When you've got what I call temperate weather, not too wet and not too dry, it is best. If it's very wet, everything becomes very sticky, although the pebbles stay where they are, but it's more difficult for everything could be sticky, even the grass drags. When it's very dry, the pebbles become loose and so you tend to get a skid. There are a few steep descents and there are some I just don't do when it's dry because the stones will just fly around and you just haven't got any grip.

(Jack)

When describing the conditions of the terrain, another rider remarks on how it only takes about two days for the mud to go if it has been

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raining: 'The good part about Woodbury Common is the fact that because of the Pebblebed heathland it does dry up quickly compared to other places, it runs off the stony pebbles' (Colm).

## **Riding groups**

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Some of the riders have been cycling on Woodbury Common for decades, one rider training there from when mountain bikes (MTB) were first

**Figure 7.1** Riding group out on the heathlands. Courtesy of Chris Warburton, Knobblies Bikes

**Figure 7.2** Riding group. Courtesy of Chris Warburton, Knobblies Bikes

introduced from the United States in the early 1980s. Other early users include the Sidmouth Valley Cycling Club (SVCC), which was formed in 1991 and has about forty members. The SVCC used parts of the heathland to promote race competition events consisting of five circuits, with a focus on the Woodbury and Colaton Raleigh Commons. A trail was marked out beforehand with flags and bunting and started from Four Firs car park; the organizer states that as the area of the quarry kept changing, they had to modify the route, particularly near the start of the race, to take in these changes and keep the riders away from any dangerous operations. It would take the more experienced riders just under ten minutes to complete a circuit, so they would be racing for about forty-five minutes before the finish. Trends have changed, however, and events are no longer organized on the Common by the SVCC because many of the current members now prefer road cycling, but individual members still participate in small social MTB cross-country rides. The SVCC racing competition remains well remembered by local cycling enthusiasts with some cyclists speaking of it as the first MTB race they had ever seen.

One cyclist we met is a former Royal Marine who took over recruit training at Lympstone in 1984: 'I had in any one year a thousand recruits going through Lympstone; sixteen troops of fifty and they would use the Common for a lot of their training. In fact if the Common were closed to the Marines, the Marine camp would have to move. Woodbury Common is the best training'. He retired from the Marines in 1989 and was introduced to mountain biking in 1990 and, as he puts it, has never looked back. He still goes out on the Common about once a week on a Friday afternoon and although he also rides on Dartmoor, the Quantocks and the Cotswolds, he regards Woodbury Common as being as good as you can get: 'It's not a large area but my goodness me it's a much easier and interesting place than Dartmoor, which can be very rocky paths and so on. Woodbury Common's got it just right'. As chairman of the Cycle Touring Club Exeter (CTCEx) and the organizer of their off-road rides, he takes them out periodically during the year on long day rides on Woodbury Common.

The thought of mountain biking across the countryside can feel quite daunting but the Exeter Mountain Bike Club (EMBC) runs several programmes that cater for all age levels. There are Confidence Builder rides for adults, a women's riding group and Go-Ride skills sessions for children and young people aged six to thirteen run from the Haldon site. In the summer months their coach brings the children to ride their mountain bikes on Woodbury Common and she also meets with the women cyclists there at least four times a year. For the adults, when confidence and skills have been built, there is a Wednesday night group that meets

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at the Four Firs car park at least once a month for a ride on the Common. The Wednesday group is a mixed group mainly consisting of men, some of whom are 'hardcore' members who ride their MTB every Wednesday evening, in all seasons, in all weathers.

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Another group of mountain bikers who ride fairly regularly on the heathlands are the Axe Valley Pedallers who, based in Seaton, bike on the heathlands about twice a month, either in the evenings or at the weekend. They ride throughout the year: 'In the winter it's great because it's more to do with night-riding and then in the summer there are longer evenings to enjoy being out and about and it's always great' (Kimmo).

'Coffee Pot Rides' and the 'Bike Bus' are two other very popular organized cycle rides that often take in the lanes that traverse the Commons. The 'Coffee Pot Rides' recently celebrated their thirtieth anniversary. The organizer chooses a café in East Devon and usually between sixty and seventy people cycle up and meet there. Two years ago, when one of these riders noticed that although the meet-up itself was very sociable, the getting-there and return journeys were usually ridden on one's own, he set up the 'Bike Bus': 'I realized that there were quite a few people who didn't go on them because they either didn't know the way or couldn't mend punctures so I started the Bike Bus' (Kirby). A timetable is sent out every Tuesday evening showing the Thursday's route: 'People just join in on the way' (Kirby). With a mailing list of over 140 cyclists, there are usually between twenty and thirty cyclists taking part every Thursday. No one is ever left behind – if someone suffers a puncture, another rider will wait with the stricken cyclist until the puncture is repaired and guidance is also given on how to mend punctures. Despite an article in a cycling magazine that stated some women preferred womenonly cycling groups, when asked, the Bike Bus female participants said they preferred to ride with men, and there is a 50:50 gender ratio in this club. The organizer comments:

We tend to be very supportive in terms of getting people to ride, particularly on Thursday but on Tuesday (Coffee Pot Rides), quite to the contrary, we actually have a ride where we say if you get dropped you've got to find your own way back; if you have a puncture you've got to sort it out yourself. So we don't actually stop for anyone and if they have a puncture, it's up to them to get back; they know it's going to be a more aggressive ride whereas on the Thursday it's supportive and, you know, they make that choice.

(Kirby)

In this way people of differing abilities and motivation are catered for. A community has been developed around the Bike Bus and one female member suggested the club create its own shirt. 'The design of the shirt includes the Devon hills so it's got rounded brown hills, it's got the River Otter in it and it's got the beach huts at Budleigh, so that kind of reflects the landscape, and that's become part of the Bike Bus' (Kirby).

Of course, some bikers also ride alone or with just one companion and find this to be a different experience from riding in a larger group: 'If you're in a group you obviously tend to talk to other people and sometimes you hardly know where you've been because you've been concentrating on what they've been saying whereas if you're on your own you're obviously experiencing things much more strongly' (Kirby). It is interesting here to compare this with those who participate in organized walks, such as the Ramblers, where a similar experience is shared. One cyclist who joined the CTC in Exeter describes how going out in a group is a fantastic experience: 'It's like going for a holiday every Sunday really' (Pamela). Others find that a leader making you go a particular way is not always what they want. 'When you're on your own you're looking around and in some ways it's easier to stop as well because if you see something interesting, like a broken tree trunk or

**Figure 7.3** Bike Bus T-shirt, designed by Stephanie Houghton

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something, you can stop and have a look whereas if you're in a group you tend to have to keep up and not get left behind' (Kirby). Another rider describes how when he is on his own he decides he will go and cycle for an hour or two, just wandering around seeing where the paths go, but when he takes friends onto the heathland it is not such a casual experience: 'I know the Common quite well so I've taken some friends from work around and I had more trouble with that. If you're taking people with you you're a bit more aware of not getting lost, of going somewhere that's more difficult to get back from' (Paul). However, one cycle leader remarks how if you go out as a group and you know what to look for, you can stop, and in the right places, learn about what is special about the heath: 'That's the beauty of living in a place, that you get to know it really well, you know the people who know the heaths really well, know what to look out for' (Kimmo).

#### **Routes through the landscape**

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Those leading the group rides, such as the Bike Bus, tend to plan their route in advance, but others without such a timetable do this also – although some changes may later be made: 'Sometimes towards the end of the day I think, "I'll shorten it a bit" or "I'll lengthen it a bit" ' (Jack). This particular group leader finds it surprising how some paths have disappeared whereas other new ones have appeared: 'I'm still finding new paths (and this after twenty-one years of riding the Commons). I go along a path I've used perhaps two years previously and it's overgrown but not far away there's a new route. It's a constant change all the time' (Jack). He feels that one reason new paths are created is that when a path is used a lot the surface tension is broken, resulting in a muddy area that remains waterlogged for a long period of time and prompts people to go round it. Another cause is when a route is not used very often; it becomes overgrown with gorse, and when other people start wanting to go in that direction they go round the gorse and a new path is created. He notes how volunteers cut away gorse from tracks that are used a lot and refers to the rotation in bracken-cutting too, comparing this management with that of the Brecon Beacons where he also sometimes cycles: 'The bracken's just been left and you just can't see the trails, I mean, you know, it's completely overgrown there' (Jack).

One rider with a great interest in maps has explored many of the green lanes and enjoys sharing these discoveries with other riders. He does say, however, that for mountain biking on the Commons, maps aren't necessarily a good guide: 'Some of the better tracks are, you know, hidden away, and not particularly well-marked' (Kirby). Another says, 'You learn where you can go', and describes how he tends to keep near trees in the winter when it is cold because there is more shelter from the wind: 'That's another reason to go round the edge rather than straight across the middle. I mean the Common is quite wet as well. There's lots of low bits where you can't go, so it's quite difficult to go across it' (Paul). He himself varies his route, sometimes approaching from what he calls the 'top' route, from Woodbury Castle, at other times going round the bottom of the Common from the Exmouth direction, past the quarries and coming into it: 'There's several different ways you can go in …  He goes on to remark that a new track has been put in here by the quarry and he does not particularly care for it: 'I don't really like that one; it's a bit open and boring and it also keeps getting washed away so there's some big holes. I had some friends hurt themselves down there' (Paul). And so expediency is also a factor. Another rider often cycles across Colaton Raleigh Common but avoids that part marked as a brook because it is so marshy: 'There are more tracks than are shown on the map but you're giving yourself unnecessary difficulty going there. It's much easier to go round and do more elsewhere than just waddling across here' (Jack). He speaks of the narrow tree-lined paths on the edge of the Colaton Raleigh Common and of when a linear copse seen when coming in from near Upbury Lane, probably 20 to 30 yards wide and even wider in parts: 'It's very attractive and there's a peaty part that runs all the way through there. I find that it's one of my favourite stretches because you're on a leafy path in the summer, that winds through the trees, but if you go off path you'll hit a tree', he says, chuckling.

Maps produced by cyclists not surprisingly emphasize a combination of surrounding roads, towns and villages, those crossing the heathlands, and favourite off-road tracks. One shows a wide area of the southern part of the heathlands as far east as the River Otter, along with twenty-one named places, a favourite place for bike jumps on Bicton Common, individual landmarks such as Hayes Barton house (birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh) and local cafés.

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newgenrtpdf

**Figure 7.4** Map of heathland cyclist

#### **Night riders**

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Riding at night on the heathland is also very popular and we discuss this next. The essential piece of equipment is a high-quality night light – 'the brighter, the better' – and these can be very expensive, one rider describing his light as costing more than his bicycle. He has a Venture Enduro model that lasts for three hours on full beam and clips on to the bike, and he states that the technology has changed a lot during the last five years: 'I had an old lead acid battery to start off with and I couldn't keep up with people and I realized when I got this one it was because I couldn't see. This makes a huge difference' (Paul). Some riders wear a light on their head, others attach one to the front of the bike and some use both. The choice of which kind of light to use can be a matter of what the rider can afford, the lights attaching to the head being more expensive – 'I can't afford to get the one to go on my head yet' (Paul), or it may just be a matter of preference. There are actual differences in the effect of what can and cannot be seen when using a head or bike light, and also the riding experience. The Venture Enduro has a 35-degree spread, which allows the biker to see far enough when going fast with sufficient time to brake when necessary, but another rider who also currently uses a bike light explains: 'What you lose with the light being on the bike is that you can't turn your head to see … you get peripheral vision if you do that' (Colm). However, as one's instincts are to ride in the direction of the light, when the light is attached to the head rather than the handlebars, and the head is turned to one side to look at something, the biker may also cycle off in that direction and come off track or have an accident. Yet other cyclists prefer the light attached to the head as it apparently helps the rider to focus more and is brighter. Although she regards head lights as preferable for these reasons, one rider uses lights attached both to her head and to the bike handlebars when she is coaching children in mountain bike riding, as she needs sufficient light in case of emergency to look after everyone and get them all back safely.

