Tour workshop in Hong Kong: August 26 - September 03

I'll be returning to Hong Kong to lead a nine-day workshop on creating tours in late August  early September. This will be a great opportunity to work, with a concentrated group of participants, on making artistic and cultural tours from start to finish. I'll be joined by Yuen She Hung and Indy Lee in giving this course and at the end of it all of the participants will have created a tour of their very own. Hong Kong is already an exciting city but I'm really looking forward to seeing how I can help people tell different stories and show less familiar sides of the city. This can only make for a richer still experience of Hong Kong. The course will be given in English but details of it below are provided in Chinese.

成為文化旅遊創建者

你有興趣成為社區導賞員嗎?
嚮往把自己熟悉的社區，用獨一無二自己創建的方式與人分享嗎？
如何成為一個出色和獨一無二的文化旅遊導賞員?

工作坊簡介：

是次工作坊參與者將學習如何策劃首創的導賞徒步之旅。導師以嶄新的角度引發參與者，如何集中精力地設計屬於他們興趣與話題的獨特徒步旅程。運用旅程沿途的選定場景、位置，啟發他們研究城市空間及在地有趣的主題，並發揮個人創意，通過自己獨特和擅長的演繹方式作導賞分享，把故事及觀眾連結到眼前的空間。

參與者透過視覺、聽覺、感觀層面，以多角度尋找他們的徒步材料，並通過分組練習，建構自己的導賞元素。發展他們的旅遊導賞，成為日常生活的一部份，而不僅僅是資料的傳遞。

參加者能夠在工作坊，獲得建構文化旅遊的多角度嶄新想法。並且誘發他們的個人興趣，繼續進行對社區及文化的研究，以便發展更多新的旅程。持續地創建屬於自己的獨特旅遊路程和演繹方式。

學習成果：
1.培養觀察和研究能力，把個人風格轉化成獨特的文化旅遊旅程
2.了解戶外空間，學習如何運用在地空間，創造性地講述故事
3.掌握接收者的觀察和理解，並如何啟發參加者找尋平常事物箇中有趣之處
4.建立參加者在戶外表演，演講的信心和能力
5.教授完整地組織文化旅遊的內容及結構

對象：有興趣運用創意建構文化旅遊之人士、

           有意成為文化旅遊帶領者、

           對社區和創意藝術有興趣人士

地點：社區文化發展中心 / 碧波押 (上海街404號)  待定

Bill Aitchison 工作坊

日期: 2017年8月26日    (星期六)          早上10:00-下午5:00
         8月28日- 9月1日  (星期一至五)   晚上8:00-10:00
         9月 3日                 (星期日)          早上10:00-下午5:00

*早鳥* 註1    優惠費用: $2,200
                     正價費用: $2,500

課程重點：
運用創意及聯想力，創建獨特的徒步之旅
學習研究身處的城市和空間，展開獨有的話題
親身遊歷社區，尋找創意素材和靈感

目標及成果：
以嶄新的視覺、聽覺、多元化的角度探索城市

創建屬於自己獨有風格的文化旅遊地圖
建立戶外表演和演講的能力

雄仔叔叔工作坊

日期：2017年8月27日(星期日)
時間：早上10:00-下午5:00
費用：$700

課程重點：文化是幽靈，社區是異域，真實的人是載體。載體要自覺，才可跟幽靈握手，在異域覓路。自覺來自情感和想像，導賞就是讓人深思現實的另一百種可能。雄仔叔叔以獨特的工作坊形式和香港實踐經驗，豐富了Bill Aitchison工作坊的外國經驗。

李俊亮工作坊

日期：2017年9月2日(星期六)
時間：早上10:00-下午5:00
費用：$700

課程重點：行行重行行，停下來，看著路邊的風景。遊走社區與街道，觀看著人來人往的場面，一齣齣未經綵排而又活生生戲劇場境，活靈活現。李俊亮以他的獨特工作坊和香港實踐經驗，豐富了Bill Aitchison工作坊的外國經驗。

全程投入參與  Bill Aitchison X 雄仔叔叔 X 李俊亮   
*早鳥* 註1           優惠費用: $2,800
*會員* 註2           優惠費用: $3,100
*永久會員* 註3    優惠費用: $2,200
                            正價費用: $3,400

