The Tour of All Tours Bath video

A short promotional video of the Bath Tour of All Tours.

Interview on the Bath tour

With thanks to Martha King (camera) and Cheryl Pierce (interviewer). Recorded outside the Roman Baths in Bath City Centre, October 2014.

The Bath Tour of All Tours

After a hard Summer of intensive tourism in and around Bath, it was finally time to offer up my tour of the Bath tours in response.

This is not a critical review of the tour, like the majority of the posts on the blog are, it is something simpler: some pictures of the tour and descriptions of what they are or what they remind me of. So, to begin, this is us in front of the Abbey where a moment later an official emerged and shooed us away with the choice words, "This is not a theatre, it's an abbey!" 

Here I am describing the horse drawn carriage tour of Bath. The carriage wasn't doing the rounds during the morning tour but in the afternoon we did cross it more than once. As you can see the group is very mixed with younger and older people, residents, students, strays and visitors all tagging along.

The City Sightseeing Bus is parked in the background and one afternoon an actual guide who gives tours for the company joined us. I make a point of only saying things I would be fully prepared to say to the people who give the tours I am talking about, but I must say that of all the stops this is perhaps the one where I give the most critical comments so I was unsure how they would be taken. I need not have been so concerned; the guide turned out to be openminded, amusing and not at all like the colleague of his I talk about on my tour. There were in fact a number of interjections from different people I talked about at different junctures of this tour. 

The tour is not all ironic jokes, as might be expected from the description of it. Whilst there is an obvious humour to the proposition of making a guided tour of tours, the tour would quickly exhaust itself if it only used the idea as a platform for gags and nothing else. Rather, the format offered a readymade way to talk about the city and its users, tourists and locals alike. I felt this tour was rather conventional, formally speaking, and it was the subject matter that marked it out as different. I suspect I'll want to stretch the formal boundaries of what constitutes a guided tour a bit further with subsequent tours, but making this one within a stricter frame was a good challenge and seemed to work well for the location.

I was particularly happy with the last minute addition of the sign on a stick. It is so simple a form of advertising that it is easy to overlook and immediately focus at online platforms and suchlike. The sign on a stick, however, did bring some people to us and, just as importantly, it provided a nice presence throughout the tour reminding us of what we were doing and announcing it to passers by too.    

Speaking of simple technology, the other item which proved incredibly useful was the portable speaker I wore around my waist and was connected to by a hands free microphone. It allowed me to be heard easily above the passing traffic in places like this stop opposite Nelson's former residence. When I took the People Behind the Plaques tour, which stopped to talk about the same building, they had to withdraw round the corner where Nelson's old digs could barely be seen, just in order to be heard. I do turn the speaker down when it is not required, it can be off-putting to be barked at unnecessarily, but more often than not, it was useful to raise the voice above the traffic and crowds that flood the city centre at weekends.  

Opposite Thermae Bath Spa I shared my experience of the Spa Audio Tour and this was interesting for the fact that people did indeed have their own opinions about the spa, its history and the process of privatisation that I introduced. What's more, they have quite different opinions with some regarding it far more favourably than others, who consider it plain robbery. One lady was so animated by the subject that she took the opportunity to go not only into the history, at some length, but also into the current campaign to heat the swimming pool with the thermal water which, she finally told us, she was one of the moving forces behind.

We cut a tourist picture walking through the streets looking for all the world like just another group on the UESCO merry go round. This forward progression came through in what I said too. Unlike some previous tours which were more episodic, this one really tried to build a narrative as it went along, drawing upon previous spots and constructing a history and frame of reference of its own. This history was not anything like a chronological one giving a history of the city or of a person, it was restricted to a history of our tour. It self-consciously built up a story of sorts from the tours, a story in which the city itself is the chief protagonist with additional voices provided by tour guides and tourists alike. 

Here we are looking at the City Trail which, I was surprised to discover, one or two people were aware of. Inviting the group to follow the trail and placing myself no longer at the front was a way to let the group play a more active role in the tour, something I liked because it got people talking to one another. This gentle encouragement to interact was effective but was always delicately balanced with a desire to avoid contriving embarrassing situations. Street entertainers tend, too often for my liking, towards the latter so I was careful to create space for those who wanted to watch in silence while setting the general tone as one that encouraged interaction between me and the public and within the tour goers too.

Here we are dowsing. I was intrigued to notice how this works for some people and not others. From observation, about two thirds of people got a response from the dowsing rods. There were one or two who were keen to make it not work as they were skeptical about the whole procedure and it seems mind might have been able to suppress the movements of the rods. What this all means I cannot say, it will have to rest as an observation.

