The Remembrance path walk
Some thoughts and feelings

We walked over 100 circuits of the remembrance path walk, walking twice daily each time setting off at the same time. We walked sometimes on our own sometimes together and sometimes with the many friends and guests who decided to join us on the remembrance path walk.

The walk, following roughly the circuit of Shrewsbury’s town walls, proved nurturing, revealing and healing. Walking with an emphasis on remembering meant for both of us that memories, thoughts, pain and loss were revealed like fossils laying with the slowly smoothed town walls. The physical environment of the ever flowing river Severn, the smoothed sandstone walls and the age within the buildings and history that surrounded us all acted as some kind of soothing balm as these layers were revealed

The walk included a simple act of laying down 5 stones, choosing a place for each stone to signify a special thought, a memory or simply the right place;

a stone in this little cleft between bricks,

a stone in this bed of green,

a stone betwixt bark and tree,

This simple task repeated daily meant that the walk became populated with our own and others stones, our own and others capsules of memory.

“This is where, i think of Rachel’s, coat , and here is where Mary told us about the damselflies, and here is where I placed a stone for no reason at all other then i wanted the stone to be nestled and protected, and here a cue of stones leading to a door one left each time we passed ,after all there’s always the desire to simply come in from the cold”

Each walk setting off at the same time, developed its own story, the moment we reached Ellen’s Tower we would hear the long list of welsh stations the train at the station was about to embark upon. We would pass the small bird bath that Wren always dropped a stone in. Each day there would be a new shimmering network of snail trails along the wall by the allotments, we were not the only town wall walkers. One day the tranquil predictable scene of the bowling green was a surprise with at least forty bowlers surrounding the green and all bowling one ball into the middle to clack and collide at the same time.

The walking circle once complete would finish with some contemplative time, time to write, draw, scribble or simply watch the river flow past on its way. This was important time, a demarcation, a decompression chamber, sometimes once the physical motion of walking stopped pain was felt a little rawer and time was needed to accept this. Other times it was a moment to immerse, or a moment to be still and re grow roots a little different than before.