One hazard is when turning round and becoming dazzled by the light of the rider behind you. The Royal Marines have an issue with the dazzling effect of the cyclists' lights too; their use can cause confusion during manoeuvres, as one rider explains: 'We bump in to them and they've got their lights on and we've got our lights on … we dazzle them and they don't really like that … they do complain every now and again' (Cohen). The Marines are not the only ones who can be dazzled: 'We see lots of rabbits up there and they can be a bit of a pain actually because they just stand there and look at you because they get cornered by the lights and I've had a few near misses because they don't run' (Colm). Other nightlife on the Commons is also affected and the riders call out warning to each other: 'Frog, frog', for example. Owls are often seen and sometimes 'spooked' by the riders:

And of course if you get them spooked they then tend to spook other animals up there like deer; it can frighten you to death because you're riding along and this deer will jump out from anywhere and run off; that's quite spooky. You know, they're there, sort of thing, and then, phwor, they're gone.

(Colm)

#### **Differences between day and night riding**

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Many cyclists do not ride at night and the reasons for this are various, including the cost of decent night lights, a fear of disorientation, and a preference for seeing where one is going. Levels of fitness and confidence may also be factors when night riding. One cyclist spoke of his caution when deciding to ride at night and of how he only went out by himself when first starting, as he was unsure as to whether he would be able to keep up with the experienced night riders who rode in groups. He now rides on a Tuesday night with the Exeter MTB Club and they often ride on Woodbury Common. Another said it was good when the RM were out: 'It's always quite nice and comforting actually sort of knowing they're around really' (Paul). Also, two riders describe their Thursday night ride as not being a club as such, chuckling: 'It's a kind of a mates thing, it's by word of mouth and if people think they're fast enough we'll invite them along' (Cohen).

The cyclists have spoken of their pleasure in riding the commons because they are so open and the views are beautiful, but what is it like at night when the views are no longer visible? Certain riders find that it is more of a 'heads-down' experience because there are no views to be looked at, and describe it as being a 'different ball game': 'You can ride a trail in the day and when you go back at night it's completely different', said Colm. He feels this is because the trails are ridden more slowly and the riders' perceptions are different because of the darkness. Nevertheless, the actual cycling still appears to follow a pattern of a burst of activity and then a stop – to wait for the slower riders to catch up, a pause to discuss which trail will be followed next, or a wait whilst someone fixes a puncture, and stopping just to look up at the stars. Does it still feel 'open'? To some it does not feel this way; the feeling of spaciousness is lost and the senses may be used differently because the rider is more alert: 'It smells different and your eyesight has to be much better because things come at you much faster because you just don't see them coming' (Paul). The sense of hearing also appears to be particularly important at night: 'You need to respond quickly to the sound of what's under your tyres, you know, from the point of view of whether something's loose or solid or wet' (Kimmo). One rider feels closer to the landscape at night because he feels as if he is moving in his own space – 'It's like a little sphere travelling with you' (Paul). He finds this quite comforting in what he describes as a spooky landscape: 'It's quite warm and friendly. It feels smaller and more like you feel when you're at home, nicer somehow because you feel more at one with it but you've got to treat it with respect' (Paul).

#### **Comparisons with walking**

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Several cyclists make interesting comparisons between walking and biking:

Well, I've done both and I enjoy each for its own sake. Cycling is more challenging, physically more tiring, it's exciting, and it helps to develop a degree of fitness. You can invent challenges like steep hills and sudden drops and so on as well as seeing the scenery and, you know, cycling with the CTC, you've got the route, reconnaissance, you've got to find your route, you've got the challenge, the physical challenge, you've got the company of the people you're with, that's three jolly good reasons, isn't it, and you've got fitness. (Jack)

He says he sees more when walking rather than cycling but, because bikes are very quiet, he often surprises animals such as foxes and badgers while cycling quickly and quietly: 'If you're talking when you're walking then you won't see much, you've got to walk quietly, but if you're cycling and you're quiet, you catch up all sorts of things' (Jack). Another cyclist remarks upon coming across a hare on one occasion and feels he would not have seen it if he had been walking. Others find cycling more rewarding than walking because a greater distance is covered and it is more of a challenge.

Some mountain bikers prefer this activity to walking or on-road riding:

Yeah, the big advantage of the mountain bike (as opposed to an on-road bike) is you can just go for a gap; whatever the terrain.  I mean I would never dream of walking from here to here in an afternoon, and come back again but on a bike it's not difficult.

(Paul)

 He feels that he sees more of the nature immediately around him when he walks but prefers to do mountain biking as he sees the landscape from different perspectives: 'You don't have to be cycling fast all the time'. However, one cyclist who also does a lot of walking on the Commons says that she does not have a preference between walking and cycling as she gets a different experience every time she is up on the Commons. One of the cycle leaders also comments on speed differences when walking or biking: 'You're going to be moving at a completely different speed so it's fair to say that, walking, you will see more, up close, and are more likely to see things than you would on a bike' (Kimmo).

#### **Relationships with the heathland**

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Cyclists discuss their feelings about the heathland and whether they find it to be a natural wild place. As will be seen, there are commonalities and differences among their viewpoints. One cyclist describes his feelings when on the Commons thus: 'It's a feeling of freedom and challenge I suppose. And I find it's nice to be there. It's nice to be free and forget the worries of the world and your age and things.  That becomes more important with time', he says, laughing. He has no particular favourite route: 'I just enjoy being there, whatever it is. I enjoy doing a long day rather than a short day because you've got that greater feeling of the whole day of freedom and just doing what you want to do. But that's early, I mean I like going off early in the morning and coming back sort of late teatime' (Jack). He says, when walking, he senses being part of nature but he also feels this when cycling too: 'I mean we're not going flat out all the time; I make a point of stopping and looking'. He does not feel the Commons to be a wild place, however, as 'wild' to him is walking in the wilderness in North America.

Another says he frequently goes out on his mountain bike on the Commons and now knows it like the back of his hand: 'So I picture where to go and I can work out how long it's going to take me to go everywhere but conditions (of the terrain) make a huge difference. It's just nice to be in the outside world and away from everything' (Paul). He describes Woodbury Common as being a fantastic place for mountain biking because it has everything: 'There's flat and open wide stretches where you can go for quite a long way and there's a single track, which is narrow and twisty, in among the trees and I like that, you can get up some speed and it's fun'.

When he comes across paths with obstacles such as fallen trees, he removes them. He also comes across paths with holly growing across and says these can be quite hazardous, particularly when biking in a group because one can easily get holly in one's face, and so he sometimes takes secateurs with him to remove such obstacles. He laments the cutting down of trees because although more of a view is revealed when they are cut down, he feels there is a loss of certain wildlife. This cyclist likes to be quiet and see what is going on around him but he rarely feels part of the landscape: 'I always feel humans intrude on my view of the world' (Paul). Although he views the contours of the landscape as being natural he knows the Commons are managed:

It's obvious that it's managed because there are paths everywhere and you can see where there has been intended burning and when it is accidental burning. You can see where they have been mowing down the gorse and you can't go very far without seeing the quarry or bits that they have worked on. So, it's natural in that it's full of nature, wildlife and stuff, but it's very managed.

(Paul)

And another rider states he does not feel the heathlands is as natural a place as it once was due to the expansion of the quarry: 'Where the quarry is now we used to ride trails down through there and they've dug it all away' (Colm). He finds that the trails grow over very quickly unless the growth is managed or there has been a fire. He has the sense of the heathland as feeling wild at times, although not as wild as Dartmoor, Exmoor or the Quantocks.

Mountain biking on the Commons is often referred to as having bursts of activity and this is felt to be good for health reasons. The physicality of riding is pleasurable, as is following the contours of the landscape and anticipating what is coming next:

If you don't anticipate you certainly get to a turn and you're not ready for it and you have to brake and just stop, whereas if you're

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anticipating you can see that the path goes sinuously through the trees, and you keep an eye for that. Your whole body is following that and your brain's ahead of the action, working out what's going to come next. So you notice the beginners tend to sort of just stop because they haven't worked out what to do next; they're afraid of going in to a tree or something.

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(Kirby)

 This biker describes how, when putting in the effort to get to the top of a steep incline, the view suddenly appears, and how different emotion erupts because a visual field that had been limited to twenty yards suddenly opens up, triggering thoughts in his mind, leading to a sense of connection with the landscape. He enjoys the variety of the Commons, describing some parts as bleak, and one part in particular, up above the golf course, left towards Sidmouth, as looking like a savannah (other users of the Common have also remarked on this):

I keep expecting to see elephants and giraffes there because the vegetation at ground level is sort of yellow and you have the isolated trees standing up and it's just like a sort of David Attenborough film. You see that and then you go into this ancient fort, which is only a few hundred yards further on, with oak trees and it's quite different. It's quite bizarre.

(Kirby)

 He himself finds the hill fort quite disappointing, particularly after he had been informed of the house that was once there. He is moved by the hill forts in Pembrokeshire but not by Woodbury, and thinks partly that the trees spoil it.

The variety of riding experiences afforded by the Commons is often remarked upon: 'It's a great place the Common. What I like when I take the children there is there's so many different types of terrain; you have small wood coppices to ride in on single mud tracks and downhill places through conifers' (Sam). This variety enables the development of a lot of different riding skills; the Pebblebeds themselves being very challenging:

The other day I thought it would be all right but it actually had been dry, and then got wet and then was really sticky, really slippy. If it's really wet then it slugs you and that's if you ride a mountain bike, it's muddy and slippy. If it's muddy and the mud slides, you kind of know where the bike's going but when it's greasy … so it's hard underneath and then wet on top, and it's really slippy and that's like riding on ice, so that's quite challenging.

(Sam)

This rider actually finds it quite terrifying to ride over the pebbles but still finds the heathland a 'brilliant, beautiful and special' place. Unlike where she does most of her training (Haldon), where all the trails are constructed from an MTB training perspective, she finds the trails on the Commons to be more natural and the landscape to be wild, in an untamed, non-cultivated sense: 'Yeah, it's not groomed; it doesn't seem to me like someone goes around with a pair of secateurs clipping it all; it's a very natural place' (Sam).

For many, the openness of the Commons is very important: 'When I'm out on the Commons there's a sort of openness; it conjures up images of the Far East to me, it's adventure and even though it's actually quite close (to inhabited areas) it feels remote, you actually feel as if you're a long way from anywhere' (Kimmo). He describes the landscape as giving a sense of being out in the wilderness and says it has a different feel to it than Dartmoor or Exmoor: 'It's not as exposed and in that sort of sense it's more friendly and warming' (Kimmo). But he does not feel the Pebblebeds are wild: 'I know it's looked after by quite a few different groups and interested parties and it's used actively by the military'. He goes on to say that this is a cared-for environment that is looked after in a particular way, which helps maintain its character: 'Because it's such a large space there's a little bit more breathing space, shall we say, for all those different interests – that's the beauty of it'. For him the whole thing is about pleasure rather than a form of transport:

It's not like you're getting from A to B, that's not to say that some people don't. There are a few people I know who do actually commute across and around that area but more often than not it's more for pleasure than reasons of transport. Going across, riding across the heaths, is very enjoyable because it's one of the few areas where you'll get traffic-free sections of considerable distance; real proper cross-country mountain biking.

(Kimmo)

One cyclist describes how she used to occasionally cycle across the Commons just to get to the other side rather than to enjoy it for itself,

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but having joined a group she now frequently rides both on and off-road.  She states that it is a place she can be quite proud of and that it is there when she wants it:

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So, if it wasn't there, there'd certainly be something missing I think for the character of this area and your, bit of a cliché, but your kind of quality of life. From, yeah, from physical recreation but also for clearing your head or just sort of making you feel better. It has a lot of qualities; it is very important.

(Pamela)

The last time she had been up there cycling off-road she had arranged to meet with someone but they had got their times mixed up and so she made her own way round the Commons:

I had a fantastic time as I was discovering paths that I hadn't been on before. I was following other cycle tracks, which I thought might be my friend but they would disappear and you didn't know if you were actually going the right way and I really enjoyed that. I know the Commons reasonably well, you know, but it takes forever to actually get to know it all.