註1 : 於8月10日或之前報名可享早鳥優惠
註2 : 申請成為CCCD一年會員費用$100，並可於報名其他工作坊享有優惠
註3 : 申請成為CCCD永久會員費用$1000，並可於報名其他工作坊享有優惠

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

創意藝術家導師:

Dr. Bill Aitchison
英國藝術家 【http://www.billaitchison.co.uk】，是個著名運用場地而構思和進行演出(Site Specific) 的表演者。 Bill曾經在世界各地，創造和策劃各種多元化的實驗性旅遊，使人重新想像城市，並如何敘述城市與我們之間的故事。他曾獲英國倫敦、Bath等地的旅遊局邀請，設計文化旅遊路線，及以Tour of All Tours讓人一口氣品嚐別具一格的導賞旅程。

阮志雄 Yuen Che Hung  (雄仔叔叔）
講古佬，也寫詩。70 年代社運青年，於 1994 年成立「慢慢走工作坊」，自始成為全職工匠，製作想像的真實。對象有小朋友、學校、社區中心。2012 年加入「四圍講古」，推廣講古文化。雄仔叔叔在深水埗在地的文化旅遊，以講故事模式出發。由現實到超現實，讓人進入深水埗深雋之旅。

李俊亮 Indy Lee*
劇場導演、演員、戲劇教育工作者。早年畢業於香港演藝學院戲劇學院，後獲英國Royal Central School of Speech and Drama 應用劇場碩士。過去參與不同劇團的創作及演出，亦為學校及機構策劃及推行藝術教育項目。現為香港演藝學院表演藝術教育主任，香港藝術發展局大會委員及戲劇組主席。生於香港，在深水埗長沙灣長大和學習，曾在十年內遷居到十個不同的地方。李俊亮的文化導賞充滿戲劇和表演，讓參加者共同參與。
*承蒙香港演藝學院批准參與

查詢：2891 8482  Stephanie

Amsterdam North: A Guided Tour of Anywhere

The Amsterdam Tour of All Tours is now up and running and I have had people ask me which tours are really from Amsterdam and which are from elsewhere. I replied that this information is all on this blog. I was not lying but the writing is scattered over many reviews spanning two years so to make it a little easier to find, here are the tours that inspired the show. If you have not yet been on the tour but intend to go, I would suggest taking the tour first and reading the reviews second, as there is probably more to be gained that way round. 

The Free Alternative Tour of Berlin

The Stone Seeker Tour

The Dalston Conservation Tour 

The And While London Burns Tour 

The Kunstmuseum Tour 

The Political Tours Study Tour of China

The Bath Ghost Walk  

The Jack the Ripper Tour 

Harry Slingers Amsterdam North Tour 

The Political Tours Study Tour does not exist as a formal review, though I do quote their China tour in my Beijing Tour of All Tours. They do not currently offer a tour of The Netherlands. I also mention, in passing, a foraging tour around Amsterdam North. This is based upon one in Bath, which was similarly disorganised and did not actually take place. As for the rest of the tours, they are practically all not from Amsterdam North; the Amsterdam tours that I took were mostly ones from the centre. I particularly like to take tours that are the town's speciality and where else are Red Light District tours the popular mainstream thing to do? 

In this performance I have treated Amsterdam North as a canvas (not a blank one by any means) upon which to paint a portrait of tours more broadly. This picture has been painted with sensitivity to the local conditions so that it appears to be a lot more local than it actually is. Indeed, it has been a case of choosing tours from elsewhere which met the conditions I found here. The work involved in making this show has therefore been less about researching Amsterdam North tours and more about opening myself up to the area, finding a route that contained enough of the qualities that I sensed more broadly in the area and then adapting pre-existing tours to fit. The tour is still running daily another week till July 12th. 

All Berlin's Tourist Buses Go to Checkpoint Charlie

I've just arrived in Berlin and started to assemble a Tour of All Tours of the city for this weekend's B-Tour Festival. I'll be making my tour in the city-centre and talking about the city as a whole. My starting point, Checkpoint Charlie, is so much worse than I remember it. It really is quite ideal! There is not just one Checkpoint Charlie museum but three separate, competing attractions all vying for the tourist's euros. That's to say nothing of the tours that pass by here, such as this Segway tour. This place is pure tourism whereas my endpoint, Brandenburger Tor, does at least combines tourism with something else: politics.

