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Walking a straight line

Walked line - map reading
Shetland ZE2 9NT, UK
4 minutes

Brindister

Collection · 1 items
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Walking piece
A walk along a counter-intuitive straight line of our own making... using an OS map with a line drawn on it from our croft house in Brindister, West Burrafirth to the Ayre of Whalwick,

A walk along a straight line of our own making… using an OS map with a line drawn on it from our croft house in Brindister, West Burrafirth to the Ayre of Whalwick, a small remote bay with what was once ‘a dwellinghouse with outhouses and a few acres of land attached’.
Walking a counter-intuitive straight line in the heather, bog, and rock-strewn landscape around Brindister, with its many lochs and streams, requires a deliberate effort to ignore the desire paths that we would usually take. While in Shetland, liberated from the restrictions imposed by English ‘rights of ways’, we can also walk where we want, the stricture of our route demands constant referral to the OS map and keeping to our straight line. It also involves a lot of discussion (which, in hindsight, we really should have recorded), as we scan the landscape closely for any landmarks that might assist us to keep in the right direction, and lots of pointing.

Credits

Janette Kerr, Steve Poole

APA style reference

Kerr, J. (2026). Walking a straight line. walk · listen · create. https://walklistencreate.org/walkingpiece/walking-a-straight-line/

pedestrian acts

By de Certeau: In “Walking in the City”, de Certeau conceives pedestrianism as a practice that is performed in the public space, whose architecture and behavioural habits substantially determine the way we walk. For de Certeau, the spatial order “organises an ensemble of possibilities (e.g. by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g. by a wall that prevents one from going further)” and the walker “actualises some of these possibilities” by performing within its rules and limitations. “In that way,” says de Certeau, “he makes them exist as well as emerge.” Thus, pedestrians, as they walk conforming to the possibilities that are brought about by the spatial order of the city, constantly repeat and re-produce that spatial order, in a way ensuring its continuity. But, a pedestrian could also invent other possibilities. According to de Certeau, “the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform or abandon spatial elements.” Hence, the pedestrians could, to a certain extent, elude the discipline of the spatial order of the city. Instead of repeating and re-producing the possibilities that are allowed, they can deviate, digress, drift away, depart, contravene, disrupt, subvert, or resist them. These acts, as he calls them, are pedestrian acts.

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