Bedrock Walk
In mid-July 2013, a small group of people, including SpeyGrian trustee Jean Langhorne and other SpeyGrian supporters, walked together over several days from Dalwhinnie to Glen Nevis. The journey had many aspects, bringing together learning, creativity, conversation, collaborative venture and sharing of skills and points of view.
Called 'The Bedrock Walk: a journey through geological time', the journey was made by a diverse group that included geologists, geographers, educators, writers, musicians and artists who all shared, learned, collected and created along the way.
As part of the journey, the walkers generated new stories and explored some of the following questions (and more):
What stories, history, music, sound are ‘held’ or inspired by the rocks and stones and land?
How was the landscape made and how does the geology determine what flourishes?
Why it became an important route.
The part played by human culture in the past and currently.
What does time mean in such a context, and what future might we imagine for the places we move through?
How does the physicality and rhythm of walking for several days help us to access any of this?
The journey was funded by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society as part of their Stories in the Land project, which was inspired by the Speygrian drove road journey and is coordinated by Joyce Gilbert as part of her role as education officer at RSGS.
"We were very lucky to have Simon Cuthbert as our “resident” geologist on this journey. He brought the rocks and the landscape to life with enthusiasm and told geological stories in four dimensions to boggle our minds with the concepts of deep time and continental drift. It was challenging to think outwith the human timescale and to think of Scotland’s landscape as dynamic and not fixed.
New realisations and valuable insights gained during this week will inspire new ways of thinking for all of us."
Jean Langhorne, Bedrock walker
Find out more about the walk and shared experiences on the Bedrock walk blog.