Something that has immediately struck me is the large number of bus tours that operate in Berlin and come this way. 

I took a short walk around my tour area and started looking out for the competition. The reason for this abundance of buses, I can only imagine, is the distribution of the tourist attractions across the city. If they were all within walking distance or, if there were enough packed together, then walking tours would be more popular. 

Some of these buses offer live commentary and some of them simply play recordings, in multiple languages, over headphones.

I saw City Sightseeing are running a bus operation here. I am familiar with them from having taken and reviewed their Bath bus tour. This has got me thinking that I will be drawing heavily on previous tours, such as that one, in order to describe the tours that take place here in Berlin. I will add a few unique to city too; I'm heading over to the Holocaust Memorial to take their audio tour as soon as the rain lets up today. Together, they should comprise a full-length hybrid tour of Berlin and the tourist imagination more widely. I have 3 days to put this tour together so it will be fast and furious stuff!

Tours Coming Up: a tour crazy June

There are some tour events coming up that I'd like to mention. 

First of all, the London Tour is proving enduringly popular so it will return again on Thursday 11th June, starting at 7 PM from outside of Richmix London E1 6LA. 

Reservations: info ( a t ) billaitchison.co.uk Cost £8

The following day, June 12th, I'll be participating in Bees in a Tin in Birmingham, giving a talk on alternative tours. This will also include a discussion and it is part of a larger day featuring a number of invited speakers who cover topics across the arts, science and technology.

Then, on 19th and 20th June I will be participating in the Performing Place 3 Symposium at the University of Chichester giving a presentation on The Tour of All Tours.

To finish off a tour rich June I will be presenting a new tour of tours in Berlin for B-Tour Festival in Berlin 26th and 27th June. The festival is devoted to artist-made tours of alternative varieties and is a quite ideal context to see the project in. If you are anywhere nearby, make a point of coming and see some of the other tours too; this is where it is happening!

July is set to be busy too with the premiere of a new tour performance in Amsterdam and in August it will be Edinburgh's turn. Hope to see you in one of these places.

  

London & Beijing tours Feb/Mar 2015

Some new dates for the calendar here. 

London

Thursday 5th February 7 PM start outside Richmix, Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA
Saturday 7th February 2 PM start outside Richmix, Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA
Price £8 
Duration 110 minutes approx. 
Bookings info (at) billaitchison.co.uk

Beijing

Saturday 7th March 2PM start inside The Bookworm, Sanlitun, Beijing
Price by donation
Duration 100 minutes approx.
Bookings info (at) billaitchison.co.uk

This will be the last Beijing tour for a while and it is being given on a donation basis so anyone who wants to see it can do so.

There are some new tours planned for 2015, details to be revealed in the new year. 

Documentation and Tours: performances and their records

I recently had an article published in the online arts journal Felt Acts. The issue is devoted to the theme of 'Approaching Documentation' and also features the writing of Harriet Thompson, Aparna Sharma, Jesc Bunyard, Rafaela Lopez, Georgia Rene-Worms, Antje Seeger, Simon Farid, Joana Quiroga, Joanna Bucknall and Bryony White.

Video still from Lijiang Tour 

Here is a sample:

There is no standard way I approach documenting my own projects and The Tour of All Tours is a case in point. The performance has had to develop as a performance in its own right first and only in the project’s second year have I begun adapting it for the camera. This I have done by doing away with the live public altogether and concentrating upon performing the work directly to the lens. 

If that floats your boat then do take a look at the downloadable journal for the full article and the articles of the other authors too. Best of all, its free!

The Tour of All Tours Bath video

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

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!

New Tour of All Tour Dates Added for London & Beijing

The Tour of All Tours a guided tour of guided tours. You've read the writing and the reviews of tours here on the blog, these tours of tours are where it all comes together and gets put into action. The tour is as much an art performance as it is a guided tour, if you are in London or Beijing come and see for yourself.

Beijing Saturday October 11th 2PM 
Starting Point: Bookworm, Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Cost 100 RMB

London Tuesday October 28th 7PM 
Starting Point: outside Richmix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA
Cost £8

Bookings: info ( a t ) billaitchison.co.uk

The Mad Max Tour: from Stonehenge to Harry Potter

Mad Max Tours, a bus tour running out of Bath, does involve motorised transport but that's about all it has in common with the post-apocalyptic movie starring Mel Gibson back in the day when he seemed OK, i.e. before he went off and did Braveheart, The Passion of The Christ and turned anti-Semitic. It's so much easier to appear cool when you burst onto the scene and don't have a history behind you.

