Social isolation, already prevalent for many, has been exacerbated during the pandemic. Author Sonia Overall argues that walking alone can increase togetherness, regardless of absences and physical distance. 

Pre-pandemic, walking alone often felt, for Sonia, like an impossible luxury. Taking time and space to walk outside and beyond everyday concerns was hermit-like, an eschewing of noise and busyness. Through COVID restrictions, physically walking together has been by turns impossible and impracticable: public walks and group derives are a fond memory. Drawing on her own pre-pandemic pilgrimage and lockdown Distance Drifts, Sonia will set out her case that isolation and place can be a conduit for togetherness.

Earlier in the year, Sonia’s book Heavy Time was published to wide acclaim.

In Heavy Time psychogeographer Sonia Overall takes to the old pilgrim roads, navigating a route from Canterbury to Walsingham via London and her home town of Ely. Vivid in her evocation of a landscape of ancient chapels, ruined farms and suburban follies, Overall’s secular pilgrim elevates the ordinary, collecting roadside objects — feathers, a bingo card, a worn penny — as relics. Facing injury and interruption, she takes the path of the lone woman walker, seeking out ‘thin places’ where past and present collide, and where new ways of living might begin.