An Alternative Writing Retreat
Between the villages of Dinmael and Tŷ Nant in north Wales, there is a half-mile stretch of road that has been closed to vehicles since 1997. It winds along the side of a short leafy gorge above the river Ceirw, and remains open to visitors without advertising its considerable history…
We live surrounded by maps of every sort you can imagine, digital and on paper. What Three Words reduces the world to three random words, Garmin and Strava can make you feel good about how far and fast you can run. Map My Run – well, maps your run. The Ordnance Survey is still going strong…
Edinburgh is perhaps the most vertical of any major UK city. It has ups. It has downs. And sometimes the transitions between the two can be surprising and difficult to parse. As we navigate from place to place we might find ourselves tackling elegant staircases, perilously steep streets, or unexpected bridges…
Maps aren’t boring. Or, at least, they’re not boring enough for some people. The Royal Society for the Presevation of Boring Grid Squares is the largest organisation of individuals who dream of more boring maps, more blank grid squares, and a more featureless, relaxing world…
I’d been drawn to it, when it had appeared one day in the middle nineties, bursting upon a patch of wasteland on the way to Roman Road, where my favourite morning market had offered cut-price clothes. My mother and I had gone to the market every now and then, and we’d punctuated our chilly trawl down the long, stall-congested street…
Take a ruler. Take a map of Wales. Draw a straight line from border to coast… then pack a bag and walk it. To anyone familiar with the brambly, moist, sometimes-rocky terrain of the Welsh countryside this might seem like an insane idea…
To mark its 70th anniversary, Heathrow Airport launched a project to curate stories about itself. Years later, only a few of these narratives have survived…
We believe that there are cameras everywhere, and that security is a ubiquitous presence. But how much of the security we see is actually real?
We’d arranged to meet in front of the Whitworth Art Gallery and head onto the baths from there. Being a time before mobiles, the plans had been made on landlines back at our respective houses – of course back then we didn’t call them landlines, we just called them phones…
There is a somewhat-sinister rumour that nobody has ever been allowed to die at Disneyland. We investigate the spectre of death within theme parks…