This tour shares its name with the movie because the woman who originally gave it and who now runs the company is called Maddy, or Mad for short, and her dog, who used to accompany her, was called Max. There is an internal tourist body clock which tends to work a good two hours behind the rest of us and by that reckoning the 8.20 AM start was very early. Still, we knew we had a long day ahead of us that would take us to Stonehenge, Avebury and two picturesque Cotswold villages we had never heard of but which, apparently, were wonderful. What this early start did mean was that I missed breakfast because the place I was staying at was adjusted for these leisurely hours and only started serving breakfast at 8AM. With a stomach looking in vain for food all morning I hopped in the van along with about eight others.

Our  mild-mannered guide and driver introduced himself with some self-deprecating wit and gave a brief outline of the day. He asked where we were from to which the reply was UK, Canada, USA and Hong Kong. There would be a lot of words on this tour so the fact that everyone spoke good English made his work a lot easier. With the obligatory health and safety notice out of the way, we were off. 

While we were driving he spoke through a small microphone. He made a lot of observations on the various things we were passing such as the crops growing in the fields, about which he seemed very knowledgable, at least to a city boy like me. The type of wheat and how it is cut might then be followed by a story about why a certain place got the its name, or, in this instance about the hill in the distance which became briefly famous for a UFO sighting. When we were rounding upon Stonehenge we listened to an audio track about the place narrated by Maddy, who used to give this tour and who didn't sound mad in the slightest. At first it jarred as I would have preferred to have heard about Stonehenge live but it was a pretty good introduction that covered both the known and the unknown mixing history with speculations and stories, so this switching between live and recorded was OK in the end.  

At Stonehenge there was a good deal more audio commentary as we walked around by ourselves listening to the audio guides. This commentary and the new visitor centre more generally, were very professional and no doubt reflected contemporary expert opinions but they were also slightly dull. 

I was not surprised to see that the map I was given didn't show anything like the full extent of the tourists: it acknowledges the visitor centre and the road that ferries you back and forth but after that it glosses over the viewing paths and crowds that line them preferring instead to transport you back to pre-history.  

Running visitors back and forth to the stones were these minibuses that sported the logo 'Step into England's story.' Coming in the run up to the vote for Scottish independence, I could not but notice this wording. I doubt this logo would have been chosen even ten years ago but now this kind of stuff is commonplace. I found that this stamping the flag upon the prehistory of a place tricky when I came across it in China, and I found it just as tricky here: it's the stuff of nationalists. It's not that I am not interested in the past and how we came to today, I simply feel that Stonehenge's builders were not English in the way we think we are and this effort to retrospectively make them so is conspicuous. I much prefer how it used to be: step into prehistory and learn about the stone age or bronze age or whatever. Please, leave England out of the story.

And on the theme of nationalism, our guide told us that a few weeks ago, coincident with the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One, the fields around the visitor centre were awash with poppies, these being the flowers that are used to commemorate the soldiers who died in battle. I spotted just three on my visit which led me to suspect that the burst of flowers a few weeks ago was most probably not the result of nature alone. Our guide would not express a sceptical opinion but neither would he refute mine and when we left Stonehenge, we drove past Larkhill military base, neighbouring the stones, and I had to conclude that The Royal Artillery, whose home this was, were the most likely source of this patriotic blossoming. I find it a pity that scepticism has little place in most tours and while a full on 'sceptics tour' would be a curious creature (and not necessarily a bad one) I do feel that our natural scepticism should be allowed equal space on a tour as elsewhere. The basic situation of most tours tends against this, however, as there is a guide who knows a place and a public who doesn't. Deliberately awakening the critical instinct is only done with a little effort and can, I suppose, look heavy handed if laboured. In fairness though, we were encouraged to take some of the other stories on this tour with a pinch of salt, such as the UFOs and crop circles, of which we'll come to in a moment. 

