Building on the slowly growing series of Cageian pieces I have just completed a set 4 walks based on the Island of Alnham.  This mythical island in mid Northumberland is based around a 13^th century church and contains a peel tower, the site of an old castle and an ancient hill fort; it is also marked by the rising of the River Aln and the watershed of the rivers Aln and Coquet.

Having identified 16 locations across the island and grouped them into four sets of four-step rants I recorded the sequential walk between the locations as well as recording at each of them.  Starting at just after six in the morning of June 20^th I was walking for 12 hours, over 19 miles, and up a total climb of 3200ft.  The three local farmers had kindly agreed that I could access their lands but even so there were two sites I could only get to within 400m of as they were in the middle of crop fields.

This is the third such series of walks that I have now done – the first was walking on Fair isle (https://mpefairislereels.wordpress.com) and the second was across the whole of Northumberland.  The Northumberland walks involving a lot of driving between sites and being back on foot felt both good and important and as a consequence (and unlike the Fair Isle work) the walking will become a major focus of the subsequent performance piece.

I have text to work with alongside the sound recordings and will need to explore how to reflect the two sites I couldn’t get to – silence is my current thought.  Still, this will all need to evolve over the next few months as I work my way into the recordings.