Precarious Office: a climate refugee from the future

Precarious Office was a promenade performance that took place earlier this year in Macau. I designed a walking route through the city which started on the southern shoreline, passed through the city centre and arrived at the gallery, Ox Warehouse, who were supporting the artistic residency. 

The starting point was notable as it was off limits: a small patch of trees sunk into the coastal mud, the remains of a mangrove forest which had been cut down to make way for land reclamation. It was here that I was smeared in mud. The smell was ripe; this was salty sea mud and sand. I had to climb over a fence to get down to the beach and this provided the first obstacle of the show: lifting office furniture over this fence then pulling myself over it too.

The route took me through a flat reclaimed area of land which casinos and banks have now colonised, then up a public elevator to the older part of the city. The reactions of passers by were an integral part of the work and there was no shortage of these. In a way the people glued to their phones oblivious to what was going on are just as interesting too. All hell could break loose, but as long as it didn't get between them and their phone, it would be irrelevant.

The performance was given with no explanation, it simply consisted of a tall, western looking man, covered in mud and struggling with office furniture to cross the city. I quite wanted to let the image be itself and not surround it with a story or set of expectations. 

That's not to say I didn't have any intentions or designed it by chance. I have seen many videos and news reports lately of people fleeing flooded homes. I wanted to make this an office space, however, to emphasize the spirit of blind industry that is in no small part playing its role in shaping our current climate crisis. The image had to be kept normal, however, as if this were a routine situation, something that goes without mention.  

The heat, duration and resistance of the materials made this quite a difficult performance. I was in no way acting tired, I genuinely was exhausted and had to use my full energy to make it across the city. It was humid, hot, the plastic started to hurt the skin, the wheels didn't enjoy the bumpy pavement. It was a proper test.

Having arrived at the gallery, the office equipment was then displayed as part of the exhibition with the full length video of its transport playing on the screen. This gave the objects a greater significance, they were not just props for a performance but an integral part of the exhibition. What's more, the sound was edited so that the sound of the office chair rolling over mock historic cobbles was privileged. This was to draw attention to performance like quality of this recently constructed history and to reduce other sounds so that this video could combine more effectively with the other works in the audio space of the exhibition. 

Way-Losing Brussels

The day before going on this Way-Losing Tour, I visited a friend in Molenbeek, the neighbourhood much in the news as a hotbed for jihad. It seemed perfectly OK to me, but I did hear from a friend living there that until recently it had seen a surge in terrorism tourism. Looking out from on high, I saw more of Brussels than I've seen before: towers, hills, houses and parks stretching out afar. I didn't realise that it would be amongst these very same buildings we'd be passing tomorrow. 

  

The starting point, this statue in Grassmarkt, the time, 2PM. The city-centre with it's convenient signposts and cultural centres soon slid away. We rang the bell of the The Magic Mountain but nobody was in. We walked on.

We cut a line northwards, a direction we were mostly unfamiliar with, and we seemed to fall on the right-hand side of the main train tracks. Whilst I don't really know the city, I know this train line only too well so it was important to move away from it. This meant steering a path around and away from the red light zone that seems to ooze along the side of the tracks of the north station. 

I had never previously realised just how hilly the city is. This can be both an asset when getting lost and also land you with bad surprises: you can happen upon a view that immediately locates you. These hills were at first a blessing and then later became something to avoid. Over time we gravitated to the valleys. To get lost, we had ourselves to become hidden.

Of all the Way-Losing tours so far, this was perhaps the most elegant. Where previously Way-Losers have often found ourselves drawn to the margins of the city, sites beyond the reach of designers and even the law, in Brussels we seemed to be accompanied by a steady stream of art deco buildings.

We all knew far more than we realised. We kept on stumbling across places we didn't know we knew, landmarks that prevented us from fully leaving behind the city and coming face to face with something other. 

For no more than fifteen minutes did we reach our precarious goal of being lost. That is when the discussion warmed up. We saw the police interviewing residents at the door, the stories of crime surfaced once again, but so too very particular details. Businesses that had fallen on hard times, unusual names, ambiguous signs pointing in all directions. Yet, even when lost there was a presence surrounding us that could not be wholly forgotten. Planes making their approach to the airport and hills upon which tall buildings threatened to reveal us at every corner.  