With Stonehenge ticked off we were on the road again and passed but did not stop at a place I would have been quite curious to have seen. To the left is the way down to The Barge Inn which boasts at being the 'world headquarters' of crop circles. Wiltshire is, we were told, the most active part of the world for these and where better to have your HQ than a pub? I remember reading a somewhat daft book on crop circles in relation to the Mayan calendar and end of the world and what struck me most was the degree of work that went into these 'unexplained' patterns in the fields. Reading between the lines there is a bit of a wacko culture around these circles which, despite the proven hoaxes, continues to read into them all manner of messages from UFOs and suchlike. The Barge Inn is definitely a place to return to at a later date on a more esoteric tour of the region's subcultures. Maybe it will be as much of an anti-climax as Stonehenge, maybe it will be Mecca, for now it is full of potential.

Avebury was completely different story to Stonehenge. The circle was far larger, the surrounding ditch deeper, there was no fencing off and no visitor centre and the general atmosphere was calmer by far. I also remember people randomly smiling at me around the stones and in the street in a way that did not happen anywhere else on this tour. Although our guide would not go too far into what the stones meant he did give us some history of how they came to be how they are. The Christian Church, he told us, over a number of centuries damaged and buried many of the stones in an attempt to suppress the pagan faith. They clearly did not succeed! He told us that some of the stones were recovered from the ground and returned to their original positions, which seemed natural to do given this was not only an archeology dig but also a living place of worship.  

It was a lot of fun to have a go at dowsing. When I tried it, the rods converged as I approached the stones and then at the last moment swung back parallel when I was right up close to the stone. When some of the other people tried the same thing with the same metal rods they didn't move at all. I couldn't say why that was but it definitely happened and I would quite like to try this more.

The bookshop in Averbury was particularly well stocked in new age and esoteric books about the stones, earth mysteries and related topics. Unlike Stonehenge, which was rather dry and commercial, Avebury looked as if the people who really cared the most about the stones played a far greater role in setting the tone of the place. On the shelves of the bookstore I noticed this book by Peter Knight which I was happy to see because I have been in touch with him about his tours. I'm all set to return to Avebury in a week or two and be shown round by him on his alternative tour that will include drumming, dowsing and more. That couldn't be further away from the Stonehenge visit and, to be honest, whether or not I believe what I am told, the very fact that it comes from someone who genuinely cares about the rituals and meanings of the stones in a complete and not narrowly academic way, should, at very least, make for a great tour.

Next stop was Lacock where we ate our lunches separately. I felt it was a pity that the group was an unsociable one but that is something that it is probably impossible to fully predict or manage. Following lunch we had an informative walking tour around the village. 

This brought us to one of the principal reasons that the village is so firmly on the tourist map. This pleasant but unremarkable house featured in several of the Harry Potter films as, we were told, Harry's parents' home. With an important featured location, and a number of further incidental locations used in the films, Lacock is now actively marketed as a Potter destination. I met an American couple not long ago who took a Harry Potter coach tour around London and they complained that the sites they were taken to didn't look the same as in the film clips they watched while driving between locations. The problem was the film uses a lot of special effects, so many that in some places you had to really look hard to recognise it as the setting of the clip you had just watched. And to make matters worse, some locations were blocked off by Palestinian protesters... Not so here in Lacock. Film tourism seems to be very big and villages that do not appear in films, like Little Bredy where I am also currently working on a tour, are deserted. Some time I will have to write about my appearance in one of the Harry Potter movies, but that will have to wait for another moment. 

Our final destination was Castle Combe, seen here in the movie War Horse. The church had this display up in a corner recording some scenes shot in the village once declared, "the prettiest village in England." That is a difficult title to live up to and it seems the place today has opted to endure the occasional minibus of proletarians like us rolling in and taking snaps and concentrate instead on high-end tourism with a hotel where prices start at £210 a night, then add in golf, dining and other profitable distractions. Strangely, there was an informal book sale in the church to raise money for the place and there was a conspicuously good selection of books on Marxist theory and philosophy. They were clearly all left by one person and they made odd bedfellows with a Hollywood movie set and luxury country resort.

It was funny to notice that we were not the only tour group in Castle Combe. As well as Chinese tours visiting Bath and Stonehenge, as I wrote about recently, there must also be a Chinese operator who includes Castle Combe on one of their itineraries. Their tour buses really do get everywhere these days. Well, everywhere except Little Bredy.

