The Observant Walker: Wild Food, Nature and Hidden Treasures on the Pathways of Britain

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John is an expert in the natural world and has been leading forays around Britain for decades. As an expert forager, he shows people how to identify the edible species that abound – but he also reveals the natural history, stories and science behind our surroundings. In 'The Observant Walker', he takes us with him on eight walks: from verdant forests to wild coastlines, via city pavements, fields and rolling hills, he illuminates what can be found on a walk across any British terrain, and how we might observe and truly understand them, for ourselves. Such techniques improve your perception of the unusual and the mundane, and ability to detect patterns. “Art is everywhere, if you say so,” Rob explains. “ You’ll see details you missed, you’ll draw new connections, and you’ll reconsider first impressions,” he adds. 2. Sensing On the environment, the Festival has physicist and science broadcaster Helen Czerski, who will speak about the critical importance of the oceans and her book Blue Machine – how the Ocean Works. It is also important to connect to the natural world, something that seems lost in urban life. For ages, humans were keenly aware of the moon, but many people today don’t know what phase the moon is in today.

This year’s Festival, which runs from 2-14 May, will have more than 65 events, including 15 in schools, featuring international writers and speakers covering a wide range of fascinating subjects. The first week features local writers and this year’s Festival’s has its biggest ever community programme, taking writers into the prison and care homes. Events will be held in a number of local venues, including St James, Les Cotils, the Guille Alles Library, the OGH and St Pierre Park Hotel. In 1971, 40 years after the crash, Job editorialised in Aviation Safety Digest about how pilots were still having CFIT crashes. ‘All too many general aviation pilots are apparently willing to “give it a go” even when indications are all against safe completion of a flight,’ Job thundered. The Observant Walker: Wild Food, Nature and Hidden Treasures on the Pathways of Britain | By John Wright In sum, these exercises and meditations are meant to help understand what you want to care about, Rob explains. “This at its core is the art, and the joy, of noticing,” he signs off. When we go for a walk, whether in the countryside or city, we pass through landscapes full of natural beauty and curiosities both visible and invisible - but though we might admire the view, or wonder idly about the name of a flower, we rarely have the knowledge to fully engage with what we see. When we do, our sense of place is expanded, our understanding deepened and we can discover richness in even the most everyday stroll. John Wright has been leading forays around Britain for decades.A graduate of Britain’s Royal Military College, Sandhurst and former Royal Air Force pilot, he was regarded as a safe and expert captain by the more individualistic standards of the time. These were somewhat different to standards in the modern era of flight data analysis. A contemporary, Raymond Garret, (later a distinguished RAAF officer) remembered Shortridge making a series of stall turns during landing approach on a passenger flight in the Avro. ‘Then he pulled out, straightened up and with a grin from ear to ear made a perfect landing,’ Garret wrote in 1981. Other suggested exercises are eating in off-beat places, keeping a nature log or field guide about everyday objects, testing your memory of observation, making one-minute videos about and from different locations, and adding annotations to historical places or plaques on public objects that memorialise incidents. The Outreach and Community Programme will see events in Les Nicolles Prison, Maison de Beauvoir Care Home, Russel’s Day Care Centre, Le Grand Courtil, Guernsey Cheshire Home and the Guernsey Alzheimer’s Carers’ Group.

When you talk to strangers, you make beautiful and surprising interruptions in the expected narrative of your daily life. You shift perspective. – Kio Stark John Wright will be talking about his book The Observant Walker – Wild Food, Nature and Treasure on the Pathways of Britain. What if, instead of just admiring the view when we take a walk, we slowed right down and looked closely at every living thing – every plant, fungus, lichen, hoverfly or spider?This can extend to other senses as well, such as an audit or map of tastes and smells, a scent walk, imagining spirits in what you see, or putting together random objects in interesting ways.

There’s even less excuse for flying into terrain in the 21st century. Modern general aviation pilots have electronic flight bags, which would have seemed utterly miraculous in 1931. Yet CFIT crashes persist. ‘The pilot, who was qualified only to operate in visual meteorological conditions, flew toward and entered an area of low cloud and reduced visibility,’ the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said about the fatal crash of a Cessna 182 in April 2019. In September that year five people died when a Bell UH-1D Huey was flown into low visibility conditions. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Observant_Walker_-_John_Wright.pdf, The_Observant_Walker_-_John_Wright.epubKingsford Smith told newspapers he believed the aircraft was in Bass Strait and the controller of civil aviation, Horace Brinsmead, told the inquiry, ‘To my mind the evidence is almost overwhelming that the pilot did get over the sea and that the accident took place between that point and reaching Point Cook.’ Rob describes an activity called ‘digital silence,’ where you observe others’ posts for a period of time but do not respond. He also asks us to wonder what we would post if we were allowed only a few updates a month, and to only a few people per week. This could increase our power of appreciation and focus. Inspirational speaker Mim Skinner’s journey into alternative societies led to her book Living Together – Searching for Community in a Fractured World will be the subject of her talk, and activist Kim Samuel looks at the importance of connectedness in her book On Belonging – Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation.

The Guernsey Literary Festival is a not-for-profit organisation planned, organised and run by a team of volunteers.John Wright is a naturalist and one of Great Britain's leading experts on fungi. His most recent books include A Spotter's Guide to the Countryside and The Forager's Calendar. He lives in Dorset, where he regularly leads forays into nature and goes on long walks across all terrains. The Forager's Calendar won the 2020 Guild of Food Writers Award and the 2020 Woodland Book of the Year. Our museum is still receiving fragments of the Southern Cloud more than 60 years after the discovery. Meaning and remembrance Memoir is well represented. Gail Simmons will talk about her book Between the Chalk and the Sea, which chronicles a walk along a long-forgotten pilgrimage route from Southampton to Canterbury, and Edward Chisholm’s book A Waiter in Paris – Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City takes you beneath the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world and reveals its dark secrets. Gail will also be holding a writing seminar. If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us The Southern Cloud was one of five Avro Ten aircraft operated by Australian National Airways, the airline founded by pioneering aviators Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm. The Avro Ten was a British-made licensed version of the Fokker FVII.3m that Kingsford Smith and Ulm had flown across the Pacific Ocean in 1928. On 21 March 1931 it took off from Mascot Aerodrome for the daily service to Melbourne. It was heard over Goulburn in NSW, but never definitively seen again.