(Pamela)

This particular cyclist feels as if she is part of the landscape when she is on the Common and she enjoys the solitude it can provide: 'There's not many people around, it does swallow people up. Even if there's quite a lot of cars in the car park you don't actually come across that many people except on the main paths'. She enjoys the unexpected variety of the landscape and compares riding under trees, through bracken and over tree roots with wide paths and their vistas of the sea. Stating that she is more of a landscape person than wildlife person, she describes how going on to the heathland lifts her spirits: 'It is stunning and of course it varies from time of year and time of day and conditions'.

Although she believes it is a big enough area to be called wild, she feels the heath is not technically wild because it is a managed landscape:

But it does have, you know, it does go away in front of you, and it sort of sweeps away and the views are fantastic and rough tracks and gorse and heather and trees and the sort of variety of the habitats and things and, of course, if you went up there and it was wet and windy it would be wild, you know.

(Pamela)

Reflecting upon whether this is a natural landscape, she states that 'natural' is a good adjective but it cannot be applied to the heathland because it is managed: 'I mean heaths at one time were pretty well selfmaintained because, you know, sheep grazing or whatever it was and the commoners, and so it was like part of people's livelihoods and the way of the world that would maintain those areas like that' (Pamela). Thus, although to an extent natural processes once maintained the heath, with human activity sustaining rural livelihoods, that state of affairs has now passed: 'It is more of a managed approach, which will be more regulated, have certain targets and certain aims'. She does feel, nevertheless, that the heathland retains its sense of remoteness and she finds it peaceful: 'Yet it can be a sociable place as well; you see other people doing other things, enjoying themselves' (Pamela).

Asked what it is like riding on the pebbles she says: 'You notice the pebbles when you're on a bike that's for sure because going across the path that goes straight across and down the other side, if you haven't got the right kind of tyres, it's quite a steep bit and you'll start skidding around'. She finds the texture of the pebbles against the vegetation, and the colour of the paths running through it, to present an interesting contrast.

When talking about what could impact on the heathland and how important it is that these sort of spaces are kept she speaks of the campaign to stop a golf course from being built on the Common in the 1970s: 'The battle people put up to save the Common, we should be really grateful to them because otherwise it would be a huge golf course and that would be a dreadful thing' (Pamela). She has noticed an increase in the number of off-road cyclists and is also concerned that there may be too many commercial businesses offering bikes for hire; she hopes that CDE offer a good choice of routes so the load is spread. Like the other cyclists interviewed, she does not wish to see amenities added to the Pebblebed environment.

#### **Relationship with other users**

Cyclists discuss their relationship with other users of the Commons:

I have what you would call the old fashioned type of bell that rings as opposed to bings, and I always, particularly elderly people, I give

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them a good ring and quite often, sometimes they say, 'How nice to hear a bicycle bell'.  Actually I always invariably stop or walk round people who are elderly or infirm or whatever. But I don't think all cyclists are well behaved by any means. You see these young lads, the world belongs to them as they whizz past but I think, I mean most of my contemporaries are between fifty and seventy; only a couple of us are over seventy.

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(Jack)

He also feels that cyclists do less damage to the terrain than horses do, except when moving uphill when the cycle tends to cut in:

But horses cut the turf and they're heavy on one spot whereas bikers sort of even out and they have a very narrow imprint and move relatively quickly. Well, this article that I read said, scientifically, we do actually less damage to the countryside than the horses do. Which is rather relieving.

(Jack)

Another cyclist feels there should be dedicated cycle paths as this might lessen what he describes as conflict between cyclists and walkers, as well as encouraging more people to ride there. He would not want to create new paths but to install waymark posts to help people to navigate, so they do not get lost or disturb sensitive areas.

In general terms cycling is regarded as a good and sustainable form of mobility in relation to others. However, particularly in the rural context of a conservation area where wildlife may be disturbed by day and night, and in relation to historical monuments, the effects of cycling become more complicated. Potential conflict has involved not just others on the Commons but also how Woodbury Castle, the Iron Age hill fort, is used by visitors. Described as a 'playground' by Bungy Williams, the Senior Commons Warden, Woodbury Castle has been walked on and in for pleasure way beyond living memory. Some erosion had been caused by walkers but this has been exacerbated by some mountain bikers who use the castle to practise jumps and have fun. One cyclist said to us:

You'll always get people using areas that you're not really supposed to, but where the Pebblebed comes in and the information that's posted around the car parks, that's the opportunity to educate people really. This takes a while and also, through other user groups, it's always easier to put good practice into peer-to-peer networks than other forms really.

As of 2009, the damage being sustained to the castle was a situation that had to be resolved. If certain members of the MTB public were going to continue ignoring the notices, then measures had to be put in place to prevent cyclists riding on the castle. As part of the long-term management of this scheduled ancient monument, an in-depth archaeological survey of the castle took place in March 2009. This was conducted in partnership with CDE, Devon Archaeology, English Heritage and Natural England, and the geophysical instruments used showed just how deep the erosion was. A plan was drawn up. It was decided that the badly eroded scars had to be repaired, with some of them being formed into steps that would guide visitors up, over and around the Castle. Also, holly bushes and other suitable flora would be planted in order to deter mountain bikers. An archaeological observer was to be present during the construction to record archaeological features that became exposed. Master Builders A. T. Vincent and Sons were contracted to repair the erosion work. The repairs being complete, the steps were built with oak wood and in-filled with gravel from Blackhill Quarry. The site was then re-opened to visitors after fencing was erected around the more fragile scars. Bungy Williams said:

We just hope that, now the restoration work is complete, people will treat the 'castle' with the respect it deserves, so that it can be enjoyed by the people of Devon for generations to come. The only alternative would be to limit public access, but nobody involved in the restoration effort would want to resort to that.

(Bungy Williams)

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#### **Horse riding, co-being and the landscape**

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Recent research commissioned for the British Horse Society suggests that in the UK over 90% of recreational horse riders are female and more than a third of them are over forty-five years old (Maxwell *et al*. 2012). This is borne out by our research on the Pebblebed heathlands, in which all independent riders seen out on the Commons were women, sometimes accompanied by children. The only time we have observed male horse riders has been during meetings of the East Devon hunt. So this form of recreation is heavily gendered, contrasting with cycling and walking. Another difference is that horse riders, apart from groups of learners riding out from Dalditch stables in the far south of the heathland, usually ride on their own, in pairs or more rarely in larger groups of families or friends. The one established riding school on the heathlands at Dalditch currently has forty-five ponies and horses. Beyond that there are up to eighty independent horse riders using the heathlands on a regular basis. Almost all of them live in villages and farms in the vicinity and ride up to the heathlands and back again. Transporting horses to ride here from further afield, using horseboxes, is not commonplace. So almost all horse riders apart from those using the riding school are local people with local knowledge. Some have been riding here for twenty or thirty years, and in some cases, since they were children. They, in turn, are taking their children out to enjoy the heathlands.

One of the main attractions for all concerned is the absence of road traffic, a major hazard all horse riders have to contend with. Some say that if they did not have this area to ride on and had to use mainly roads they would probably give up horse riding altogether. Both the riding school and independent riders use the whole or large parts of the Commons. The areas they tend to frequent most are strongly related to where they live or stable their horses, to the east, south, west or north of the area.

Those riding regularly may go out on the heathlands three or four times a week for anything up to a couple of hours. Mornings, and evenings during the summer months, are favourite times. Many find riding in the landscape calming and therapeutic, as do some walkers and cyclists. Again this aspect of riding has been noted by the British Horse Society investigation cited above. Horse riding stimulates positive feelings; it may help to counter anxiety and depression and it promotes an appreciation of the landscape with like-minded people (Maxwell *et al*.

**Figure 7.5** Group of horse riders on the heathlands

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**Figure 7.6** Horse-riding partners. Photograph courtesy of Karen Williams

2012: 21ff.). More generally 'equine-assisted therapy' has been widely promoted, stressing the physical and psychological benefits of both riding and being around horses, touching, grooming and taking care of them (Lawrence 1988; Gilbert 2014). Horses and people take care of each other through their mutual interaction.

In this section our primary concern is with horse–human relationships in the heathland landscape as a particular form of embodied relationship that differs substantially from others. While cyclists have their own particular experiential entanglements with their machines, horse riders have a rather different kind of relationship with their animals as sentient beings with an agency and intentionality of their own.

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Recent discussions have indicated the importance of understanding horse riding in general and human/animal relationships in particular in terms of a shared sense of co-being and becoming, transcending nature/ culture, subject/object, active/passive dualisms in social thought (Argent 2012; Birke 2009; Brandt 2006; DeMello 2012; Haraway 2003; 2008; Hunn 2012; Marvin and McHugh 2014; Maurstad *et al*. 2013; Davis and Maurstad 2016). Horse riders and their horses actively participate in each other's being as part of an embodied relationship that is both physical and mental. In turn this has an intimate relationship to an experience of landscape. If riding horses may contribute to stress relief it also has another purpose for many: as a particular way to experience nature and the landscape. Horse riding provides a perfect motivation for doing so, a reason for getting out and experiencing something Other and different.

Each horse rider, like most cyclists or dog walkers, will have their regular and favourite routes across the landscape. Very few of them can be seen riding across the heathland off the established tracks and paths. They all say they prefer to keep to the tracks both because it is safer underfoot, the vegetation concealing pits and uneven ground, and because there are no adders. Such is the number and variety of potential tracks to follow that riders say there is very little reason for riding off them anywhere else. Should they leave a track it is generally because they have got lost. The horses, like dogs, don't like picking their way through the spiky undergrowth.

Horse riders point out a number of positive benefits and things they appreciate about the heathlands: the relative absence of fences, gates and other restrictions to movement; the absence of traffic; stunning views across and off the heathlands themselves; the diversity of the terrain and the types of areas that one can ride through – high places with fine views, sheltered valleys, open moorland and wooded areas. This provides a varied and interesting riding experience: 'It's so diverse. One minute you can be going down a very dark overhanging track and the next minute you're up Wheathill with clear views of the sea. And the smells up there are absolutely brilliant, the gorse, the rotting vegetation' (Horse rider). They are also keenly aware of seasonal changes in the character of the heathland vegetation and the character of the tracks along which they ride. They develop their own names for tracks based on their characteristics. For two of our informants, Karen and Jackie, who ride together, 'Sandy Gallop' is the name they give to a long, sandy track on a slight incline where the horses can safely run. 'Two-Leg Corner', a sharp bend around which they ride fast, marks an important turning point on a short route out before turning home. 'Jumping Woods' is a short stretch of track where they jump over low piles of logs in woodland. 'Big Circuit' is an extensive ride around the heathlands, the 'Brick Track' is part of the Second World War camp and part of the current RM endurance course, and 'The M1' is a very straight and wide track running to the east from Woodbury Castle across the middle of the heathlands. Riding along these familiar tracks is deeply significant personally because it brings back shared memories of being out together and with their children. The maps drawn by these two horse riders are utterly different from those discussed so far. On the maps produced by the RM, few or no tracks are depicted. By contrast the maps produced by the horse riders are dominated by tracks and car parks are not shown.

Figure 7.7, drawn by Karen, depicts over forty named places and many of these are personal names (e.g. Sandy Gallop, Adder Path, Bluebell Valley, Lollipop Tracks). Numerous tracks are shown crossing the heathland and areas with grazing cattle and ponies. None of these occur on the other maps. Views off the heathland are marked as are boggy areas (very significant for a horse rider). The map covers the southern half of the heathland where Karen rides. The grenade range, quarry, MAFF airfield and Woodbury Castle are shown. The only roads depicted are part of the B3180 and the Woodbury to Yettington road. Little is indicated off the heathland apart from some village names. Unlike the others this is a deeply personal map insofar as it arises almost entirely from a horse rider's perspective, with personal names given to places and particular stretches of the tracks. The second map, drawn by Jackie (Figure 7.8), depicts a similar area of the southern half of the heathlands and is again dominated by tracks and personal names.

The quarry, grenade range and part of the endurance course are indicated together with the positions of bogs and wooded areas.