Finally it was the train line that brought us back to reality but it did so in a curious way: it led us to Magic Land. Once again we stumbled into theatre, once again the city was offering up a polished version of itself that was not quite real, but not for one instant did we break into the backstage of Brussels and discover the dressing rooms where the city's make up is painted upon it transforming street to stage. An elusive city, then, a city that has faces for all occasions, a city with a resisting embrace. 

The Walking Club of Victoria Tour

The Walking Club of Victoria is a Melbourne-based walker's club that organises weekly walks in, around and outside of the city. I was kindly invited to join one of their Sunday walks for which we gathered at 8:30AM around the back of Southern Cross Station and then car pooled. With four of us comfortably seated and our destination Steiglitz entered on the map, we headed west out onto the highway. The city thinned and eventually gave way to dry farmland. As we drove I talked to my fellow passengers who told me about some of their more adventurous hikes in the thin Himalayan air of Nepal. Those days were behind them now and the Australian outback was where they now did most of their walking. 

Once we'd all arrived at our destination, an hour of so later, we stood in a circle and began with a formal introduction to the walk and the day. Our guide was a relatively new member of the club and she was being mentored by a more experienced walker. In a sense, she was the beginner and was leader in name only, but her responsibilities were, nonetheless, real. This was a learning experience for her and a way in which the club brought in new people and gave them the skills to lead walks. She explained what the walk would be like (she had already scouted it with another club member) gave us some advice on how to stay safe in the hot weather and welcomed today's new member, which would be me.

We walked out of Steiglitz and saw the remains of this gold-rush mining town. At one time it was home to over 1500 people. Streets such as Barry Street, pictured here, would have been lined with more or less temporary structures, all of which have now vanished. When the gold dried up there was little else to keep people here: today the population is in single figures. As I am currently developing a project for another 19th Century mining village, Allenheads in Northumberland, I was set wondering why one village was able to adapt and another has all but disappeared. 

As we walked we talked. The way conversations flow on longer walks, like this, is quite specific. The duration, the rhythm of the footsteps and the changing scenery allow for pauses and silences, for interruptions and observations whilst still maintaining enough direction for the conversation to continue. You invest time and effort into the walk and this rubs off in the connection with the other walkers. I find people are usually more open when walking in nature, more focussed on what and who is around them than on their phones, as is often the case. As we headed up a largely dry stream bed, the path became more broken and the walking became harder. I heard some nice stories about the club which was founded in 1947, and which had seen pretty much everything, it seemed. At one point, apparently, there was a spate of its members getting married to one another, and on another walk some years ago, a senior member had passed away. Whilst that must have been distressing for the rest of the people on the walk, it sounded like a pretty good way to go. They agreed; if it's your time, sitting down on a quiet rock in a beautiful place and letting go is just about ideal.

The plants and landscape were pleasingly unfamiliar to me. There were no two-headed turtles or carnivorous bushes, but when I examined the flora closely I could not say precisely what any of it was. Along the way we came across a lot of tall grasses, the most aggressive of which was this variety that reaches a metre in height and carries a nasty spike on the end. The hikers came equipped: some wore gaiters and many used walking poles to cut a path through the bush and work the arms at the same time. I understood why: this was not a gentle stroll in Surrey, there were plants here that could rip you up, there were (thankfully rarely) poisonous snakes too, to say nothing of the threat of bushfires that can race faster than a man can run. I checked my phone: there was no signal down here in the valley. This was not a good place to come alone or to act dumb in, this was a place to come prepared and in company.

I wanted to see if there were different ways the group's members walked through and experienced the landscape because, although this was one tour, I suspected there were numerous parallel tours taking place. I floated around spending a bit time with different people, dropping into their conversations and then, sometimes, I just walked on my own and let the landscape make its own impression. As expected, there was quite a contrast in how we walked. One lady was keen on interpreting the rocks and trees and seeing things into them. For example, we sat in front of these rocks, which she called 'the temple' because they reminded her of a Greek temple, and once she had said it I also started to see it too. It was fun, not to say enlightening, to walk and talk with her and see the trail through her imagination. I then spent some time with a serious bush whacker who had a very specific and efficient way of forging a path through rough terrain. As he and a friend of his walked, they looked around and compared this trail to other trails they knew in other parts of Victoria. They were serious walkers. This variety of perspectives made me think that I should like to better understand how indigenous Australians view, cross and imagine this landscape. Theirs, however, must be a very different way of walking, one most probably quite antithetical to this.

