Only open on the second Sunday of the month, and only accessible on foot, the old Jewish Cemetery in Vienna, was an extraordinary discovery that we stumbled upon earlier today.

It was in use between 1770 and 1870, and has managed to avoid being built on, owing to an unusual Judaic law. Once your are buried, you own the plot in which you are buried, so when it comes to purchasing land for housing, or creating a park, as so happened to the adjacent Christian cemetery, the purchaser would have to settle with hundreds of dead owners, so through time they haven't bothered. Inevitably it was vandalised during the Second World War, with graves losing any adornments that could be melted down for war use, and owing to neglect since, it has endured weathering and the encroachment of plants and trees. However, the occupants of some 4,000 graves have been identified, and for the last four years, a group of volunteers assisted by the City of Vienna, have begun to reinstate the cemetery as it would have been.

Vienna is often talked about as an easily walked city, however, that is not entirely the case - what makes Vienna something special is that it has reliable and extensive public transport, that is significantly subsidised, so that it is easy and cheap to get to places from which walking is made more convenient. As Londoners, what we've found is that so many of Vienna's streets lack any greenery, and very few are lined with street trees. So a square with a bar, coffee shop or restaurant is a very welcome sight...

During the past week, although in Vienna, we've managed to run two online events:

a very popular creative writing workshop to launch our annual writing competition on Walking A/way, the theme of which, was chosen by Cheryl Markosky and Tony Horitz, our writers-in-residence, who also facilitated the workshop;

and an intriguing and provocative Walking Writers' Salon with Dave Borthwick, of which you can view the video recording from here.

Coming up, we have Simon Cole aka Hackney Tours, taking us on an investigation into the parlance state of refugees trying to reach the UK, in a walk · listen · cafe on Tuesday and then early in May, Linda Cracknell will be our guest for another Walking Writers' Salon. We hope you can join us online, and would like to thank you for your continuing support.

Meanwhile, keep walking.

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