Walking on pebbles and rocks

One of the strong auditory experiences offered by our collaborating sound walkers related to the sounds of walking this shoreline. Returning to the same location in similar weather conditions, I recreated the original walk, without the conversations that were originally there, but with, as a substitute, the voices of a local and their friends, a friendly dog and oystercatchers, terns and other birds. The local told us that this was one of few areas of ‘natural beach’ left on the island and he regretted that the council had plans to cover it with an asphalt path, which would make it more accessible to prams and wheelchairs but lose the sense of the space as fjære, a word that seems to encompass the time of low tide, the area of shoreline that is above water at low tide and the land close the to the sea. When we left the beach, a sign that we had missed on the way down, directed us to remain on the proper path. (Listening back, although I tried to walk with a unaffected gait, the recording sounds like Foley).