At lunchtime the gatorade came out. I was offered some and while I'm sure it serves its purpose of rehydrating admirably, it is not a pleasant brew. I have a tribal loyalty for Irn Bru (Scottish family) which I admit is not consensual stuff either, but I was surprised to learn that there are Gatorade cocktails; an Angry Granny = gatorade and whisky; an H-Bomb = gatorade and malibu. Hmm, I think I'll stick to the gin and tonic.

At some point the trail levelled off and it became easier to stroll, look around and take everything in. That is when the otherness of this place really hit me.

The early afternoon sun was pretty hot and on the home stretch back into Steiglitz we fell into a more languid rhythm. A conversation question I overhead was, "Have you ever had skin cancer?" This struck me as a question you wouldn't often hear asked in a British walking club. In the UK you'd be more inclined to hear people ask where they went to find some sun. Towards the end of the walk, one of the group (not the lady above) had to take a stop for a breather in the forest, the heat getting the better of him. The club sprung into care mode and I discovered a number of the walkers came from medical backgrounds, and those who didn't were also active immediately planning a way to get him out, carrying him if need be. Finally, all he needed was a break and he was back on his feet and tramping back into Steiglitz in no time. It was reassuring, all the same, to see how the club takes safety seriously and everyone was really looking out for one another. 

When we were done we jumped back into the cars and headed over to a nearby cafe. Over custard tarts and refreshments I asked some of them why they were a part of the club. Their answers were varied but overlapping, the most common ones being that it was good exercise, a pleasant social activity and the club enabled them to go to beautiful places they probably wouldn't otherwise visit. The bonds of friendship seemed deep; even if the club's marrying days were over, at least for the time being, they seemed to connect well as people. I also learnt that there are a number of walking clubs in and around Melbourne, and that there is really quite some variety in them. I started to see that there was an understated competition for members between the clubs as they all need to ensure a consistent stream of new blood into their clubs. I felt that this club was doing things right; it could never be all things to everybody, what matters most is that it is meaningful for the people who do it and that it remains sustainable. In this respect, not being too large was actually quite a good thing: over the duration of the walk I had time to talk to just about everyone.

In a similar way to how we began, the computers and GPS stepped back in. It doesn't look too tough a walk, according to the stats, but fighting our way up the dry river bed, weaving from side to side was not smooth going. If I lived in Melbourne I would definitely give them a go again, they not only organise walks every week but also talks on subjects relevant to their outings. I suppose the most similar tour to this one that I have made recently was the trip up El Teide in Tenerife this Summer. That was a good deal more arduous and uncertain than this one, as our guide had never made the trip himself. This was an altogether more relaxed and comfortable walk, as I would expect of a club that had been doing this for over 60 years. What they had in common was they were about walking in nature and letting that be the strongest element, rather than listening to a guide telling a story. To put it another way, on these tours, the walk itself is the story and the guide is simply there to help us better hear it.

The Free Alternative Tour of Berlin

To the East of the city, by the banks of River Spree, runs a daily 'Alternative Tour' of the city. A reasonably sized group of us gathered at noon for a three-hour walk through the sites of Berlin's counter-culture. This tour is another so-called free tour, which is to say, it is one that is done for tips. Unlike the Amsterdam 'free' tour I recently took, this one was not pushy and did not try to pump us to give money, it was much more low-key. Our guide, a young Australian woman, introduced herself to us and it turned out she was relatively new to Berlin having lived in the city just one year. Her main qualifications for the job were her command of the language, an outgoing personality and her enthusiasm for street art.  

After having a chat with another one of the company's guides, who runs their ever popular pub crawl in the evenings, we stopped to admire our first piece of street art. We learnt a bit about the artist, an Italian woman, how the work was made and what it might mean. We then took photos and filed off to the next artwork.