A proper Bath weekend moment came towards the end of the tour when we were asked to bulk out a group photo for a hen party.

Finishing up at the Royal Crescent seemed to work fine and it offered us a gentle stroll back into the city centre where we repaired for food and refreshment. Over the three days I had a number of interesting conversations with people who were on the tour, each had their own take on it and on the city itself. I am fortunate to have had such generous people come along and even more so to have had one, Richard White, write about the tour on his blog, which is worth looking at more generally being based around landscape, arts and walks. He concludes, "A wonderful and surreal experience" which is in no small part due to the interventions of all the various people we encountered along the way who somehow became a part of the tour. I should conclude however, by thanking not just the inadvertent participants but also the very steady and significant practical support and advice from ICIA who commissioned the tour and visitBath who supported the project too. Thank you and see you on the next tour!

The Stone Seeker Tour of Avebury

The Stone Seeker Tour is a tour given by author and guide Peter Knight, who is based close to Avebury. He offers a range of activities and tailors his tours to the group or individual. I did not come to this tour with an especial interest in pagan religions and ancient sites, though I should also add, I am not against them either. I would count myself as one of the curious who has visited a few stone circles, mostly in Scotland, and once by chance ended up at a Beltane festival in Wales where I found myself in a sweat lodge with the great unwashed whilst shamanic drummers deep in psychedelic revelries circled the flimsy structure connecting with the ancient ones. At least, that is what they said they were doing afterwards, while sitting around a fire, smoking up a storm. Today's tour was to be a good deal more proper; I was, basically, getting an Earth Mysteries 101 tour of Avebury and the West Kennet Long Barrow. 

The tour started inauspiciously enough at Chippenham train station. It was a short, 12-minute ride out of Bath but it felt like a significant step in terms of atmosphere. Whereas Bath is very cosmopolitan and urban, albeit according to an 18th Century design, Chippenham felt like it belonged far more to the countryside.  

My guide, Peter, picked me up in his car and we drove to Avebury. The stones are accessible free of charge to visitors and not fenced off at all, unlike Stonehenge. This meant we could walk amongst them, touch them, sing at them, perform magic with them, check their auras, ley lines and everything else that was on this afternoon's esoteric agenda. He told me that while he was not such as fan of the restrictions at Stonehenge, they were probably necessary to deal with the sheer volume of visitors. For the type of interactive tour that we had lined up, Avebury was clearly the better location.

We began by looking at the stones with Peter explaining his theory of the stones being gendered with alternate masculine and feminine stones. He knew from which angles to best observe them from, having taken many pictures of them himself.

We noticed these impressively large mushrooms and this provided the cue to discuss the role mushrooms might have played in the rituals that took place here. He said there were no less than 12 varieties of psychoactive mushrooms growing in the area, back in the day. While it is tempting to say that such speculation and ritualistic use of drugs is more a product of the present, such as the Beltane I witnessed, some things in people, like the desire to get out of your head now and then, are, I suspect, fairly constant. What's more, we were not talking about a Friday night down the pub sort of scenario, we were talking about  the use of hallucinogens within sacred rituals.

The next thing we did was to look for faces in the stones, such as this stern face looking out to the side. It is a human capacity to find faces in abstract shapes and the idea here was that the people who constructed the stone circle chose the stones and positioned them such that there would be faces everywhere. I had the feeling the way he had developed his theories had been to read the literature, as it existed, and then spend a lot of time around the stones coming up with ideas of his own and connecting his observations to alternative beliefs from related fields. As such, it all hangs together because it comes from a consistent position but it would be difficult to say with absolute certainty that much of it is definitely true. That is one of the beauties of the stones, that their past usage has been lost in the depths of prehistory and then rediscovered through a mixture of scientific study and contemporary sacred practice. 

I then had a go at dowsing. Avebury, he told me, was on the Michael and Mary ley line which crosses Southern England. He said that it was possible to detect this line using dowsing. I had a go myself and something certainly happened, namely, at a certain point the metal rods pointed together and then, taking a few steps further, returned to a parallel position. This they did without me directing them at all. When he was telling me about the ley line from Cornwall to Norfolk I immediately thought to myself, "that would make a great tour!" I have since noticed that The Avebury Experience already offer an 8-day tour of the line line. Alternative tourism is a definite niche business. Peter did say that he sometimes shows dowsing groups around Avebury and they can spend a full hour on just one small part of it, so much is this a central point on their map. 

