Well, the main gain out of this walk will hopefully be the appearance of two new dots on the UK World Heritage Map, but, although this walk will be tiring, I don't ever expect it to be boring, because I'll also be exercising another of my little obsessions all the way through. For a few years now, I've been genning up on the way that culture /heritage/ history / strange customs are being used throughout the UK as methods to regenerate areas - especially ones that have used to look at industry for their employment and prosperity.
So...I've made it my priority to visit as many 'heritage' sites as I can on the way down - the ones in the town centres, of course - I don't have the legs to bend myself off the route too much. There are two reasons for this: First is that I feel the people working there /visting will be more 'open' to signing a book waved at them by a Geordie stranger, than those busy shopping, but secondly, RESEARCH. I'd hope to leave this walk with a better understanding of what it is to be English -Bede was very certain of that question 1300 years ago, but now, the answer's a bit more fragmented. I'm a believer that a country is best known by what it chooses to take with it from its yesterdays, and I wonder if a walk through England's history, and the way people here consider its history TODAY, may give me a better idea of how that word still holds up.
Those who know me will now be saying that this is all starting to sound 'very Ged' , so I'll leave those thoughts to come out naturally during the walk, and get down to brass tacks, as we say up here int' north. On to the diary...
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