If there’s a cultural event locally and It’s free then I’m all over it like a rash. The idea of ‘Walking with Words’ to combine image, word play and local heritage on a walk along the Forth and Clyde Canal sounded like the perfect way to spend a sunny September morning.
Walk a mile in his horseshoes…
The walks are the brainchild of the Reader in Residence at Falkirk Libraries(a post funded by the Scottish Book Trust), Jan Bee Brown who invited the participants to “snap and natter, tweet and twitter, hike and haiku” to explore the theme of transformation. The context for the event was set by an informative pre-walk presentation by local historian Geoff Bailey who used vintage maps and images to compare and contrast the past and present landscape around Falkirk and its connection to the ‘Great Canal’.
Fired up to see the ‘after’ of the area which oozes industrial heritage our intrepid group hit the streets of Falkirk to navigate from the town centre along to Lock 16 before finishing at the Falkirk Wheel.
On the way to the iconic landmark, Jan encouraged the group to look at the area with fresh eyes, as if we were viewing the canal through the eye of Falkirk’s newest tourist attraction, the Kelpies, modelled on the type of Clydesdale horse which once trod the tow paths.
Falkirk’s very own Banksy!
Power to the People!
The thing that struck me most was how the area had changed since I was at high school. In my novel, Talk of the Toun, the main characters go to St Paddy’s High School, based on St Mungo’s High School in Falkirk. One of the opening scenes describes the two main characters ‘dogging’ (truanting – not the meaning dogging has in the contemporary sense!) school and taking a shortcut to the town centre via the ‘Bleachy’.
Today, the area has been redeveloped as an industrial zone but this was how I remembered it and described it in my novel. Here’s the extract…
The Bleachy gave me the heebie-jeebies and I’d never walked it alone even in daylight hours. Mr Stanners told us in our first year History class that the land opposite our school was once used as a bleach field to let cloth dry out in the sun. It was hard to imagine anything in the area being clean and bright these days. The Bleachy was now a maze of boxy concrete buildings with corrugated iron flat roofs and lock-up garages. Round every corner, mad dogs strained on their leash until their mouths foamed if you dared go near the yards of the garages and workshops that lined the muddy path. We called them Bandeath dugs; they were usually a cross between an Alsatian and a wolf and they came from the Bandeath dog shelter in Stirling. No one in their right mind would buy a dog that looked as pig ugly as these brutes. They weren’t pets; Bandeath dugs were tougher than night club bouncers.
The puddles along the Bleachy were always oily and rubbish piled up in corners like multi-coloured snow drifts. It wasn’t the devil dogs and the filth that freaked me out. The Bleachy was always dark, even on a sunny day and then there would be the men on their tea breaks, overalls rolled down to their waist, greasy thumb and index finger holding a fag between them and blowing smoke rings.
Maw, Paw and the weans.
Falkirk figures – Robert Barr, the man who gave Scotland its other national drink – Irn-Bru along with Dr Harold Lyon founder of Strathcarron Hospice.
Halfway along the route, Jan suggested we stop at a set of benches beside public art that I didn’t even know existed prior to the walk and she suggested that we write any words or phrases that popped into our minds. Some of my jottings included ‘transformational change’, ‘same but different’ and ‘coming and going’. Not exactly profound statements but who knows how the walk will fuel my writing once my brain has downloaded the sights and sounds.
This was the first of a series of ‘Walking with Words’ events and if you’re in the Falkirk area I’d highly recommend them to find all the inspiration you need on the hoof. You can book a place here.
Any relation to Lady Gaga?
Do you find walking stirs your creative juices? Which walks are sensory rich for you?
Helen MacKinven 