This brought us to the so called 'Devil's Seat.' Spending some time with Peter I had the impression that he was quite well suited to being a guide. He knew his stuff, which is a first pre-requisite, and then he also quite liked answering questions. I was a bit afraid I'd say something very dumb but he was easy going and made a few jokes here and there which made things relaxed. 

At this point a group of Americans on some sort of pagan package tour appeared out of the ether. They were mostly women of a certain age with one or two men in robes tagging along. They were clearly here on a mission: three of the women were carrying metal swords. They seemed to be circling the stones but then took a wrong turn and were backtracking looking for a way to cross the road that annoyingly bisects the circle. Peter put them on the right path and then told me that he gets significant interest in his work from the USA and from time to time flies over to give talks or workshops. California, it seems, is where the greatest amount of interest in this sort of stuff is to be found. It was interesting to note how the US has ancient religious sites of its own but that these belong to the people the settlers have largely displaced. Peter, to his credit, said he recognised this and tried to incorporate these into his talks and work when over there as he viewed these cultures as being essentially alike. I am usually rather sceptical of essentialist beliefs, in the sense of we are all one, as they usually conceive of this oneness in very particular terms. Still, I understand the impulse in this case and I wouldn't be surprised if there is something to it. 

At this point we had a go at testing the acoustics of the stones. Many of them had cavities and Peter would speak and make sounds into them. Of all the parts of the tour this is the one which, to the outsider, must have looked the most puzzling.  

There were quite a few other groups visiting the stones for different reasons. There was a school group having their lunch there and I spotted another 'alternative' looking group pounding the ley line. Peter told me that at mid-summer it can get very lively indeed and look a bit like a fancy dress party. I want to go!

Stepping away from the stones we went to the National Trust cafe for lunch. It was strangely normal. We did see some of their guides who were showing the sort of people sitting at the tables here around Avebury. I suspect their tour was very different to mine.

We then drove a short distance outside of the circle to look at a double row of standing stones that branch out from it. Again they all had faces and I was put on the spot by being asked, what do you think this one is? I was quietly happy when I guessed correctly that it was known as the shark stone.

We then drove a little further and stopped close to Silbury Hill. This, I was informed, was a man-made structure and another one of the sacred sites in the area. A huge truncated cone, it is, apparently, a special place for dreaming. Sadly, I didn't have the time for an overnight stay to put that to the test.  

We walked up a gradual hill to the top where the West Kennet Barrow is located. A barrow is a burial chamber and I had seen many small round ones but this one was something else as it was long and narrow one which, happily, is open to the public. 

Again checking the acoustics of the stones, Peter built up a rhythm with his drum and then invited me to stand in front of the stone. He played the drum in front of and around me, I could feel the vibrations moving through my body. This built up over a few minutes and where I was at first rather self-conscious I relaxed into it. This is a tour which itself blends into action, I was no longer just the observer but also the observed and it was all the better for it.   

An elderly couple then entered and asked us to be quiet. Peter told me that this was the first time in the fifteen years that he had been coming here that he had been asked to stop drumming. It's a pity I didn't get a decent picture of how the couple looked, they had the countenance of those who like order. In fact I think they probably prefer order to the barrow: they sniffed around for a couple of minutes and then left. When we were leaving a little later we did some informal cleaning; there were a good few tea lights and the remains of rituals past. Seeing how popular Stonehenge is and also how flat the experience can be, I'm surprised that more people don't try this sort of tour. I daresay there is some marketing and communication issues which conspire to make things how they are, but with just a little effort there is a great deal more you can experience at these ancient sacred sites and the Stone Seeker Tour is a great way to do this which does not demand you be an initiate or anything, you simply have to turn up with an open mind, ready to see faces in stones.

The Tour of Britain: the lycra warriors come to town

I'm not going to write too much about this one as I am in the final stages of making a Tour of Tours here in Bath and need to spend time on that. Yesterday, however, I did watch the start of stage 6 of the Tour of Britain, and it deserves some mention.

First thing to notice was the health and safety treatment the city centre received. This was one of my favourite installations.

A considerable amount of resources went into hosting this cycle race which runs overs eight stages, spread over England and Wales. Hardly a tour of Britain in the manner of say Dafoe's, but then again, Scotland has the wee matter of a referendum to deal with so this race might have seemed irrelevant even unwelcome north of the border. Still, these sorts of events are a way in which the state is made visible so it is telling that Scotland was omitted. This is where the cones lived. 

The city centre was to be blocked off for an hour or so for the start of the race. As I approached the starting point I encountered more and more race paraphernalia.

And here they were: the racing bikes just sitting on the pavement. This was not formula one grand prix: the whole outfit simply rolled into town the night before and set up on the street this morning. There was no clear separation between frontstage and backstage of the operation: the backstage, as it existed, was the interiors of the various support vehicles that accompanied the cyclists.