The nature of the experience of landscape from a horse rider's point of view is very different from that of a walker. They notice different things, in particular the character of the surface over which they are riding. This is absolutely crucial for horse riders. Horse riders, unlike walkers, are much more aware and finely attuned to the manner in which different areas of tracks may change over time on the

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**Figure 7.7** Karen's map

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**Figure 7.8** Jackie's map

heathlands, in a similar manner to cyclists. They all say that the tracks change. Through time parts of tracks that were once pebbly become sandy, or vice versa. This will make riding along that particular stretch more or less difficult and enjoyable. Sandy areas where the ground is soft are particularly important and exhilarating for horse riders because these are the areas (rather few and far between) that allow you to run or canter. On a horse it is much more difficult going down a steep slope with an uneven surface than going up one, and so particular care and attention to the ground surface is required. Weather may also alter the character of the tracks significantly. After a wet spell horse riders may avoid particular areas because they get so boggy and difficult underfoot.

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On a horse you are much higher up than either a walker or a cyclist, and therefore you can see more of the landscape that unfolds before you. Horse riders also tend to go much further than most walkers in the same period of time. So the horse rider obtains an extended view of the landscape in two senses: looking down and across it, and in terms of spatial range. Horse riders say that they see more wildlife sitting on a horse than when out walking: 'You see deer. If you walk you don't seem to. So you see more wildlife on a horse and the horse will detect the deer before you normally' (Horse rider). It is also in some respects less energetic and the experience of the terrain is mediated through the body of the horse: 'You've got the power and the feeling of the horse underneath you and then you've got this beautiful scenery as well and you're not doing all the hard work of the walking you're just being taken through this beautiful, beautiful countryside' (Rider). Steep pebbly slopes make horse riding difficult and challenging in some areas, as do boggy valleys. Sandy tracks without pebbles are areas where it is best to canter because the ground is soft. Favourite areas for most riders are either stretches of track where the ground is soft enough to canter or those where there are wide and extensive views across the landscape, for example, to the west of Woodbury Castle and on parts of East Budleigh Common with views east to the sea. Horse riders orientate themselves in the landscape primarily in terms of familiar landmarks such as Woodbury Castle, like others, but also in terms of the particular characteristics of individual tracks well known to them.

Independent horse riders have noted some significant changes to the landscape: the removal of a pine plantation on Dalditch Common and the restoration of the area to heathland; separately, the huge area swallowed up by the quarry at Black Hill. One mentioned the 'unnecessarily aggressive' fencing now hemming in Dalditch Common restricting access to some tracks she formerly rode along.

Riding on a horse involves a different kind of exercise than walking using different leg muscles to control the horse and move forward. The rider and the horse communicate with each other through the mutual engagement of their sensuous bodies and emotions. For an independent rider this involves intimate knowledge of the horse and its capabilities, because horses may not always cooperate. Any indecision on the part of the rider is likely to be sensed by the horse. In some more difficult areas it is not really possible to look out across the landscape because the rider must instead concentrate on the terrain:

… a lot of the time you do have to concentrate and certainly when you are on the stonier places you are watching the stones and on my horse, she's 16 now, and having a bit of joint trouble and I'm very careful where I try to ride her on the Common and I try to pick out the smoothest bits to walk down.

(Horse rider)

The horse itself, as well as the rider, will often know the track if followed many times, knowing where to turn and anticipating a canter or a run at certain points. In winter it may want to take the shortest route home: 'The horses know the routes as well as we do I'm sure. Obviously we make decisions and they don't know which way we are going to go but when you turn down that track they know it will be like this and then we'll have a canter there' (Horse rider).

Horses, however long they may have been ridden by the same rider, can always be unpredictable. Riding always involves a relationship between the person and the horse, their mind and that of the animal: it is a constant dialogue that may be relaxed and harmonious or become tense and difficult (cf. Maurstad *et al*. 2013; Brandt 2006). Riding a horse involves a synaesthetic engagement between their bodies, textures and surfaces, sight and sound and smell. Sometimes the rider may be able to look across the landscape and forget about the animal beneath her in the process of movement. At other times she must concentrate on the relationship with the animal and the area of the track immediately ahead. This relationship also changes with the age and physical capacity of both horse and rider. A 'sparky' horse may calm down with age; older horses will find it more difficult to negotiate steep slopes with an uneven surface and so on. In this way the experience of landscape is always mediated by

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the relationship established between horse and rider and the duration of that relationship. There is always the danger of falling off and getting seriously injured. Horses can become spooked or frightened by things that take place in the surroundings. Horse riding may be a joy; it can also be a real challenge.

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The main potential problems for horse riders on the heathlands involve the other user groups: inconsiderate mountain bikers who flash past and do not slow down, dog walkers who do not control their dogs, model aircraft flyers and the Royal Marines. Some horse riders avoid riding past the model aircraft flying field because their horses can get upset by the high-pitched whining sound of the planes. They will also deviate from their chosen route to avoid areas where they can see the RM are training and engaging in fire-fights. Low-flying RM helicopters sweeping just above the landscape can frighten their horses as do bushes that suddenly start to move (i.e. the RM), causing the horse to stop or alternatively scoot unpredictably up a track: 'You can be going up a track quite happily and the horse suddenly stops and you can't think why and then you look and there is a whole line of camouflaged Marines with guns pointing at you' (Horse rider). However, experienced horse riders are aware of these potential problems of riding on the heathlands and do their best to avoid getting into situations where their animal will be frightened, perhaps asking groups of RM, if encountered, if they are likely to start firing:

Usually we will see things going on and we will always question them as to whether we are about to ride into a war zone or not because suddenly they can open up and the firing is very loud. The horses cope pretty well with the firing as long as it is not on top of them. But the horses get spooked when they are creeping around in the bushes with their helmets on and hedges growing out of their heads and they suddenly get up and walk and the horses think it's a bush and it suddenly starts moving down the track.

(Horse rider)

#### **Embodiment and landscape**

Different ways of riding change the relationship between the rider and the landscape. For example, while walking the rider will typically sit upright on the saddle. Cantering involves being out of the saddle and leaning forward up the horse's neck a bit. This is when the rider will be looking forward rather than from side to side so the faster they move the less, other than the act of riding itself, they tend to see or experience beyond the relationship with the horse. Being on a horse means you are always accompanied in the landscape, never alone. So horse riding always involves negotiation between horse and rider and communication between the two. The two are always in bodily contact in a manner in which a walker and a dog are not, and the movement of the rider is entirely dependent on the horse. This is primarily a matter of kinaesthetics and haptics. The horse rider must, as discussed above, pay attention to the ground surface because the horse has a tendency to slip and the rider has no control over the feet of the horse. On some surfaces they will feel comfortable and may be able to canter, on others they must concentrate solely on the track ahead and move slowly. It is highly significant that all of the horse riders we talked to mentioned the changing character of the surfaces of the tracks that they followed, something that hardly registered with walkers but was also of great significance to cyclists. The rider, unlike the walker or the cyclist, needs to be vigilant and aware of factors that may frighten and upset the horse and avoid them if possible. So getting through the landscape may be a greater achievement and in this sense provide more satisfaction. Riding and controlling the horse requires a different kind of mental activity involving constant and largely non-verbal communication, mainly through the body, with the animal; being one with the animal and ideally in harmony with it and the way that it moves. There is a rhythmic activity using the thighs, calves and legs and the reins to direct the horse forward. There are always two independent minds at work and therefore the experience is completely different from walking or cycling. Horse riding involves a continuous active relationship with another being. The horse rider is always co-present in the landscape with the horse in an encounter that differs fundamentally from those of other user groups on the heathlands.

#### **Conclusions**

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There are cultures of bicycle and horse riding on the Pebbled heathland that entail an understanding of the environment itself and that involve adapting riding skills according to the various surfaces, inclines, textures and widths of track. Both types of user develop kinaesthetic sensibilities in relation to the terrain and the manner in which they can navigate through it. The relationship of cyclists with their bicycles as a fifth limb, and whether they cycle during the day or night and in what kind of social group, produces a specific sense of space-time and specific evaluations of the landscape, and in a similar manner so does horse riding. Both cycling and riding may be solitary or social but cyclists tend to be more organized and in larger groups. Horse riding is more familial and in our case heavily gendered as female. The bicycle and the horse are both inseparable from human bodily experiences, producing a sense of near/far, up/down, directional coordinates and distant horizons. Knowledge is often tacit, routinized through the medium of the reflective and pre-reflective body, both physical and mental.

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The maps produced by our cyclists and horse riders differ substantially and in particular in the absence of roads or car parks for the latter. Named places are fewer and this reflects different kinds of experiences. Cyclists include areas off the heathland itself. Movement for horse riders is generally slower, especially downhill, and usually far more cautious, whereas some cyclists in their pursuit of performance can be reckless. The horse rider has an altogether different kind of relationship with the horse from the cyclist's relationship with the bicycle, as the horse rider is responsible for the horse's well-being. A broken bicycle can be replaced, a horse, with its distinctive individuality and person-like being, cannot. On the other hand horse riders can gallop in sandy stretches of the terrain where cyclists struggle. Far more physical effort is required by the cyclist and for some the effort itself physically taxes the body but may be, for this very reason, exhilarating.

'Challenging' is the word shared by most cyclists when discussing their activities on and around the Pebblebed heathlands. Whilst some of those interviewed cycle on and off-road by themselves, the vast majority rides with at least one other person and often in groups of three or more, especially when riding at night when it appears the focus tends to be on what is in front of the rider rather than around him or her. The sense of vastness and space that is often referred to in daytime riding is lost and the heathland can seem more intimate, which is an interesting contrast to the repeatedly cited 'spooky' characteristic of the heathland at night. From a distance, the cyclists can be quite impressive to watch: their lights and the trails followed are like a moving chain, a lit-up weaving pattern in the night-time. Horse riders only encounter the landscape in daylight and they are generally far more cautious.

Both cycling and horse riding involve shared acts of movement or artistry, but with horses this involves a shared mind and a kinaesthetics linking the rhythms and power of the movements of the horse to that of the rider. The relationship between the cyclist and the cycle is thoroughly mediated by the technology of the machine itself, which may be modified and thought through in various ways to produce different performative acts in moving through the landscape. By contrast a horse rider's relationship with the horse is an intersubjective meeting of minds that, if successful, leads to an understanding between the two and a responsiveness that may heighten the pleasure of both. The emotion a bicyclist may have for his or her machine is a one-sided affair as opposed to the constant negotiation and meeting of minds involved in horse riding. The difference between the cycle as object or thing and the horse as subject and 'person' is fundamental and consequently the emotional entanglement is different. Embodiment is layered in different ways. The bicycle rider experiences through the medium of the bicycle, which itself has no experience or will of its own, but the experience of the horse rider is fundamentally part and parcel of the horse's own experience. Part of this is memory for both human and horse: bad or good rides in bad or good places across the landscape, linked to particular events.

For both cyclists and horse riders there are differing connections with the textured landscape, its curves and changing surfaces. When cycling or riding there is a translation between cyclist and horse rider and landscape, a flow involving the visual and physical, and a making, temporarily, of an imprint by the tyres of the bicycle or the hooves of the horse. This can result in a mobile *being-in-the-world* in a landscape that can change according to terrain, weather conditions and the emotions brought to it by the cyclist or horse rider. Of particular note are the valuable psychosocial aspects of cycling or riding across the heathland, which can, as when walking, become a therapeutic landscape for many.

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## 8 The cry of the Commons: walking through furze

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In Britain, walking in the countryside as a popular leisure activity can probably best be described as a recently 'invented' cultural tradition. Until the late eighteenth century walking was regarded mainly as a means of transport used by those not wealthy enough to afford a horse or carriage to convey them on their journeys. For the walkers, journeying was conducted on 'desire paths', the quickest and most navigable routes to the destination. These desire paths would, where permission was given, cross landowners' fields and woods, hugging the landscape's contours.

Influences on the culture of walking for pleasure have been both romantic and scientific. When writing of the first essay written on the pleasures of walking (William Hazlitt's 1821 'On Going a Journey'), Solnit remarks upon how it and the other examples that were to follow over the next 150 years or so were moralizing and inclined to preach on how to walk; Solnit feels this belief in the virtuousness of rural walking persists to this day (Solnit 2001: 118–25). Other influences have come from botanizers such as Richard Buxton (1849), who used long-distance rambling as the basis for naturalistic fieldwork, transforming pedestrian labour into scientific pleasure (Landry 2001: 207). More modern influences include walking as part of the growing 'leisure industry' in post-Second World War Britain (Rubinstein and Speakman 1969), its developing material culture, including what some may regard as peripheral equipment such as pedometers, and the use of mobile phone apps to determine routes. A history of the Ramblers' Association, the Open Spaces Society and other organizations also shows that walking for pleasure has been and still can be political in nature. Although it may be argued that following routes provided by guidebooks or walking leaders reproduces a narrative instigated by others wherein the walking experience is formalized and the opportunities for discoveries lessened, this is perhaps an oversimplification of that which takes place. For example, the 'walkexchange' organization develops educational and creative walks that are free and open to the public. Blake Morris, one of the walkexchange founders who focuses on group walks as an artistic medium, explains: 'We walk to learn about spaces, ideas and each other' (Morris 2015).