We were given an interpretation of this work that both started and stopped at the blatantly obvious: it is a political piece of street art about the euro crisis. I'm not so used to this blunt form of art criticism and if I try to imagine it in a museum tour it can be almost funny. Here, however, it more or less worked as it was in keeping with the directness of the art itself. Indeed, I had the feeling that the majority of the street art we came across was raw expression, though there were some refined works too, and this got me wondering, what is the attraction in looking at miserable art? When I thought about it further I came to see that these sorts of pictures are to art what teenage grunge bands are to music. They rarely have the skill or subtlety of expression of gallery artists and they are working to a much more immediate, easy to grasp, aesthetic. They are still expressive, some maybe even more so than the professional art, and some people (mostly younger) will feel more connected to this sort of art than to what they'd find in museums. There are exceptions too; crossover street artists who branch into advertising, gallery shows and coffee table books, which we'll come to later. 

She talked a lot about the different techniques employed by street artists, such as, attaching wheat paste posters to the wall. I found it surprising she did not acknowledge the man standing to the side of her sticking an advertisement, piece by A3 piece, onto the wall. The technique is very similar and I was struck that the advert was not printed on a large sheet of paper but was rather home-made and assembled from many smaller pieces. She said that street art being used for advertising was frowned upon yet I also see that it's rife. The NSDM wharf in Amsterdam, where I will open another tour in a little over a week, is full of street art advertisements for trainers. It is also, not co-incidentally, where MTV have their offices and studio.

The pivotal moment of the tour for me came when we were walking in Kreuzberg. We came upon a large and very direct piece of street art: a hand giving the finger with the words 'FUCK YOU' above it, just in case you didn't get the message. On the side is another piece of text reading "TRAVELLERS WELCOME FUCK GHETTO TOURISTS". I guess that would mean us. She said it was a new piece that was 'brutal' and she couldn't find a neat way to incorporate the message back into the tour, as it was a direct challenge to our tour's legitimacy. 

We instead talked about a large squat that once occupied the land in front of the wall that was so spectacularly showing us the finger. The place had been cleared by the city authorities fairly recently amid speculation that a fire which precipitated its clearance, on public health grounds, was not accidental. My impression was that the whole area was cleaning up and while it still had the self-identity of being grungy and alternative, the reality was something else. The cafes we passed were actually not so cheap and the punks were outnumbered by the hipsters and Turks going about their business. The conditions that had created Berlin's counter culture were no longer in place and, block by block, the city seems to be returning to the mainstream German fold.

While we were talking about a street artist who was fined a hefty sum by the city authorities, decorators on the other side of the road were painting the front of a building an elegant shade of cream. It must be an unrewarding job painting a building like that in the full knowledge that within 48 hours it would be tagged but, on the other hand, that does also mean that as a painter you have a steady stream of work. Indeed, even the street artists have this problem of their pictures getting plastered in tags and we learnt that some return to touch up their art.

We came to the work of some successful street artists, a pair of twins who make large-scale paintings such as this one on the side of the building. There must be a system for the promotion of artists like these and it might be interesting to learn how the street and money collide and interact with one another. The Banksy film Exit Through The Gift Shop covers some of this terrain quite entertainingly but does so from a self-serving position. A cooler more analytic documentary would make for myth-busting viewing.

The last stop on the tour was a park with some street art. Some alcoholics were drinking beside the art we were looking for so we did not interrupt their reverie and instead concluded next to this statue. There was nothing said about the statue, however, it was to all effects invisible. I found this a pity as it too is art that is found on the street. By focussing so exclusively on contemporary street art a great deal of art that is also found alongside it was missed and I would have found the comparisons very interesting. Perhaps that is just me reimagining the tour with a broader visual field that would bring into focus some interesting questions around who makes art, for whom, and how. Those sorts of questions which open up a discussion of society, politics and aesthetics were outside the scope of this tour, however, which stuck to simply showing some examples of one type of art. Finally, it is a tourist walking tour after all.

Talking Walking Interview

I've just given another interview and it is now available online. I took a walk through Shoreditch with Andrew Stuck of Talking Walking and we discussed performances, tours, walking and much else. The conversation is a podcast on the Talking Walking Website.

Talking Walking is well worth taking a look at more generally; there are interviews with quite a number of interesting people from diverse fields that all connect through walking. 

Walking apps under development

I'm talking to an app developer about creating an app that can encourage people to walk and I'm interested in making something that artists might also be able to find useful for art projects that involve the city, travelling around it and so on. I have a rough idea of some of the features I'd like to see, but if you have some ideas of what you might look for in such an app, I would be keen to hear. 