There was some celebrity buzz about the race, with the autograph hunters out and a last minute scrummage around the starting line. Not knowing one cycling celebrity from another this seemed entirely arbitrary to me. At this point I started to really notice just how many cars there were within the tour's supporting infrastructure.

This Team GB pram with dogs was one of the more daft things I saw. I couldn't help but wonder if this might be the last time that this banner gets used. If Scotland votes for independence next Thursday this banner, made for The Olympics, will become obsolete. Come to think of it, it's already gone to the dogs.

Keeping some semblance of order around the start were professional events management staff who travel with the race. One prerequisite of the job is having a loud voice so you can clear people from the road when the cars and occasional bikes come through.

The vehicles just kept on getting bigger and bigger. The racing teams had coaches like this one which were their mobile headquarters. 

On the street the crowds gathered to watch the cyclists pass and free advertising was handed out in the shape of these inflatable batons. I noticed these are sponsored by KLM. I  had a truly horrible experiences with them that, still to this day, they have not resolved. I wish they would spend just a little bit more on a honest customer service department and not funnel it all into advertising. They are scoundrels and should be avoided. 

I took my position on the route and soon after, the cavalcade approached, headed up by police motor bikes and followed by a police car. Going back to Dafoe, it is interesting to read that when he visited Bath it was a building site with The Circus, in the background, just one third completed and still featuring a pond in the middle. With each update of his tour (pages 293-297) he had to revise this and many other descriptions of Bath, as the city was changing rapidly at that time.

Following the police came the race controller in a shiny car and some cameramen. The technology to broadcast and edit this stuff live must be quite complicated. Behind them the cyclists themselves finally came into view.

It was striking that they were not really racing at this stage. They were tightly packed and were instead making a circuit of the city centre for the benefit of the camera. In this sense, this race functions as a tourist advert: it shows a route through the city that includes all the must see locations. 

That's not to say they were going slowly, they had some pace but nothing exciting. This seemed like a warm up and when they got onto the hills out of the city, the race proper would begin.

As a keen cyclist myself I looked at these bikes and cyclists and felt strangely indifferent. The whole thing seemed completely removed from my world. I use the bike as a practical means of getting about and as a source of pleasure and exercise. This was something else.

Just as there were a number of vehicles preceding the bikes, so too were there many more following them. First was the cameraman on a motorbike. 

This was followed by more cars and the cars also got a cheer from the crowds, who lined the streets. Seeing as the bikes were all gone in 30 seconds they needed something else to make some noise about.

Up above a helicopter hovered over the city. No doubt this had a camera inside and was gobbling up some of the architectural porn which was a good half of the point of having the race come to Bath. The ending point of this stage, Hemel Hempstead, is altogether more puzzling to me. There must be some race logic behind this to do with distances, gradients, location of the following stage, logistics, projected size of crowd and degree of support from local authorities. Still, Hemel Hempstead hardly inspires as a destination. It's not like a cycle race to Edinburgh or, more ambitiously, the Paris Dakar road race, which sets the imagination off. I've been to Hemel Hempstead several times, my brother used to live there and there's nothing terrible about it, it's simply a nondescript satellite town with a weirdly large roundabout. I could imagine a couple of teenagers in Watford racing each other to Hemel Hempstead on their scooters, but that's about the sum of it as a race destination.

With the stream of vehicles that then followed, much much longer than the pack of bikes, I had to stop and consider how this sort of racing is really highly dependent on the motor vehicle. If I were to imagine a more militantly cycle-centred race, I would design it around a completely different logic so that it would consist of bikes and just two cars: one at the front and one at the back. These cars would time the cyclists and they'd be there if there were road accidents. They could each contain a journalist but that would be it. Everyone else would be on the bikes or at the side of the road. Of course such a race would be near invisible in comparison to this media circus and maybe that's the thing that troubles me slightly about it all. It feels like the cyclists are the decoration and the vehicles are where the real substance of this outfit is to be found. 

With the bikes and cars out of the picture, the thing to do was to then watch the rest of the race on the large plasma screen erected in the park. Some people came in their cycling costumes, their road bikes parked nearby. Theirs is a different way of cycling to mine, I now see, but I wish them all the best with it. Personally, I like to go off-road exploring canal paths and bridleways, I don't like to be a mobile advert with anyone's logos and besides, with my gangly arms and legs I look daft in lycra. There's many forms of cycling tour and I'll have to cover a few more of them when the opportunity arrises.

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.