Some early writings show recognition of nature's restorative agency, the affordances that may be offered and the way in which emotions, feelings and well-being can be part of an interactive process between the person and their environment. In a poem dedicated to his friend Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth wrote: 'From Nature doth emotion come, and moods of calmness equally are Nature's gift' (Wordsworth 1888). In her research on walking in southern England, Kate Cameron-Daum finds that walking in nature does indeed provide her interviewees with a sense of well-being and the opportunity to recover their physiological, psychological and social equilibrium. This perception of well-being is not the passionless, clinical and 'professional' gaze that Foucault describes (Tilley 1990: 296, 310); it is an emotional response and a nurturing of self. It is possible body and self are not seen as such distinct entities. What is objectified is transformed by the self-caring gaze in conjunction with the paths walked. In turn, these pathways and landscapes cannot be seen as set apart from the objectification process but in relation to it. For several of the walkers she interviewed, whatever their state of health, certain paths, locales, and animate forms in nature are embedded in their memory and cultural sense of identity (Cameron-Daum 2008: 35, 39). The medical benefits of walking, both physical and mental, are now acknowledged with a systematic review and meta-analysis by Robertson *et al*. showing walking has a significantly positive effect on the symptoms of depression (Robertson *et al*. 2012) whilst other research indicates that such psychological benefits may be dependent on their social context and an outdoor environment containing greenery for example (Johansson and Hartig: 2011).

Walking as a popular leisure pursuit may be found in other countries besides Britain, including New Zealand (SPARC 2003), where it is the most common leisure activity amongst adults; Norway, where the *Den Norske Turistforening* (DNT, the Norwegian Trekking Association) has created a nationwide network of trails and lodgings, and where Ween and Abram argue that trekking practices encapsulate performances of a ' … banal everyday nationalism' in which nature itself is performed into existence (Ween and Abram 2012: 168), and also France, Finland, Japan

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and Taiwan (Cristache 2005; Nielsen 2003; Morita *et al*. 2007; Hsiao and Chen 2012).

#### **Anthropological aspects**

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Walking is one of those taken-for-granted mundane bodily techniques categorized by Mauss as varying depending upon cultural and local conventions. Despite this widely cited definition, until recently, apart from evolutionary theory, it has been largely ignored in anthropology as a topic of interest in itself. A possible reason for this lack of interest may lie with the long-held Cartesian mind/body dualism in which the mind is held in higher esteem than the body. Perhaps reacting against the traditional emphasis on cognition and language in structuralist and poststructuralist approaches, phenomenological studies of the body and its movements as integral to thinking processes have grown in the last twenty years and with them notions of the mindful body (although it could be argued that overtones of dichotomy still remain in this formulation) or person (in a holistic sense) (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). And now walking, together with its possible meanings for the walkers, brings new forms of inquiry and discovery (for example Lee and Ingold 2006; Vergunst 2007; Ingold and Vergunst 2008; Ingold 2010; Lund 2012).

Chris Tilley first introduces walking in his phenomenological perspective of landscape where he shows how essential it is to walk in order spatially to experience, appreciate and understand the possible meaning of the landscape, its locales and the places encountered. Walking can be 'both constrained by place and landscape and constitutive of them' (Tilley 1994: 29). This is a knowledge mediated not by the texts or images produced by others but through personal bodily experiences where, over time, both walking practices and landscape become embodied, yet in writing of these experiences the latter are evoked but cannot be captured (Tilley 2012: 15–16).

*Ways of Walking*, edited by Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, is a multi-disciplinary cross-cultural examination of several diverse practices of walking, distinguishing for example between walking as challenging, as a resource for social and historical knowledge, and as living. An example of the latter is Pernille Gooch's study of transhumance, where feet follow the hooves of the buffalo – a temporal dwelling made fragile and exhausting with the continuing political opposition and attempts to 'wean' the Van Gujjars away from their pastoral life in the Himalayas (Gooch 2008).

In foregrounding the phenomenological importance of landscape and its ties to human response such as narrative, imprint, emotion, the sensual and the importance of textures, these writers provide a sense of how moving forward can be a moving-away-from which is contrasted with the circumambulatory moving on in order to return (Tuck-Po 2008: 32–3). There are openings and closures both metaphorical and in practice, the latter including who is allowed to walk where and how this is transgressed in order to survive (Widlock 2008: 58–61).

#### **A temporary dwelling**

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When listening to the heathland walkers relate what they experience and feel when walking, it becomes clear that Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's proposal that movement and thinking are not separate happenings is valid: they are 'aspects of a kinetic bodily *logos* attuned to an evolving dynamic situation' (Sheets-Johnstone 1999: 489). When relaxing or reflecting, movement can enable or mediate the thoughts and feelings of the walker; the environment walked in is also likely to be part of this thinking and feeling process. The heathland is not an empty space, not an appurtenance, but a world that is constantly folding, unfolding and refolding. It is an environment in which a social and cultural response is embodied. On occasion it may, in Deleuze's terminology, feel interiorized, wrapped 'in an instance that can ultimately be called "personal" ' (Deleuze 2006: 144). The anthropologist Tim Ingold speaks of what he calls a 'dwelling perspective', which is an alternative to the nature–culture dichotomy (Ingold 2000). Thus walking on the Common can perhaps be regarded as a temporary dwelling, an interaction and engagement with a landscape that changes according to season and weather and to the walkers' perceptions, emotions, interests and memories. This we explore in detail in the rest of this chapter.

#### **The cry of the commons: motivations for walking**

They've got this weird melancholy cry that you can hear from miles away.

(John, walker)

A fascination with buzzards is just one example of the phenomenological nature of the walkers' relationship with the Pebblebed heathland; the majority of the walkers refer to the heath as 'The common', an umbrella term for all the heathland commons. All the walkers we spoke with cite sensory and emotional factors that help build this relationship and these include the smell of gorse, the feeling of solitude, the landscape's wildness and the beauty of being in its open space.

The walkers' main motivations for walking on the Common are often interlinked. They include well-being and how this is felt through movement and the use of the senses; a love of nature; pleasure in being outside either as a solitary activity, with a friend, or while participating in a led walk. There are diverse ways in which the walkers use the heathland footpaths to take them in to spaces where they are with nature. For some, it is a close and intimate relationship; for others there appears to be a need for space, if not distance, between what they perceive and themselves, and these particularly favour a vista that involves sight of the sea. The walkers have very different reasons for being in nature. It may be curiosity or knowledge-seeking, or it may be more to do with the release of anxieties.

#### **The walkers**

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John is the source of our opening quote above. In his childhood he lived surrounded by acres of rhododendrons. When he and his wife retired they moved to Budleigh Salterton, which – as well as being by the sea – possesses the acidic soil these ericaceous plants require: 'I'm trying to create a little paradise' (John). Although recent arrivals, John and his wife have known the area for ten years as they came here for holidays. Dalditch Common is the common they know best but he is also particularly interested in history and is acquiring knowledge of the military history of the commons. Other walkers also moved to the area after retiring or being made redundant and several joined the Otter Valley Association (OVA), often becoming walk leaders.

Another walking couple, June and Richard, were born in the area over seventy years ago and have continued to live here throughout their lives. They are certainly amongst those with the strongest memories of using the Commons in their childhood and remark upon the freedom there was then: 'You could go anywhere and do anything without fear of any problems. It's not quite the same nowadays.'

Margaret used to watch the swaling when she was a child and her father, Alan Toyne, was the key figure in the campaign against the building of a golf course on the heathland (1971 to 1974). She remarks, 'It was a huge issue for Devon. It was one of the first big campaigns to save a piece of land'. She is naturally immensely proud of her father, particularly in view of the diminishment of lowland heathland throughout the world. Benjamin, who was born in this area and returned once he had retired in 1999, tells us that his predilection as a child was not for the beach but to travel up to Squabmoor, and interestingly he feels that there has been no change in landscape terms to this particular area of the heathland.

Susan has lived in Lympstone for over twelve years. Although she enjoys walking on her own, she is also a member of walking groups such as the Exeter Outdoor Group. Another walker moved to the Pebblebed heathland area over thirty years ago with his wife. A keen walker, he organized the publicity for the archaeological Pebblebed Project and its open days. The project has changed his life in that what were once leisurely walks in favourite green lanes with their trees and flowers have now become more focused on the pebbles themselves.

Three of our walkers came to the area having either been born in or lived in Africa. One of them knows the Common very well having lived in East Devon for the last thirty-five years, twenty of which were spent working for CDE.  The location is not all that is important: 'It depends on where the wind is, what the weather's like and how you're feeling', says Alice. She and her family particularly like Woodbury because it reminds them of the landscape they once walked in Africa: 'It has a Nevada effect, which we had in South Africa. There are just certain areas in which you stop for a moment and think "Wow", and if you catch it with the sunset it's really beautiful'.

#### **The physicality of walking**

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The physicality of walking is not such a mediated experience compared to the mountain bikers and their bikes, and the horse riders with their horses. Although the Marines also use their feet this is more likely to be when undergoing a nine-mile speed march, and this is not comparable to the pastime of walking for pleasure with its intimate sense of engagement and equanimity. One walker, Paul, enjoys walking on the heath in his bare feet: 'I've got quite hard feet and I can walk on the pebbles. I've been for many cold walks up there in bare feet'. Walking on the heath involves movement, pauses and on occasion, rhythm, the latter particularly when the walker is intent on reaching a destination at a specific time. It also encompasses emotion, feelings and thoughts, as well as memory and comfort. Although there are flat, easily walked routes, others are less accommodating and some walkers find them quite challenging.

#### **The character of the heathland landscape**

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How individuals feel about the character of the heathland obviously varies from walker to walker. Indeed it may vary according to which area is being walked in, the views afforded and the conditions of the terrain, which is frequently affected by the weather, but it may also depend on the purpose, if any, of the walk and – as Susan states – one's personal mood at the time of moving in this landscape. John says it reminds him of Hardy's Egdon Heath and notes that although he finds it does not contain the slightly menacing air described in *Return of the Native*, he feels the Pebblebed heath is its own master and should be treated with respect. Pauline has felt fear, stating that the heath can be frightening and threatening at times. Allison does not find much of the heath an intimidating place but does describe the fir plantations as being like an Eastern European fairy-tale forest: 'You know, it looks like a deep, dark, Polish forest with wolves …' (Allison). Some walkers describe the Common as being beautiful, others find it fascinating and inspiring, and several walkers remark upon its openness and the sense of freedom one gets from walking there. Many walkers speak of the changing colour of the scenery over the seasons – greys, lilacs, yellows and soft greens – and reflect upon the diverse range of materials that lie beneath one's feet – pebbles, sand, grass, mud …

#### **Engagement with the heathland**

Two of the walkers we spoke with (Sylvia and Peter) walk from their home two miles up to Woodbury Castle every year on Boxing Day to join the East Devon Hunt (EDH). It has become a tradition, having been held here for over 120 years often with between sixty and seventy horses and three hundred foot followers. Since the Hunting Act of 2004 the EDH meets for trail hunts, with dogs tracking a trail laid with a scented piece of cloth. Not everyone is happy with the trail hunt, including these walkers: 'It's a nice event to see and we don't get steamed up about hunting foxes. I would be perfectly happy for them to carry on hunting foxes, which are vermin in the countryside but it's been stopped so they're drag hunting instead and good luck to them' (Sylvia, walker). Her partner remarks there is plenty of support for this across the social scale locally and speaks of how coachloads of people used to arrive from neighbouring towns such as Sidmouth with buffet lunches laid out at the Castle:

The Clinton Devon Estate has very rightly closed off a lot of the car parks so now coaches can only go into one car park, which, I think, has stopped them coming so much because people who come on the coaches don't want to walk; they want to be delivered to where the hunt is.

