Walking the M62

Entering the flow

Opposite the Admiralty Guest House, Hornsea, Friday evening promenaders enjoy the lapping of the great North Sea below. The fading sun makes a colourful picture of clouds and water to rival any Westward sunset. Only some among these walkers might be aware that this peaceful scene conceals a grim truth - that the rising North Sea is a terrible force for destruction on this coast. Those looking Eastwards with the eyes of history know that one mile, two miles out beneath these glowing waves, lie ruined towns, lost harbours.

In the B&B I have been reading Outrageous Waves, in which Basil Cracknell describes in great detail the historical vulnerability to the tides of the Holderness and Humberside coastlands. It’s astonishing, like nothing I know on the sheltered West:

The Holderness coast is said to be the most rapidly eroding coastline in Europe. Nor is this a modern phenomenon: it has been going on ever since Roman times if not earlier. The sea has also had a dramatic effect upon the coastal configuration of the Humber estuary, giving here, and taking away there, and in the process quite large towns and ports have come into being and have then disappeared under the sea.

On the eve of my walk, then, I am aware of these things: the temporary nature of places in the great scheme of things (great cities like Hull as vulnerable to rising tides as lost, tiny settlements like Hornsea Burton and Ravenser Odd), the speciousness of the maps I carry (Barbara and Catherine earlier pointing out to me that when they walked Spurn Head a few weeks back, the road - clearly defined on OS 107 - had disappeared), and the great power of the flows which I am tenderly treading my way into, or in opposition to, on this route - the water flows of Humber, Hull and Ouse which will be my companions east of the M62, and then the terrifying traffic flows of the massive roadway which I shall follow home.

To charm motorways

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.

- J.G. Ballard, from ‘What I Believe’ and quoted in an interview with Iain Sinclair on the Ballardian website.

The Secret Life of the Motorway

BBC Four is excelling itself with The Secret Life of the Motorway, an excellent piece of social documentary. Martin Parr reads out what people wrote on the back of their postcards sent from Forton Services in the early 1960s (when motorways themselves were tourist attractions); Will Self ruminates on how motorways might become our age's equivalent of megalithic remains: to future peoples, the only visible signs left in the landscape of our civilisation and its concerns. No Iain Sinclar or J.G. Ballard (as yet, two programmes in from three) but a host of other fascinating contributors. What better way to prepare for my M62 adventure.

Manchester Whirlpool Galaxy Drift

Following up the previous post, I'll be meeting members of the Manchester Area Psychogeographic for a Whirlpool Galaxy Drift, on 13th October 2007, meeting at the Queen Victoria Statue in Piccadilly Gardens, at 11am.

On their messageboard they write:

The theme of the walk will be about travelling through space. On this date in 1773, Charles Messier developed the whirlpool galaxy. This drift is about time, space and disorientation and links to a political critique of the gentrification of Manchester city centre. Anyway, that's a theme ... it could change before then!

The Bored in the City Collective are here.