Right now we are talking about an app that can record and post real time and/or recorded data about walks onto a shared platform, and it should allow walkers to connect, i.e. you could say I want to take a walk in XYZ neighbourhood on Saturday afternoon, anyone else interested? Images, texts and sounds from previous people's walks can be public and discovered by others heading the same direction. This way it would be possible to create treasure hunt structures which give out information bit by bit. The app should also produce a GPS map at the end showing where you have travelled. What else might make it useful to you?

The Bath Skyline Tour: a sunset walk of ideas

The National Trust Skyline Walk, to give it its official name, is a walk on the urban/rural fringe of Bath. It is, apparently, their most downloaded walk in the country and I was fortunate enough to be able to take it not with a few sheets of A4 printouts, but instead as part of a sunset walk accompanied by a guide from the National Trust and one of the mayor's honorary guides too.

We gathered in a grassy car park above the city. Our guide was suitably attired and gave us a brief introduction that was to the point and not laboured, as can happen. I generally much prefer it when the introduction to a tour consists of the essentials only (e.g. duration, end point, safety, cost) and other things are revealed as and when they need to be. That means a mixing of some further 'practical' information with the tour's ostensive subject matter at different points in the tour. For example, the guide can reveal their sources half-way through or explain how they came to be giving the tour. What I usually prefer, in any case, is to get some momentum, and that's just what happened here.

Our second guide introduced himself at the next stop and his thing was the history of Bath. Up in this area that meant him telling us about the abbey who owned the land, an old racecourse that was here and that this was a site for duelling. I heard similar information on the City Sightseeing bus tour, which passes this way, however, the bus had to condense everything into 20 seconds as it passed at speed whereas he could take as long as he liked so there was no sense of urgency about rounding off the story before we turned the corner. He went on to tell us that his special interest was in Ralph Allen who was instrumental in shaping the city's history and who owned a large tract of the land in this area.

For quite a distance we walked through fields and then woods with no sweeping vistas before us. I was beginning to wonder if this title the skyline tour was so well chosen.  

But then we seemed to turn a corner and were rewarded with a proper view over the city. 

With the view of the city behind him, we then had the Ralph Allen story in earnest. The emphasis here was not upon a psychological approach to tell the man's biography, his private life was largely absent from this story. Instead, we were told how his deeds shaped the city. I was reminded of how history is often told through the format of great men being the instigators of events and of the passage in War and Peace where Tolstoy argues the converse. 

“In historical events so-called great men are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill, is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and predestined from all eternity.”

Both ways have much to be said for them, I perhaps notice this favouring of the great man approach here because pretty much all of the guided tours of Bath seem to focus on three great men to tell the story of how they made the city and then on one great woman for how it was to live inside of it. What was also quite striking, was the difference in the way the two guides used the space. The descriptions of nature were mostly about the areas we were actually standing in whereas the historical material was, more often than not, what we could see some distance in front of us.

There were a couple of dogs on the tour, and this one prompted the following joke. "What did the spaniel say to the parrot? I'm a cockatoo."

We looked at a tree that had allegedly been set on fire by a schoolboy arsonist burning his books. The trust had done quite a lot of work to preserve the tree. I may be embellishing the story with the burning of school books but having physically abused some of my own school books, back in the day, by kicking them around the four walls of my room, I can understand the impulse though I'd never condone the burning of trees.

Rob, the guide, asked more than once whether I could feature the new bench installed along the skyline in the blog, so here it is. Someone said it would make a wonderful place to sit with friends and drink a bottle of wine with the majestic views over the valley below. The cynic in me thought the more likely fate is for it to be a spot to sit on and drink special brew, though now I think about it, it's enough of a walk from the city centre to deter the average  alcoholic. In any case, it's a nice bench and unlike the City Trail, the quotes are more significant and well chosen.

There was not so much spotting of fauna on this walk, it was more about the flora. We did however, spot a deer at the far end of the field. Not having a paparazzi zoom on my camera, this is about the best I could manage. Yes it could be a kangaroo for all I know.

Emerging onto the pavement we walked down a short slope and as we were doing so, I heard a ugly thump behind us. Turning round I saw a cyclist lying in pain on the road. No car seemed to have been involved, except perhaps a parked one on the side of the road. One or two of our group rushed to the scene, those who knew first aid, and people came out of a house opposite to see what was going on. These hills are pretty steep and if on a bike you don't treat them with caution, you can finish this way. What the real cause was, I have no idea. It looked like a more than superficial injury from a distance and when our party returned they confirmed so but also said he was basically OK and had the good fortune to come off his bike in front of the house of a doctor, who was immediately on the scene. 