#### (Peter, walker)

Although Peter now walks there far less often than he used to, Sylvia visits more often; until recently she took the Girl Guides there on field trips as it is a 'graspable size'. She remarks on how there are always flowers to see and identify, and birds such as stonechats and nightjars to listen to. Having been brought up near the lowland heath of Sutton Coldfield, which also has pebbles and where she developed her knowledge of wild flowers, she loves the heathland: 'So this in a way is coming home for me because it's exactly the same flora and fauna as I was used to as a child' (Sylvia, walker).

Edward brings his family on a regular basis throughout the year. He says he loves being out in the open air and wishes to instil this appreciation in his children. He feels the Common provides a valuable education for them in a number of ways but particularly for its wildlife and history: 'For me and obviously for the family as a whole it's very important'. He tells us they have great fun with the children and the pebbles:

We try to find the smoothest, the widest, the knobbliest pebbles. Then we'll get the kids to find a red one and a white one and it gives them an extra focus. Everything is a learning experience and if you can make it interesting as well then they're more likely to listen and learn.

(Edward, walker)

#### **Led walks**

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Andrew, a walk leader, says there are so many paths it takes some time to get to know your way around. It took him a few years to get to know the area before he was confident enough to lead a walk. He likes the openness of the Commons but not the fir tree plantations: 'They are certainly not so interesting and they don't support any sort of plant or bird life'. He prefers to walk in the wintertime and on one January walk it had been snowing: 'It was really magical, the Common looked entirely different'.

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All of the walk leaders agree that it is nice to get people who have a particular expertise on these led walks as they point out interesting things that they might otherwise have missed. Ian leads the OVA walks three or four times a year, some of his walks going round by the hill fort: 'I always try to imagine what it would have looked like. It must have been a formidable construction at the time'. Duncan believes that the led walks are particularly good for single older men and women as it provides them with an event that they know is going to be sociable, and Andrew feels led walks fulfil a need, especially for single women who may not want to walk alone. He actually prefers to walk with just his wife and have the place to themselves: 'We walk in silence and find that on a lot of these led walks people chatter away and don't really look where they're going. You get back and they say, "Where've we been?" '.

However, walking on one's own without a leader creates the challenge of navigation. Like other walkers, Susan has found that the pathways are not very well covered on the maps and thinks this maybe because the Marines have developed their own. To become a walk leader she needed to learn how to navigate open land: 'Even where it is open access land it's fairly overgrown and I thought to hell with this business of sticking to footpaths, I'm going to go and walk towards a cairn or something'. But her attempt to create her own pathway failed: 'I got desperately caught up in brambles. I mean I really came out absolutely streaming with scratches on my legs. It was quite frightening'.

Several walkers appreciate the information boards and labelling of crop fields but Edward disagrees and says if he wants to know more he does his research beforehand, or after the walk: 'Having the information boards at the car park is great. Once you start putting them in the open spaces where people can see what they're looking at from various angles, then you impose on what people can or can't see; you impose on the feeling about the place'. Although the Common is not common land Sylvia remarks that this does not actually affect the way people feel about it or use it: 'In fact, it's probably better looked after because of the Pebblebed Trust, better cared for than if it had been just common land'.

### **Change**

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Ian remarks on the remaining traces of the past:

It's always interesting to imagine that the Bronze Age and Iron Age people might have tramped the same paths that we tramp today. I sometimes wonder about the links between Woodbury Castle and neighbouring hill forts and what routes they would have used to get from one to another; whether they ever travelled by boat.

(Ian, walker)

Whilst at Woodbury Castle we spoke with a geologist who has been visiting the Commons for over thirty years. He finds the changes at the hill fort are very small: 'It's a very resilient structure'. He is also pleased with the new steps that have been put in to deter mountain biking. Over the years he has brought many children from the Woodbury Saturday Club to visit the Commons, with the hill fort providing a wonderful environment in which to play hide-and-seek.

Benjamin is pleased with the Second World War encampment returning to nature, but Margaret is not happy with the changes to the Common since she visited as a child, particularly since 2005:

They've done a lot of management. They've cut huge swathes of gorse, closed many of the car parks and inside the hill fort it's now a big flat space. It was very overgrown for a long time and not really managed at all, which I much preferred, because it now looks so pristine and it doesn't look and feel its age.

(Margaret, walker)

 Paul describes the heathland as having become gentrified and that there is a build-up of biomass that never used to be there: 'So it has changed. Even the habitat has changed'. He has quite strong views on scraping as a method of management:

It's well recognized that to keep it as a heathland you have to burn it. Scraping is no answer at all. It's not a natural way of doing it and it's not how it's been done for the last three thousand years. They're going to completely change the whole nature of it by scraping it.

(Paul, walker)

## **Natural wildness?**

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Creating a mosaic that gives the heathland a natural appearance and is of maximum potential for its wildlife is very important to the CDE. The concept of what is 'natural' provokes response from many of the walkers and several feel the Common is both wild and natural, despite knowing how much management goes in to maintaining it. Benjamin describes the Commons as 'untamed' and finds the sharp divisions between the formal agriculture and the scrubland Common very interesting: 'You can get a perception of how things over the years could change'. But Duncan feels quite hemmed in because of the way in which the Common is dissected by various roads, adding that it is noisy and too close to civilization to be described as 'wild'. Yet Ian describes going to visit the Common on a June evening, listening to nightjars and snipe, and says you do feel in a very wild place.

#### **Memories**

The 1971 announcement that the CDE was proposing the construction of two golf courses, one on Woodbury Common and the other on Colaton Raleigh Common, was met with great anger by many of those who visited these Commons at that time. Walker and local historian Sally and her husband, Ramsay, were amongst those joining the rallies organized to oppose it. Thousands of signatures against the proposal were collected within days. Sally, who has done much campaigning against developments such as these, says, 'Oh, looking back it was so heartening. It started a terrific outpouring of opposition and being part of an audience that felt the same way is a nice change'. She describes their public meeting at Woodbury Village Hall as being packed with people, the room too small to accommodate everyone:

They crowded the hall, stood at the back, stood in the porch outside; some people to have their say put their heads in through open windows to address the meeting. Loudhailer equipment relayed everything that was said to those outside and couldn't get in to the hall. It was exciting, fascinating and, you know, feelings were running really high and in the right way as far as I was concerned.

(Sally, walker)

Sally describes the strength of feeling about the Common that existed then as being very much an emotional attachment.

Although it is the vision and perspective of the CDE and RSPB wardens that is responsible for the heathlands we see today, it is the work of the campaign against the golf course that provided the opportunity for this vision to succeed. If the golf course had gone ahead, despite limited SSSI protection given in 1952, it is doubtful that the heathland would have been awarded the substantial protection it has now, and for this we are indebted to the passion of Sally and her fellow campaigners. Their human intervention and protection of the heathland has enabled its conservation. Ironically, Sally speaks of how, for some people, nature is tidied up and becomes a status symbol; in fact it may also be argued that in seeking to preserve or re-create the Pebblebed landscape which 'houses' certain flora and fauna that have existed here for hundreds of years, conservationists are creating or maintaining arranged, tidied and perfect places. Parks in our cities can be seen as examples of perfect, organized space; does conservation of the heathland contain elements of such organization? Perhaps, but for Sally this is not an organized space but a valued place which bears traits of a Foucauldian heterotopia, in which fear of loss of biodiversity may be linked to notions of heritage and a place of time that Foucault describes as being in itself 'outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages'(Foucault 1986 [1984/1967]: 26). Sally's memories of the successful campaign against one golf course's construction on the Common are uplifting and part of this phenomenological place of time. So it is positive to view the surveys she has and is conducting – her photographs and maps will, as she has said, encourage others to view for themselves the beauty of this countryside and in so doing this can become 'a familiar part of our inner landscape of "home", a cultural link to our ancestors down the ages' (Sally; see Elliot and Wickenden (n.d.)).

For Benjamin the Common is sometimes a place to re-trace the paths he used to use: 'I can pretty much find my way around the Squabmoor area without guidance and still on pathways I used as a child'. He describes himself as having a sort of mental map of how to walk round there. He says that he has always felt the heathland to be a part of his life: 'You know, it's one of those things that sticks to you'. When he was in his forties Paul enjoyed walking the Common at night. He found that it was not wise to move off the main path, and once saw a moonbow there: 'There was this grey ghostly rainbow, all in silvers and greys. Apparently they're very rare and it was an amazing thing to see but you'd never get that if you didn't walk out at night; you probably wouldn't notice it in a car because of all the light pollution'. He tells us that walking the heathland at night 'binds you into it'; you have a relationship with it.

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Sylvia's parents, when on holiday in Sidmouth before they got married, had actually got engaged on Woodbury Common: 'They had this photograph of one of the clumps of trees, which has now gone on the Common. It was always in our home, and the house I was born in was called "Woodbury"' (Sylvia, walker).

Mark says he has little knowledge of the archaeological features on the Commons but that when he was a boy he dug up an Iron Age artefact at Woodbury Castle. He and his mother took it to Exeter Museum who told them that it was a digger of iron-bearing sandstone, usually found only in the Netherlands. He still has it fifty-eight years later and it sits on a windowsill in his home. In the early 1960s Ian learnt to drive on the old concrete roads that had been laid down in the Common during the Second World War. He speaks of the time when, in the winter of 1962–3, Squabmoor reservoir froze over and they went skating. Richard recalls that when there was a bad drought in 1976 people came up to the Common to cut ferns for animal bedding. Also, when Blackhill was a working quarry, being tenants of the CDE meant they were entitled to free hardcore from the quarry to make their roadways and pathways. Benjamin remembers visiting what was left of the Second World War encampment with his mother when he was a boy:

The whole place was littered with little square lots of two or three courses of brick and a chimney, and a fireplace – magnificent. And I remember my mother was very envious as she always thought these fireplaces were much better than the ones she had at home, and if only she could take ones of these home it would be great.

(Benjamin, walker)

The walkers' personal historic links and memories create a sense of ownership. Sylvia says she does feel a sense of ownership for the heathland and she is not alone in feeling this. Richard says: 'Having lived here all my life I've always been associated with it so you are inclined to think it's sort of "ours" '. And 'our' Common is exactly the phrase used by Margaret when she speaks of how they, the anti-golf course campaigners, were trying to save 'our piece of land'.

#### **Contestation**

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As discussed above, the Pebblebed heath has many other uses besides being a place to walk. Of RM activity Duncan says: 'They pop up sometimes but you just accept that they're there'. Andrew too has no strong objection to the Marines using the Commons: 'They're a bit frightening when you come across some of them, and some of the water holes they have there as part of their challenge can be a bit daunting when you're walking and come across these very deep gullies'. Chuckling, Peter says: 'Marines leaping out or hiding in bushes when you're going for a walk, or you suddenly feel or hear the bush talk, is an added frisson to walking on the Commons'.

Andrew says he finds the model aircraft flying a bit intrusive when he walks on the Common for peace and quiet and hears the whining of the planes. He also regards them as a perpetual fire hazard. Ian finds the planes a bit noisy too but he thinks that on the whole, people use the Common very responsibly. He also states you occasionally find cyclists on footpaths where they strictly shouldn't be but that it is a matter of live and let live. And Mark is not particularly enamoured with the MAFF activity either, as when he was about eighteen years old, a model aircraft bounced off the roof of his car and badly scratched it.

Dogs are the focus of complaint by some of the walkers. Peter says the dog walkers are alright if they clear the mess up, and his wife, Sylvia, comments that according to the notices in the car parks, dogs are supposed to be kept on a lead during the bird nesting season: '*Nobody* but *nobody* keeps a dog on a lead on the Common'. She feels that many dog walkers do not control their dogs properly when out on the Common and that this is a drawback for people who do not like dogs. Liz, a walker who has had much experience of working with organizations connected with the countryside, including Countryside Stewardship and working on a website that is to do with conservation, recreation and conflict resolution, says she does grumble sometimes about the dogs and the mess that is left: 'I like dogs, you know, but it's their owners and when walking I have occasionally been chased or yapped at or nipped by unruly dogs … but most people walking dogs up there are lovely, and the dogs are lovely and well trained'.