The final stretch of the road back into Bath was graced with music and a rainbow, a fortuitous and beautiful ending to the day. I was left with the feeling that because Bath city centre is so famously attractive, it can create an attention vortex that leads its surroundings relatively neglected. This tour showed me that Bath can be regarded not only as a day-trip or weekend destination, but can also a base from which to go out and see the surrounding attractions too. I am not sorry to have seen Stonehenge and to have had a typically underwhelming experience: I had to see it once for myself in order to have an opinion. Avebury, however, is rather special and is a place I'll return to. As for the filmset villages, they are pretty but also victims of their own success in showing themselves off. It is quite fitting, in a way, that Lacock is inundated with tourists taking pictures of it as it is the birthplace of photography: Fox Talbot's first ever photograph was, we were reliably informed, of a window in Lacock Abbey.

Idiot Tours: a visiting anarchist from Barcelona unveils Bath in style

Much as I have enjoyed sampling the tours of Bath, I have noticed an increasingly predictable pattern to them: they are mostly industry standard. That is clearly no bad thing for a city that depends upon tourism for much of its livelihood. What I have seen little of, however, and have started to miss, is tours that are amateurish, political or plain eccentric. You can imagine my excitement then when, one afternoon having lunch near the station, I saw a man pass in front of the window where I was sat with a home-made sign attached to his hat that read IDIOT TOURS. I finished my meal in seconds, paid at the counter and dashed off in search of an idiot tour.  

Like an alternative tourism bloodhound, I was on the scent and found him in no time. He had a public of two keeping a sceptical distance from him, and when I arrived they left. Strangely, he spoke into the empty space some two metres to my left and not directly to me. This and his homemade outfit made me wonder if he might not be crazy. He spoke very deliberately, however, and was assured in what he did so I hung in there. He was basically parodying a tour guide and giving a few generic historical names and numbers that might, but probably weren't, be true. He then moved on to talking about Bath today but insisted on calling it Newcastle. He said Newcastle has a Costa, a Superdrug, a H&M, a Sainsburys and so on, which indeed it most probably does. After a few minutes he acknowledged my presence and we started talking. His basic angle was that tourism and consumerism make everywhere more or less the same. At this point, a lady arrived looking for a tour and when we were still there after three minutes talking about placelessness, she asked whether we were going to walk anywhere. The answer that came was not positive, as he was waiting for somebody, and with that she went on her way in search of a tour that would take her somewhere. It was funny that it was not the content of the idiot tour that she found wanting, merely its lack of momentum. That, incidentally, reminds me of the Stuttgart walking tour I took which some older ladies followed, not listening to the guide, but using it as a social stroll through the better parts of the city in which none of them had to worry about which direction to take.

With continued talking and he told me he was not from Bath at all but was from Barcelona. He said he arrived yesterday, was visiting the city for a few days and giving some idiot tours while he was about it. He continued in an anti-capitalist direction decrying the gentrification of Barcelona that came with The Olympics saying how much better the city was before. 

To prove his point he showed me his Spanish identity papers which feature this decidedly un-serious ID photo. He said it would not be permitted today. He told me he has a BLOG where he has written about this and while I did not find much on the city of Barcelona, it did give me a clearer picture of who he is. 

"Hello, my name is Clive Booth. I live in Barcelona, where, for the last 30+ years, I have freely chosen to be an artist/performer/free thinker, committed to us human animals, in the public places in the city centre. I work so as to finance my free art. I share my creations, my imagination, my ideas, my sadnesses even, with my fellow men/women. I do not have time for or interest in conventional art and culture."

There are indeed some videos showing his street performance on Youtube.

The tour ended when he handed me a small scrap of card which had written on it SOCIAL MONEY. He told me, with a smile, to use it wisely. On his blog I see he writes about it, "Our freedom is still possible - with our organisation and imagination! Make your own social money."  Looking back on the tour now, I can barely call it a tour as we mostly remained in one location and he was using the tour guide convention in order to gather an audience and do his own thing. Still, if he calls it a tour, an idiot tour no less, then I'm happy to include it here. I am on the lookout for a few more tours here in Bath which, like this one, have a social and political dimension. They seem few in number and I find it ironic that when I finally find one it is given by a visitor to the city who been here but 24 hours. That said, I'm on the trail of another, a certain Saxon Wanderer, and I hope to give further attention to more of these marginal and itinerant tours that can be found in this fine city.