Trail of the Blue Porcupine – towards the Watery (H)edges of Gravesend

Bring your trusty smartphone to communicate with Blue Porcupine HQ, as you decipher the clues and follow the trail of Porcupines on a mystery tour of Gravesend. Start point: LV21. Trail length: about 2 miles, duration: dependent on puzzle-solving ability. Unleashed at 11am, June 5th. 

See more here

As the mystery trail ends InspiralLondon takes over and will lead walkers who wish to, further out into the watery edges of Gravesend – to Higham Marshes and in a loop to St. Marys, Higham. Together we explore this environment in all its diverse unkempt beauty, traversing the lattice work of waterways and ditches, while listening into the other inhabitants of the Marshes.

Please bring a picnic and/or refreshments and some comfortable walking boots or equivalent.

Depending on Covid rules the walk will be managed in two parts by experienced walk guides. Both parts of this walking event start from the Riverside by LV21 but visit here for up to date information.

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About the project
“Walking, a practice of on the ground mapping, allows us to imagine together other cities, different times, and worlds, as we confront the reality of our ever-changing metropoles.” (Charlie Fox, 2017)

InspiralLondon is an ambitious artist-led metropolitan trail, a collective on the ground mapping, creating a new walk trail winding in and out of London. This anti-clockwise spiral walk begins at Kings Cross, unwinding from its centre point six times, to finally end at Gravesend, only to begin again. This unique Metropolitan trail crosses the River Thames at ten locations, using bridges, foot tunnels, a cable car and ferries.
The Inspiral Trail is coordinated by InspiralLondon CIC, and was an original idea conceived by counterproductions in 2013 as a partner project of Metropolitan Trails International and Metropolitan Trails Academy.

InspiralLondon facilitates and curates artworks, research and interventions that interrogate the city and its hinterlands, with particular focus on: placemaking, experience culture and emotional capitalism, urban ecology and sustainable futures, community and well-being. Initial on the ground mapping (2015-19) examined ways of thinking of Urban Space as an other environment: the potential shape and direction of walking route/s; how we experience the city; how we encourage artistic – experimental, social & ecological – approaches to, and other ways of being in and intervening in the city. The trail is an invitation for all to explore, rediscover and reconnect with their city; to begin to rethink the urban, the metropolitan and its relation to other/ness/places. Over 5 years – crossing drained marsh, the courses of dried up streams, boggy overgrown riverside, canals, drainage trenches, even under piped rivers, streams and along the artificial canalised New River, returning without fail to press our feet into the muddy foreshore of the Tidal Thames and its major tributaries, we remain awed and inspired by London’s watery geometry.
Now InspiralLondon embarks upon another voyage of discovery, by raft, kayak, in waders and boots or by boat to investigate – Hydrodetours on the fluid ground – something of the Thames Valley Basin’s rich undervalued watery commons, detouring and exploring along and among its watery terrain. In order to understand its complexity and its variety but also to create a new sense of value and wonder within its beautiful biodiversity.
In these times of rapid extinction, climate upheaval and ecological crisis Hydracity takes time to celebrate and share together the extraordinary and unexpected, hidden within the Metropole’s watery veins and shifting flows. We share our stories and activities allowing other public/s to navigate these fluid times, building together walking rafts to the future.