#### **Perspective of dog walkers**

We have observed that the most frequent users of the heathlands are dog walkers but the majority park at Woodbury Castle, follow a quick circuit, and then leave. As can be seen, other walkers often mention dogs and their owners, sometimes voicing complaints about mess that is not cleared up or dogs that are unruly, and so it is interesting to listen to the

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views of two walkers who visit regularly with their dogs and for whom the experience is more than toileting their dogs.

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One dog walker is also one of our artists, Caroline (see Chapter 9), and it is evident that the walk itself has two important purposes. One is to exercise her dogs, the other is the way in which a quiet walk allows her to reflect upon her work in progress. She has favourite places to walk in for an hour or so, and at the time we spoke she often walked with her two dogs a little further on from Squabmoor Reservoir, choosing to walk here as it was then most convenient:

I can do a small circuit with the oldest dog, put her in the car, and then do a slightly bigger second one with the younger dog. I do a sort of double one and that's a nice walk when the weather's bad because it's through quite a lot of trees and it's undercover so you can be sheltered.

(Caroline, dog walker)

Caroline says that her dogs make the difference in going there and that although she enjoys walking she probably would not go so frequently. Poignantly she says: 'Mmm, I can't imagine not going there but it will be hard, especially once I've not got the dogs because I shall miss the dogs even more by doing it'.

Chris frequently walks the heathland with his dog, Tor. He too often follows an established route and says that this is true for many dog walkers on the heathland; the walk is one that they have become familiar with, without the stress of having to plan a route or think about the walk. He describes what is initially a regular walk from Hawkerland, up Robin's Lane, onto the open heathland. He remarks on the butterflies and spring blooms that can be seen alongside the lane. He also comments upon the way in which Tor loiters behind him, sniffing and leaving scent marks. Soon, Tor is no longer behind him but in front, always in his vision, whether main or peripheral. He says that once up on the heathland everything changes:

Here there are no flowers and few butterflies. Particularly at this time of year (early spring) the heath seems utterly dead, lifeless and colourless: yellow-grey, white and brown. The only colour is the bright yellow of the tall-growing European gorse. This contrasts with the verdant green of the fields beyond where everything is bursting into life. Up on the top of the hill I can now look out across the landscape. Rather than looking over the heathland I tend always to look off it, across to the fields below. I sit down. Tor lies down a short distance away. The heath becomes a vantage point for me to experience that which is beyond. It is the relationship between heath/non-heath that is all-important.

(Chris, dog walker)

Spotting a new firebreak he decides to follow it and see where it leads; the familiar is now becoming unfamiliar and he says Tor no longer dawdles but is running up ahead:

Over a local summit we drop down to a shallow coombe in which a delightful little artificial pond has been made … complete with ragged bulrushes. Tor runs to the pond, throws herself down in it, and starts to drink the water. Hating the gorse she rarely deviates from tracks across the Commons. She is a track follower and will always wait at the junction of tracks to see which one I decide to take … When I get home I notice how numerous and loud the birdsong is in the garden compared with the low and muted calls experienced on the heaths. A different environment and a different species.

(Chris, dog walker)

For both of these walkers, on many occasions their dogs are the main purpose for walking the heathland and consequently they partly experience the heath via the medium of the moving dog, as much attention being paid to the dogs as to the landscape that is being walked in. Dog and dog walker are co-present in the landscape but in a very different manner from the relationship between horse and rider discussed in Chapter 7 as both move independently but in relation to each other. The most important aspect of this is that the dog walker in part experiences the landscape through the medium of his or her dog, his or her movements and deviations. Little of the heath's wildlife is seen and this may be to do with the presence of their dogs, but as the dogs themselves rarely leave the tracks they do not disturb nesting birds or Dartford warblers. Chris has also noticed how the sensory experience of the heath is limited for both walker and dog, his dog finding the lane leading up to the heath as being of more interest. Caroline is drawn to the comparative shelter and quietness of Squabmoor as an environment in which she can think about her artwork whilst exercising her dogs. But, it is the heathland's open areas that are of importance to Chris: 'The view is paramount'.

We have also not observed many women walking alone on the heathland, particularly without dogs, and this is reflected in some of the

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interviews. Sylvia says she would not walk on the Common by herself, not because she is afraid of being by herself but just in case:

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I have to face up to how old I am now and if I did have a fall or something, and there have been cases of people having a fall and lying out there all night. It's much pleasanter to walk with someone else but I've got several friends who'll walk up there with a dog, on their own.

(Caroline, dog walker)

Susan is slightly afraid of strangers and strange men when she is on her own there, possibly more so than in other places, such as the coastal path or Dartmoor, but she is uncertain why this is the case: 'Maybe it comes from a childhood fear of commons and witches, you know, a lot of that fairytale kind of stuff'. Another female walker who was put off walking alone on the heath is Janet. Prior to moving to Woodbury she lived in Farnham, and Frensham Common nearby had a bad reputation for assaults on women. She finds the associations just too strong. Elinor also says she doesn't know whether she would actually want to walk the heathland on her own: 'I find it's a bit too isolated and I wouldn't want to be there by myself, but then that's as a woman speaking'. In fact, one of the Marines we spoke with said he would not want his wife or children to be on the Common by themselves either.

Eight of our walkers produced sketch maps for us. They vary quite significantly. One shows most of the heath, the remainder show those areas with which the walkers are most familiar. Four show a particular sequential walk across and around the heath. These all mark car parks – the beginning and end of the walk – and topographic features and places encountered along the way.

Climbs, muddy places and bogs, woods and pools are shown. Roads are almost absent. The features depicted on all the maps are either highly localized places or distant views off the heath to the coast and surrounding hills, a combination of the intimate and the remote in which the landscape seen from the heathland is as significant as the heath itself. Three of the maps mark wildlife sightings, the rest do not. Two show Woodbury Castle and one marks the model aircraft field and two areas used by the RM for training. The maps contrast significantly with those produced by others such as horse riders, cyclists, and environmentalists, providing additional insight into those features of the heath that are most significant in relation to how it is encountered and used.

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newgenrtpdf

**Figure 8.1** Walker's map 1

newgenrtpdf

**Figure 8.2** Walker's map 2

#### **Conclusions**

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Spatial relations within the heathland are complex. Hebdige writes of how space has come to be refigured as 'inhabited and heterogeneous, as a moving cluster of points of intersection … which cannot be reduced to a unified plane or organised into a single narrative' (Hebdige 1990: vi–ii). The heathland and the ways in which movement within it is experienced by walkers and others are not homogeneous; this too is not a single narrative. Rapport describes walking as involving both a phenomenological objectivity – 'a common human embodiment' and a phenomenological subjectivity – 'an individual consciousness engaging in imaginative projects of disembodiment and otherness' (Rapport 2008: 32). When we listen to the heathland walkers we can see how important the heathland, its paths, scenery, views, wildlife and history are to them.  And the biographies of the walkers have given us some indication as to why they choose to walk on the Common; the proximity of the Common to where the walkers live appearing to be the common factor. But walking here can mean different things to different people at different times in their lives. Here, Rapport and Dawson's (1998) important contribution to the discussion regarding how identity may be configured through temporal and spatial relations is very apt. To note that movement has become fundamental to modern identity and its experience is an essential component of everyday existence (Rapport and Dawson 1998: 4–6) does not necessarily relate just to the globalized world of movement that they discuss. For those returning to walk on the Common in their later years, it becomes clear that the physicality of movement, the imprint both of foot and memory on the Pebblebed heathland, is of much importance. Yet the general recognition that 'not only can one be at home in movement, but that movement can be one's very home' (Rapport and Dawson 1998: 27) resonates well with the heathland encounters of our informants. For many of our walkers the heathland has become another kind of home and it clearly affords a different kind of dwelling to the home and the built environment. In moving through and encountering the heathland in its different moods and seasons they create a new sense of the self through the medium of walking in this landscape.

The heathland meets the different needs and intentionalities of all the walkers with its environmental affordances: challenging, restorative, an opportunity to gain knowledge about the wildlife that dwell on the heath, its diversity is appreciated. A journey through this landscape can thus be transformative. Although some people are nervous of walking alone on the Common, the Otter Valley Association and Exeter Outdoor Group (Exeter Outdoor Group, n.d.) offer the chance to explore this environment in their led walks, which are often educational. Other walkers prefer their walk to be a less social activity; they may be intent on observing nature or finding the quietness and solitude they seek on the heathland. Walkers and heathland meet and act upon one another, the embodied agency of the landscape, the sensed and sensing body; each is produced in mutual, mediated relation, through movement, consciousness, perception and emotion.

## 9 Art in and from the landscape

In this chapter we provide a brief review of relationships between artists and landscapes, considering environmental art and the inspiration provided by walking in the landscape. We finally mention developing relationships between the practice of art and the work of anthropologists to provide a background to our own consideration of the arts in relation to the heathland landscape and in relation to a collaboration with one particular artist, Priscilla Trenchard.

Wittgenstein claimed, 'what *can* be shown *cannot* be said' (1981: 50). Yet in his lucid account of 'circuits of subjectivity', in which he critically examines, amongst other aspects, the sometimes ambiguous but essential relationship between words, gestures, memory and art objects within the context of oral history work, Cándida-Smith writes of how we appreciate visual and performing arts because they provide us with aspects of experience and feeling that elude words: 'but then we must use words to share processes that communicate on other levels' (Cándida-Smith 2003: 8). In interviewing the artists whose works involve the heathland we are concerned, therefore, with the essence of the work itself, how it is produced and from what embodied intentionality and inspiration it may have been assembled – the unfolding relations between the agency of the landscape, that which the artist brings to the landscape, and the agency of the artwork itself. And to frame the discussion we turn to the words of the poet T. S. Eliot, when he writes of Andrew Marvell's verse 'making the familiar strange, and the strange familiar' (1950: 259).

Dufrenne considered the manner in which an inspired artist may conceive of the process of producing the artwork as a being that he must promote: 'a being-for-the-artist, a being which is anterior to his

act' (Dufrenne 1973: 33). In Gell's Maussian reading art objects may be considered as persons (Gell 1998: 9) or 'distributed persons' (Gell 1998: 103). Küchler comments that from this perspective both an artwork and the inspiration 'of intuitive associative thinking' are a locus of agency in the unfolding of person–object relations (2006: 86). We now consider this process in relation to landscape art.

#### **Fragile environments: nature and culture**

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As we have seen the Pebblebed heathland is a fragile environment that requires constant nurture. Author and environmental activist Berry writes, 'a culture that does not measure itself by nature, by an understanding of its debts to nature, becomes destructive of nature and thus of itself … The only thing we have to preserve nature with is culture; the only thing we have to preserve wildness with is domesticity' (Berry 1987: 143). Herein lies contradiction, contest and connection. The theoretical opposition between nature and culture is embodied in the works of those artists who have chosen to work with, and indeed in many examples *for*, nature. Together with the growing awareness and concern for the environment, since the 1960s certain conceptual artists have rejected the institution of the gallery in which to frame their works, instead choosing to make their mark directly within the landscape itself. Perhaps one of the most interesting examples of this within an urban landscape is the practice of graffiti – the anthropologist Schacter's discussion of which affirms

the power of ornament to not simply reflect but to create order … [disclosing] the distinctly ritual quality of the productive processes from which these artefacts emerge … [inhabiting] the space between the ordinary and the extraordinary, that exists on the borderline of art and life

(Schacter 2014: 10; 221–2)

Our relationship with landscape, and the effect we have upon it and leave behind us, is complicated: 'we see stability in its mute performance and flux in its unending variances' (Kastner 1998: 17). Berry writes of the human predicament being 'animated by profound connections and insurmountable divisions. The best Land and Environmental Art highlights this contradiction, probing the limits of artistic activity with the limitless tools of the artistic imagination' (Berry 1987, cited in Kastner, 1998: 17). Matilsky describes ecological artists as our contemporary shamans with their visions to restore the once vital balance between humans and nature (Matilsky 1992: 115). Lowndes discusses the early attempt by some conceptual artists to restore the relationship between artistic creativity and social reality in Europe and the United States in the 1960s (Lowndes 2014: 11–12). She cites Marioni, an artist and curator living on the west coast of the United States: 'it was an invisible decade; the work that was produced had low commercial value; relics, documents and photos of events, earthworks and installations – all works not made as ends in themselves. It was a vital era and the art world could hardly wait for it to pass' (Marioni 1988: 36). Yet it has not disappeared and, as Matilsky writes of ecological art, 'it is slowly beginning to make an impact as it provides solutions to environmental problems' (Matilsky 1992: 115). In her introduction to *Fragile Ecologies*, which discusses and portrays the interpretations and solutions provided by ecological artists, Matilsky traces the ways in which during human time artists have defined their environment; how, from the early celebrations of nature's cycle of growth, decay and renewal, 'art and ritual reflected the symbiotic relationship between people and the land amongst hunters and gatherers, and agriculturists' (Matilsky 1992: 35). This connection was lost, she argues, at the time of the industrial revolution and 'the flourishing of landscape painting represents a direct response to this schism. Like their preindustrial forebears, landscape painters communicated the spiritual and physical energies of the earth' (Matilsky 1992: 35).

