The original program of events, scheduled for May and June 2020, was inevitably affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s only recently that we’ve been able to reschedule events.
The pilot problem is intended as a model anyone can adopt and adapt.
One consequence of Covid is that more than 2 million people were flung into experiences of disability, organ damage, and post-exertional malaise, in a mass disabling event.
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It is now official policy to allow the covid virus to freely circulate. Mask-wearing has become frowned on and rare. Head-in-the-sandism makes it inevitable that the numbers of people with Long Covid will rise.
While there have been cultural initiatives to memorialise the ongoing pandemic–including Scotland’s Covid Memorial, which I’m designing, in collaboration with Hannah Laycock and Alistair Letch–there has been almost no response to the catastrophe of Long COVID.
With diseases such as ME and Long Covid, where no cure is available. Considerable prejudice and ignorance persists; therefore patient-led initiatives will play a key role in making progress.
As well as documenting access events, the blog has expanded to share a wide-range of resources, including creative forms and practices, visual artworks and essays that respond to chronic illness, and poetic manifestos, which consider constrained walking, not-walking, recuperative walking, and the patient-led philosophy of radical rest.
In the interregnum my own health has been impacted. I contracted Long Covid in the week before lockdown. This reduced me to a 150m wide world. Where I began this project helping others reach hillsides and mountaintops, now I will be unable to attend some events.
As the need for Day of Access events is now far greater my primary focus remains imaginative access to wild nature. This is voiced in the Day of Access manifesto.
Alec will read from the day of access manifesto at some events. This program of events is closed, but we encourage anyone who is interested in holding their own Day of Access event to get in touch, in particular communities and landowners who can drive those with limited walking into wild places. Blog posts will document the events, including photographs by Sam MacDiarmid.
As these events show, our range of participants has also expanded. We have welcomed young people who experience mental health issues (Friends of the Award Edinburgh & Lothians), and people with chronic arthritis (Versus Arthritis, Elgin). And we have broadened the range of partners we work with. Again, the idea is to plant the seed of access to wild nature in as many communities and host venues as possible.
Despite the pretence of a return to normality, many people remain in some form of isolation and there needs to be a switch in cultural provision to recognise their needs. This is discussed in blogs on counterpane, exploring and helping heal the experience of being house- or bed-bound.
The program of events in 2023 will be announced shortly. they include a festival of access as part of Braemar Mountain Festival, supported by the Fife Arms, and a festival of access in late April and early May at venues in Argyll, Fife, and Galloway.
For now, the original post describing the inaugural Day of Access event, at Meall Tiarneachan, remains unaltered, as a historical record.
Alec Finlay, 21.XI.22
As an artist with constrained walking Finlay has developed creative place-aware ways to further access over the past decade, including photography, drawings, manifestos, micro-navigation, and sharing forms, such as ‘word-maps’, ‘word-mountains’, ‘conspectus’ place-name visual poems, and ‘counterpane blanket landscapes’, some of which feature in the current Travelling Gallery exhibition, also titled Day of Access. The project offers ways to represent and relate to landscapes, enrich views, and ensure disabled people feel that they belong in wild places.
Day of Access events were conceived for anyone who has difficulty accessing hills, including the disabled, people with chronic illness, pain, or constrained walking. Our main focus is on chronic conditions – for example, M.E., M.S., fibro-myalgia, lupus, or the effects of old age. We try to offer events that are accessible to any condition, within the limits that the nature of the terrain imposes.
Each local event is unique – mountain, hill, moor, saltmarsh, woodland – and we intend that in the future organisations and individuals develop their own version of Day of Access. Anyone can plan an event for June 2020. Our focus is inclusion, working with partners to share creative place-aware strategies and ensure this becomes an annual UK-wide event.
The project promotes the positive use of vehicular tracks to encourage access, but it doesn’t promote the creation of new tracks. We have had positive discussions with John Muir Trust, Paths for All, RSPB Scotland, Mountaineering Scotland, Balmoral Estate, NTS Mar Lodge Estate, and Falkland Centre for Stewardship, who are supportive.
Contact us to help or be added to our mailing list for further information: info@alecfinlay.com
Below are images from the pilot event ascending Meall Tairneachan, and comments from participants and partners.
What people said about Day of Access
‘For me the Day of Accesswas about the practicalities of making the event fun - as well as comfortable and safe - and the weather. We were able to make Alec’s idea a reality thanks to the generosity of our drivers, Graeme, Gareth and Jez in giving their time and vehicles.
There was lots of interesting discussion about current land management and - through interpreting place names – a sense of how it might have been used in the past. Weather-wise, the Day of Access was cold, but the cloud lifted and views opened up. Thinking about the weather made me reflect on a comment that was mentioned on the day – ‘Why a disabled person would want to go into the hills?’ Why wouldn’t they? After the birth of my son, I needed to use a wheelchair because I couldn’t walk far. It was a challenging time, but what I missed most was going out in the rain. No one wanted to take me out in the wet and actually, as long as I have the right waterproofs on, I quite like going out in the rain. Happily, I recovered and I can get out into the hills again - I feel incredibly fortunate that it’s part of my job.
Our Day of Accesswas an opportunity for people who wouldn’t often get up into the hills to have that chance. It would be great to have access every year, when existing tracks are used to bring people out for a new experience. I hope the experiences from this pilot event will inspire future events. We will never be able to count on the weather, but we can count on the power of people working together in partnership to bring together memorable days.’
