{"id":1169,"date":"2010-06-14T10:02:35","date_gmt":"2010-06-14T10:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2010-06-14T10:04:27","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T10:04:27","slug":"3114-miles-the-a4074-walk-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=1169","title":{"rendered":"31.14 miles: the A4074 walk part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have written several<\/a> times here <\/a>about a project<\/a> I’ve been developing that I’ve referred to as The A4074 project. The A4074<\/a> is a road that lies between Reading (where I live) and Oxford (where I work) and I drive it very often – sometimes 3 or 4 times a week. To make a conservative estimate, let us imagine that I drive to Oxford and back or – as was the case when I lived in Oxford but visited Mark regularly in Reading – from Oxford to Reading – 2 times per week. That would mean travelling the full distance of the road 4 times per week. There are 52 weeks in the year, and 52 x 4 is 208. Considering that I have been driving this road this regularly for about 5 years, we can suppose that I have driven it, in total, about 1,040 times; let us round that down to 1,000 because there were some weeks when I didn’t drive along the road at all, and many times when I took the train instead.<\/p>\n

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The A4074 at Crowmarsh, near Sheepcote farm.<\/p>\n

Yet in spite of having driven along this road so many, many times<\/em>, I still know relatively little about the landscape that surrounds it. I have been curious over the past few years about where the oft-glimpsed paths that truncate at the edges of the A-road lead to, about what lies in the outlying fields beyond the hedgerows, and about the kinds of places that may be found around the A4074 if I travelled along it at a different pace.<\/p>\n

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An underpass that runs beneath the A4074 between Warborough and Overy.<\/p>\n

The idea for the project is a mix of curious influences including the elation that followed the 20-mile walk Mark and I did to Newbury<\/a>, and a happy accident on googlemaps where I inadvertently entered ‘walking’ as my travel method – which resulted in full instructions on how to walk from Reading to my parents’ house in Croydon (45.2 miles in case you were wondering.) These experiences – plus my growing physical confidence with the amazing results of the anti-TNF drug – started to feed into the realisation that I could put one foot after the other and trust my body to get me pretty much anywhere.<\/p>\n

I decided to begin investigating my regular commute with the eyes of a tourist or an explorer. I am interested in what happens to the soundscape of the journey when one travels it outside<\/em> of a car, and in the commute as a sort of internalised extension of domestic space and a context habitually ingrained into the fabric of daily life.<\/p>\n

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The gas-station at Benson where I have so often filled my car.<\/p>\n

I decided to make a radio show about this process, and I am working out the best way to do this both near roaring roads, and<\/em> in impossibly quiet fields, in places where all you can hear is the occasional stamping of a horse or snapping of a twig.<\/p>\n

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The approach to Pithouse farm, Mapledurham, through barley that rustles when the wind blows through it.<\/p>\n

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Me road-testing sound-recording devices a few weeks ago along the Icknield Way near South Stoke, trying understand their suitability for my purposes.<\/p>\n

I have made a few small forrays into the landscape, but this weekend I decided to just walk the whole way, to find the footpaths closest to the road, and to get a feel – with my feet – for the places that so far I have mostly only known from my car window and which I have mostly only seen while travelling at 60MPH – which is the speed limit for most of the A4074.<\/p>\n

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Tea break in Woodcote, and the edge of Hammond’s Wood.<\/p>\n

One thing I can confirm is that the land looks very different on foot. And the effort of walking the 31.14 mile route that I took, is much greater than the effort expended in what is normally a 1 hour drive.<\/p>\n

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The road in Autumn, near Dorchester.<\/p>\n

I tracked my route on WalkJogRun in 2 separate maps; Day 1 of A4074 walk<\/a> and Day 2 of A4074 walk<\/a>. Please to forgive the unimaginative titling; this is a work in progress…<\/p>\n

…I recorded hours and hours of audio on my trusty EDIROL R-09, and will condense this into the first of many features exploring walking, place, changing soundscapes, the wildlife of Oxfordshire and the process of becoming a tourist in your own town – or indeed on your own commute.<\/p>\n

I didn’t manage to photograph the muntjac deer that I startled in Lackmore Wood, near Exlade Street, or the hare that scampered across my path near Sheepcote farm. But I did manage to capture:<\/p>\n

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Sheep grazing at Ipsden.<\/p>\n

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Great red swathes of poppies in bloom over at South Stoke.<\/p>\n

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The different greens of barley (more yellow) and wheat (more blue) either side of the path from Warborough to Overy.<\/p>\n

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This exuberant inscription on a bridge crossing the A4074 near Dorchester. (Have you noticed that wherever you go in the UK, you can count on seeing a graffitied cock?)<\/p>\n

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Some appalling path maintenance near Nuneham Courtenay (can you see where the path is in all those nettles? Me neither – and I have the stings to prove it.)<\/p>\n

There was more… a lot more. But much of that is held on the EDIROL, in sounds and words I noted along the way.<\/p>\n

The road certainly looks different on foot and there are the makings of some rich radio along it.<\/p>\n

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Me at Reading Station at the start of the walk.<\/p>\n

What happens next is some editing, some production-scheduling, some reading, some writing, some emailing, some interviewing, some rucksack contents review and happily – more walking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have written several times here about a project I’ve been developing that I’ve referred to as The A4074 project. The A4074 is a road that lies between Reading (where I live) and Oxford (where I work) and I drive it very often – sometimes 3 or 4 times a week. To make a conservative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[648,639,637,706,636,688],"tags":[1850,2474,17,2473,2471,2468,2467,2469,2015,2472,1273,2470,3148],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-projects","category-listening","category-making","category-tea","category-valuing-reality","category-walking","tag-a4074","tag-adventure","tag-domestic-soundscape","tag-explore","tag-exploring-on-foot","tag-familiar-contexts","tag-final-project","tag-habits-and-routines","tag-investigate","tag-making-the-familiar-strange","tag-radio","tag-tourist-in-your-own-town","tag-walking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pmise-iR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}