Bramley, no apples

I went to pick up a coat stand. A nice 60s one, teak or somesuch. It looks ace, and super functional, which it is - and my favourite fleecy Levi's woodsman jacket is hanging on it. Luckily, given that I had driven to this exquisite part of the world, which I was not expecting, I had brought my camera. I had brought it because basically, I had to make myself take some photographs. I struggle daily with the creativity thing. How can one have a desire to be creative, have creative thoughts, be thrilled in the moment of losing myself in the reverie of click after click, being one of those time slowing, delicious activities to undertake, and still not actually be capable of setting aside enough time to do it? I'll let you know when I figure it out. The camera was on the passenger seat and a photograph had to be made. I'm doing a project, I made it up myself and am making myself do it, because my good Goddess one day I will finish something! So I followed the lane where I picked up the stand and as it narrowed at the entrance to a horsey sort of joint, I slowed and pulled in. I became aware that a horse and its lady were in fact in the farm yard, and they began striding most purposefully toward me, one of those long Stockman coats flying behind, and the twee all revealed in its glory. I felt suddenly rather nervous and began studying my phone / map most intently. She turned out to be one of those simply terrific women, a loud speaking, RP accented, incredibly direct sort. I could hear her before I wound the window down "Are you lost? Can I help?" (I really wanted to add 'I say' here). I replied that I was merely wandering and she swiftly directed me to a parking spot opposite a bridleway that would suit my needs perfectly. 

I scrambled up the steep bridleway route, camera in freezing hands, wet clumps of mud flicking into my boots from the well-trotted trail. At the top of the hill winter looked bleak. I walked along a ridge, looking out over the valley below, horses in paddocks visible between flicks of coppiced chestnuts, with Scots pines to my right and a copse of deciduous woodland dead ahead, silver birch trunks reflecting thin, grey light. I stopped, thinking there must be something I could wrap my lens around here. As I paused, to think how I might grasp anything to show for my trek, a stray ray of sunlight breaks through the steel expanse of cloud, streaking across the scene. Every drop of rain lights, diamonds in a display case, backlit stamens of old blooms clinging to stalks still somehow upright, a few crisp auburn ferns reaching skyward, faded in place, and a golden shimmer in the last wisps of something cotton-like, filled with seeds, ignored by the wind. Is it winter's bleak light, or my bleak closed mind that cannot see? I dismiss winter, the effort, the cold, lose the faith that there is always something to see. 

Each walk I take lately has been part of my commitment to recovering my capacity as an artist. The motto I have chosen, for this process of recovering creativity has been process over outcome. I have let go of the hopes and visions and capitalism of it all, and the accompanying anxieties over whether the thing I'm thinking of making is good enough. I just set the process, and the obligation and then something else awakens when I follow my own instructions. 

I have called this project, made of these processes, Finding Albion:

One day after making myself go out to find a new place as part of an 'Artists Date', I jumped in a river and found myself suddenly and profoundly alive. As I experienced that feeling I saw everything around me with new eyes. Where I had first seen only discarded litter, overgrown and impenetrable brambles, and some other bleakness that reflected my own emotional landscape - there were now fronds of weeds waving in the water like the opening scene from Solaris, boughs of trees whose leaves brushed the water flickering with the myriad shapes of summer sunlight reflected from the lapping river, the slow lazy mercury appearance of this actually rather fast-flowing section of the Wey, as I pushed to swim back against it, feeling the thrill of fear mixed with excitement that I was starting to make headway upstream and back to the bank, in what was actually a quite wild and possibly reckless solo mission.

And so began a year of searching, both for my lost artist and for Albion herself. I'm still looking.

I am truly grateful for my ability to read Ordnance Survey maps, and for knowing they exist in the first place. Not to mention the OS themselves, what a curious and marvellous British institution. As I write, the map for my current scouting job is pinned on the wall behind me, every pub and standing stone and its height above sea level clearly marked. Here is where I walked - it turned out to be the Greensand Way - which I'd like to walk more of - it is 108 miles long and goes from here to Hamstreet in Kent, and links to the Saxon Shore Way running to the sea. My kind of pilgrimage.

Walking is another facet of this Finding of Albion, which has been a journey into finding myself or some missing / frozen bit really, and has become in part about learning how to take my brain and make it work better for me. Finding Albion has required much following of bridleways, rambling along rights of way and green lanes in order to find the images that draw out the expression that my brain has to give.

My current Albion challenge - tomorrow is Bronica day. I have to take maybe eight or ten photographs (there's no counter so I don't actually know what's left) to finish the roll of 120 I stuck in it when I collected in a couple of months ago, since when it has been sitting in the camera cupboard a bit neglected. So that's eight or ten pictures of a cold, likely grey and wintry Friday in the Hermitage, a good game. 

In the meantime, please find a few more of my favourite photographs from my Bramley ridge wander enclosed. I hope too that you get to enjoy some lockdown wanderings of your own.