– Liz Auty, John Muir Trust, Heart of Scotland Partnership
‘In the first ten years of M.E. I wasted a lot of time waiting to get better. That’s the natural impulse isn’t it? Curl up, head down, let the storm pass. But what if it is like one of those two-hundred-year storms on Jupiter? In the second half of my M.E. career – and it is a career, I decided to be ill in other places. I’ve passed out in Amsterdam, been removed from planes in Edinburgh (panic attacks) and, more recently, cycled twenty-two miles on my electric bike to Rosslyn. That Rosslyn escapade for a pot of f*@%!*g tea took on the significance of some early Amazonian expedition. It was myKilimanjaro!
Last week, pumped full of codeine and carbs, I joined other professional exhaustives near Schiehallion – and was taken higher than I would possibly be able to reach unaided. Much of the journey there and back was with noise cancelling headphones with my eyes shut. On arrival, I got my DSLR out and photographed 200 images in a well-practiced burst of energy efficacy.
But yes, the right to be ill somewhere else. It’s nothing new. It’s part of the right to roam in my view. Usually, the ill have to be creative and make those lost horizons appear in some alchemical event at home. But you know what? Every now and then I’m awed by a simple lift up a simple hill by someone who cares.
– Chris Dooks, participant, ‘The right to be ill somewhere else’
‘Great day last Saturday – a real opportunity for reflection. Very good to meet you and I really enjoyed our discussions.’
– Jez Robinson, land-owner and supporter of Day of Access pilot 2019
‘The tag line "what would a disabled person do up there" really struck me. I have enjoyed the outdoors for around 7 years now, was about to start working as an outdoor instructor but I ruptured my ACL which meant I couldn't experience the outdoors like I used to. By no means am I comparing my recoverable injury to that of someone living with a disability, but I now have an appreciation of the barrier that can present someone and how hard it can be to answer that question.
But I’ve come to learn it's not about "doing" anything, it's a multi-sensory experience with so many different depths. It's about harvesting the multi-sensory experience for those with a barrier to access that makes it such a valuable experience. And it's wonderful that somebody is trying to bring that to those who until now haven't been able to get that kind of experience.’– Alison Craig
– Sam McDiarmid, photographer
‘Thank you so much for enabling Annie and I to participate in Day of Access.This was a tremendous experience for me, reinforced by the range of conversations particularly about the issues of: future and current land use; conservation and the environmental threats; addressing the consequences of historic degraded landscapes; and consideration of the access issues for everyone as well as the needs of disabled people.
I was impressed by the landscape vistas themselves particularly the back of a brooding Schiehallion and the panoramic sweeping views of Lochs Rannoch and Tummel and their environs. Truly magical! As a local resident I really appreciated getting access, as a disabled person with a lot of mobility problems, to a guided travel experience about the nature and naming of the surroundings. It’s worth saying that I would not fully have comprehended or understood what was important without the inputs from Graeme, Gareth, Liz and Jez on the day. The discussions with them and you gave the day even more meaning and richness.
– Bob Benson
‘Our day in the hills, guided by Alec Finlay, and in co-operation with the Heart of Scotland Partners, was magical. I felt as if we travelled to the middle of the world, on and on, up and down to a remote and wild part of Scotland – the heart of Scotland indeed.
To access this world in any other way but in the back of a 4 x 4 was beyond my reach. The chat; the information about what had been; the wonderful Gaelic names leading us to speculate and then to hear from the team what might happen next, all educative and vitally important in the times of global warming,
John Muir would have been happy with our pace – OK we were being driven, but it was at a slow and “sauntering” with many stops to get out, breath the fresh air and orientate ourselves in the land; the views; the scenery. Place-names put us in the place. We also followed the code of leaving nothing but footprints (tire tracks) and taking nothing but photographs. Those photographs are beautifully evocative of the day.
I wish Alec well in his way forward and as an artist with knowledge of working and living with disability I offer my help and support. Thank you for this opportunity.
– Anne Benson
‘You will see from many comments on rewilding that there seems to be a common theme of most large privately-owned estates being "the bad guys". As I'm sure you're quite aware, this isn't the case, and it's something I'm working to address. Your project sounds great, and I hope it becomes popular – and I believe there is a possibility that it's something we could be involved with.’
– Head Stalker, Highland Estate
‘I’ve been following your work on access to wild places for people with disability and am interested to talk with you about it – about how I might be able to get involved or help in any way. My youngest daughter has Williams Syndrome – a condition with a wide range of symptoms, both cognitive and physical. As a family we find it a constant challenge to have days out in the wild, firstly due to her ability itself but also the lack of true free access. Too often are we met with high gated fences and the like which make travel by mobility pushchair impossible. I don’t want to see wheelchair access to the wild places, as they would scarcely be wild as a result – but it would be truly wonderful if estates maintained access per the outdoor access code.
Likewise, any movement which encourages landowners to allow travel to the wild and high places by 4x4 on occasion is something I’d not only welcome but be delighted to support in any way I can. Growing up on Deeside meant that I was able to take to the hills whenever I liked, to go anywhere and at any time – its only by seeing the hills through the eyes of my daughter that I can now appreciate that for some folk it’s a case of so near yet so far. Thank you for bringing this subject to the attention of a wider audience.
Please bear me in mind for an event – I’d happily chauffeur or help out any other way.’
– Volunteer
credits
photography: Mhairi Law, Sam McDiarmid, Alec Finlay, Hannah Laycock, and Dr Chris Dooks; place-aware map: Alec Finlay, with assistance from Peter McNiven.
Contact us to help or be added to our mailing list for further information: alecfinlay@yahoo.com and info@alecfinlay.com
These posts are published as part of an artist in residence, funded by Paths for All.