The next part of the walk was over meadows that were perched overlooking the city centre. What very particular architecture and town planning Bath has. These meadows, we were told, are extremely rich in wildflowers, though we were too late in the year to properly appreciate them. 

The route we were following was signposted and it would probably have been possible to have taken it without a map or guide, though I'd not recommend it. There were also notice boards scattered along the walk some of which advertised the sunset walk we were taking. That and the generally high level of maintenance of the route gave the impression that it was carefully managed. We were told that a small team of paid staff and larger number of volunteers work year round on the Bath Skyline.

The walk took us along another short section of pavement but even here it was beside a quiet, leafy road. The route seemed to have been made with the intention of weaving us through a variety of natural habitats, of which there were plenty, and at the same time reminding us that all this is right next to and indeed sometimes inside of the Bath urban area.

By now it was getting later in the day and the colours in the sky started a delicate dance.

Our guide explained the principles of succession by which the countryside evolves with different plants, bushes and trees colonising the land one after another with the final result, in this part of the UK, of oak forests. It is an ecological process I had not heard about previously and it got me looking at the areas we passed through in a new way. He also pointed out that there were meadow ants in the area and their anthills could grow large and be over 100 years old, though the ones we saw were younger. It was interesting to see how there is a history to nature if you know how to read it. This also made me think about the difference between the two guides' approaches: one about the man and the other about the process. They were coming at things in very different ways, finally.

He mentioned a book that looks like it should be a great read, The History of The Countryside by Oliver Rackham (1986). I have always sensed something mannered about the countryside in the UK, as if it bears the traces of many people's usage of it. This book, if I understand rightly, is the classic work that sets out and tests a history of our use of the countryside and is the reference point for subsequent research. That's another item to add to the birthday list then.

We arrived at Sham Castle, the folly perched high upon the downs, in the golden light of the setting sun. This was to be the place where we would watch it set. During a sensual moment like this most of the group fell back into the couples they arrived in. This question of how people mix within a group is one I have been asking myself increasingly, having noticed that some tours encourage it more than others. Personally, I quite like it when there is some exchange between people who started the walk as strangers but become acquainted along the way. A good part of it is how and why the people come together to take the walk in the first place and whether they have a strong, shared interest or not. Beyond that I have also noticed that tours which leave space for the people to ask questions and contribute their thoughts are the ones where the conversation more naturally spills over into the spaces between the stops.

There were then a few minutes of looking out over the city. There was talk of how the land was managed with the golf course below but that seemed like a question from another part of the walk.

We got some further history, much of it about Sham Castle itself, a folly constructed by our old friend Ralph Allen. This mix of nature and history was complimentary in the case of Bath as that does accurately reflect the walk and its views. The two guides were not at cross purposes at all, as they were most notably on the now classic reference point of mine the Dalston Conservation Tour where the two guides were pulling the walk in different directions.

With the sun almost down we were treated to a rising moon on the other side of Sham Castle. What immaculate timing. It was now time to cover some distance to get back to the starting point where the cars were parked. This, quite definitely had to be a circular walk.

For a second time on one of these tours we had a view over Solsbury Hill, which was the cue for the Peter Gabriel story all over again. From a distance, it does not look like much of a hill, more like a plateaux. Those who had been up it, however, were very enthusiastic about it and said Solsbury genuinely was a special place.

This brought us to a great last section of the walk through woods in rapidly descending darkness. We had been advised to bring torches, and with good reason. The ground was uneven and slippery in places but basically walkable. I had to really concentrate on the path ahead of me in order to make progress, this was no place for idle chat. We emerged into fields where a dim, late dusk glow aided our way and let the eyes soak in the landscape in this evocative gloom. I realised that it is rare that I have the opportunity to walk in nature in these conditions and it is something I should really try to do more, as it awakens the all the senses. Returning us to the car park, we made our goodbyes and I and two others were lucky enough to be offered a lift back down into the city. With the legs heavy from four hours of walking, the lift was very welcome. There's another sunset walk along the Skyline 28th September, or indeed you can do it anytime you please, though in company like this I'd say it's a richer experience.