This communication is still being practised by the landscape and contemporary artists of today, their works often being both 'agentive and transformative' (Pinney 2002: 135).

#### **Inspiration, emotion, time, memory and walking**

We have already referred to anthropological studies concerning walking and considered why people walk in Chapter 8. So it is interesting to note the manner in which walking or journeying has become a strong focus for many artists and curators, both for individuals – see for example, Anna Dillon (n.d.) and Alison Lloyd (n.d.) – and for those who choose to walk or journey with others as a means by which to explore 'processes of dialogue and negotiation' (Pope 2012: 57). An example of this is the Walking Artists network, which seeks to connect people who regard themselves as walking artists, those who regard walking as a mode of art practice as well as those in related fields such as cultural geography, history, and anthropology. Deveron Arts, based

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in Huntley, northeast Scotland, possesses no gallery or arts centre. Instead, its Director, Zeiske, writes: 'the town is the venue, working with the spaces the place has to offer' (Zeiske 2014: 91). The group works collaboratively with artists from around the world and the local community, bringing together 'artistic and social relationships in a global network that extends throughout and beyond the geographic boundaries of Huntley' (Zeiske 2014: 91). *Calendar Variations* is a series of practices by individuals working from a score by the artist Allan Kaprow in order to 'move from possibility to action, from score to performance (as) by understanding that Kaprow sought to develop social experience by artistic means, we become free to work with our centre and also (be) challenged to create common ground between participants' (Coessens and Douglas, 2011: 13).

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Pope's work is regarded as central to the way in which walking as a method of art production has been rethought in recent years, Collier describes his group walks as 'deliberately subverting the Romantic notion of the solitary walker' (Collier 2013: 113). Pope's *The Memorial Walks* were created as a homage to W. G. Sebald, 'drawing on his use of walking and the stubborn insistence that the past would not fade from memory' (Pope 2012: 57). Invited guest walkers, among them those who wrote about landscape, the environment and memory, were requested to spend time with a painting of a local landscape from the Norwich School, the first provincial art movement in Britain, in which a tree was the main focus, and then accompany Pope on a walk around the East Anglia fenlands and farmlands: 'each writer would perform a recollection from memory of a tree. In doing so I had hoped that they might repopulate the countryside with images, summoned-up and made to live through the sheer force of a spoken-word description, as an act of defiance against forgetting' (Pope 2012: 57). Dillon, one of the guests accompanying Pope, wrote later:

accompanying the artist into the countryside around Norwich, standing in the rain before a nondescript stretch of land, one realised that the chosen painting had become nothing more than pure atmosphere: it had been sublimed into the air and become the mere ghost of a painting, its afterglow … Art, we might venture, is just that realm where the atmosphere becomes visible … which infolds itself into the dark, which hints at affinities and correspondences across time, which evokes rather than narrates … may well be the art that most closely answers our sense of wonder or curiosity.

(Dillon 2007: 23–4)

When we look at the emotions felt and what may then inspire an artist we find a number of aspects that both contemporary realist and environmental artists hold in common, including their perception or feelings about time and place. One artist exploring the boundaries of representational painting and time is Californian artist Gregg Chadwick. In an interview with Jeffrey Carlson, editor of *Fine Art Today*, Chadwick states his desire to 'break down the illusions of linear time passing and expose the co-existence of past, present and future' (Carlson n.d.). Art critic Clothier describes Chadwick as a literate painter; his readings and experiences within the landscape walked 'are processed through the work of the arm and the wrist, the hand and the heart' (Clothier 2013: 4). As the work comes into being 'each choice, each image, each gesture is informed with meanings, all of them so deeply interwoven as to be indistinguishable as single threads' (Clothier 2013: 4). In a discussion with Chadwick the importance of walking, inspiration and emotion become clear. He states that they 'are all deeply entwined in my artistic practice. Emotion is often an entry point into my art. And a balance of emotions is crucial both in my process and my paintings' (personal communication October 2015). For example when walking in Verona his sense of awe at the layers of history within the city and its surrounding countryside is 'tempered with a sadness of historical memory. As I painted these artworks of Verona I felt both the joy of human achievement evident in my subject matter and the anger and loss over the countless wars from the Romans through the Nazis and into our current era' (personal communication October 2015). He does not walk to escape:

and not really to get to a place but instead to be in each spot as I take my steps … Snippets of overheard conversations, the smell of lilacs, the crunch of my shoes on gravel, a blaze of light scattering across a shop window, passing traffic – all find their way into my storage banks of inspiration and reappear as colors of time in my paintings (personal communication October 2015)

Land artist Andy Goldsworthy writes:

I cannot disconnect materials as I used to. My strongest work now is so rooted in place that it cannot be separated from where it is made – the work is the place. Atmosphere and feeling now direct me more than the picking up of a leaf, stick or stone … a long resting stone is not an object in the landscape but a deeply ingrained witness to time and a focus of energy for its surroundings.

(Goldsworthy 1998: 6)

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He then goes on to describe how he repeats his visits to some stones and places, as they change according to season. He is interested in the 'binding of time in materials and places' (Goldsworthy 1998: 6). Stone and time are important for the walking artist Long too: 'I like simple, practical, emotional, quiet, vigorous art … I like to use the symmetry of patterns between time, places and time, between distance and time, between stones and distance, between time and stones' (Long 1980). In an interview fourteen years later he says:

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It's literally the same stones and the same surfaces of the world that people have always walked over and used. All the place names are like layers of history and different cultures. My work is just another layer on the surface of a world that has been shared by all these different generations, so it's really about continuity.

(Long 1994)

Long's walking artist friend, Fulton, states that he walks on the land 'to be woven into nature … walking into the distance beyond imagination', his artworks acknowledging 'the element of time, the time of my life … (where) walking is the constant, the art medium is the variable' (Fulton 1995: 8–10). Describing walks as the kilometre stones of his life, Fulton writes 'each walk marks the flow of time between birth and death' (Fulton 2015). In one of the most important exhibitions held as yet of walking and artists, the 2013 *Walk On* exhibition brought together works from the late 1960s to newly emerging walking artists. Co-curator Morrison-Bell states the intention being 'for their paths to cross, so to speak, and for the viewer to experience, look or feel how an artist's walk could also possibly become the viewer's own, leading him or her to hitherto unknown places' (Morrison-Bell 2013: 2). In his discussion of some of the artworks, artist and co-curator Mike Collier writes that he feels many of the artists share an embodied or phenomenological approach to the making of their work:

either – the way that they 'represent' movement through space (by walking), activating senses we sometimes take for granted … the way that they engage with an embodied experience of space and depth (what Merleau-Ponty called the 'flesh of the world') … the way that their work engages with others … making art is a practical application of phenomenology.

(Collier 2013:73)

#### **Artists and anthropologists sharing the same space/place**

An exciting aspect of our anthropological study of the Pebblebed heathland is the way in which artists working in a variety of practices share this same place as us in what is frequently the sensual production of their work, and, as the reader will find, an often self-reflexive approach. This and other aspects lead us to note the now major discussion between artists and anthropologists as to the differences and possible similarities between the artist's and the anthropologist's gaze and means of representation. These concern fieldwork and the affective presence of the artist or anthropologist, and the importance of immersion, decontextualization, embodied engagement and the practice of repetition in order to 'know'.

Three important books edited by Schneider and Wright contain essays providing us with perspectives from both artists and anthropologists. For example, a detailed exploration of appropriated methodologies and subjects between the disciplines of art and anthropology, and the possible development of new practices, may be found in their *Contemporary Art and Anthropology* (2006). In *Between Art and Anthropology* (2010) Ossman's discussion of her fieldwork practice and the contribution of painting to developing anthropological knowledge (2010: 127–34) is but one of the presentations and discussions about work being produced within what Schneider and Wright describe as the inter-space between the fields of art and anthropology; they discuss the fragile nature of this ongoing dialogue. In *Anthropology and Art Practice* (2013) Schneider and Wright introduce the work of practitioners 'subjectively chosen' for their representation of 'particularly challenging and productive engagements with the shifting area between contemporary art and anthropology' (2013: 2). An excellent example of an artist whose methodology is akin to that of an anthropologist is that of Lang. Art critic Metken describes his exhibition, *Nunga und Goonya*, held in Munich in 1991, as being at first glance similar to a cabinet of curiosities:

There are implements lying next to weapons, minerals and articles of clothing. Rock and colour samples can be seen, limbs of exotic animals, bark containers, a coal wagon, grass and feather capes. Good, one says to oneself: a somewhat sporadic anthropological collection, extremely widely deployed and embedded in its natural and social environment … however this is no systematic collection. (Metken 1991: 34)

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What is on display is a confrontation between cultures, between nature and culture. Helmut Friedel *et al*. (1991) write that in his various works Lang attempts to collate pictures of human encroachment on nature: the methods used in so doing always remain the same. Findings that evidence human activities and interference are collected, ordered, described and examined as to their meaning. Researching the historical and local contexts, the 'biographies which come to light from the finds play just as an important a role as the actual remains and traces he has found in the completed picture (he) creates' (Lang 1991: 6). In *Nunga und Goonya* Lang is mourning for the lost cultures of Australia's indigenous population, the Aborigines, and it is the latter's view of the white settlers who regarded the Australian continent as *terra nullis* that he presents (Lang 1991: 8). Yet as Metken remarks, Lang 'remains the white artist who takes his findings back home with him and uses them for his purposes … which does not exclude any amount of commitment, not to mention dismay over the injustices continuing till the present day' (Metken 1991: 36).

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Among the heathland artists discussed below, Trenchard's approach and works, both on-site and in her Master's portfolio, are a good example of a non-textual, visual production that is often anthropological in its essence. This is important in view of the dominant textually documented and descriptive negotiation and representation of place, emotion and aesthetics. Schneider and Wright correctly emphasize the difference between 'participation' and 'collaboration', stating that 'they are charged forms of rhetoric that have been subject to much critical scrutiny' (2013: 11). Participation involves a 'whole constellation of different degrees and conceptions of agency and control at work … and the specific complexities of particular contexts for collaboration require acknowledgement' (Schneider and Wright 2013: 11). Perhaps it is also important to state that, although anthropology has been critiqued for its anti-aestheticism, Geismar and Empson (2004) argue that anthropologists such as Edwards (2002), Gell (1998) and Pinney and Thomas (2001) have acknowledged the power of the visual both 'in its own terms, as well as through more academic discourse (in which) the importance of the visual (is) a crucially material category in vital interaction with socio-political, economic and cultural contexts' (Geismar and Empson 2004: 44). There is a difference too between anti-aestheticism and 'beyond aestheticism'. As Pinney states, 'it is not the efflorescence of words around an object that gives it meaning but a bodily praxis, a poetry of the body, that helps give images what they want' (Pinney 2001: 161).

## **Heathland arts**

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A painting of the heathland that few members of the general public have seen hangs in the Officers' Mess at the RM Commando Training Centre, Lympstone. Painted by Margaret Dean in 1981, it was gifted to the Royal Marines by the Oxford Architects Partnership. It is a large oil painting, about two metres wide.