Weird Walk Zine Issue Seven

• 48 page A5 zine
• Printed on high quality PEFC certified recycled stock

With the sun at its lowest ebb, and the night stretching to its longest duration of the year, we offer up Weird Walk Issue Seven as a symbol of the continuing cycle of rot and renewal, death and new life.

Taking inspiration from the woodland, author Nadia Attia explores the folklore surrounding some of Britain’s iconic tree species, while leafy associations abound as we reflect upon the Hastings Jack in the Green festival, and the suitably named Verdant Wisdom collective walk us through a rural take on dungeon synth music. Elsewhere two mavens of weird walking, Alice Lowe and Benjamin Myers, lead separate quests in two very different locations, each filled with magick and memory.

And if trees can emotionally connect us to the landscape, then so can the old stone monuments that so entrance us; in this issue, we explore phenomenological approaches to ancient sites (and, also, cheese).

Includes photos by Sarah White, Rachel Adams and Freddie Miller.

Formed in the hinterland between the bucolic and the eerie, Weird Walk began as three friends walking an ancient trackway across southern England wearing incorrect footwear. Being out in the countryside for extended periods, away from screens and distractions, not only refreshed our brains but sparked a creative enthusiasm for the countless stories in the landscape that we yomped across. We spent three transformative days and nights on the Wessex Ridgeway, stopping off at Neolithic burial chambers, sacred hills, Iron Age earthworks, misreading maps, and sleeping in haunted pubs, all the while slowly becoming aware that the further from the towns and cities we walked, the wider the temporal boundaries grew.

Here was the land of Silbury Hill and Avebury stone circle, of Wayland the Smith and the great Uffington White Horse, whose annual scouring is a true pagan survival; here also was the land of the druids, the first farming communities, the last Saxon kings, and countless age-old folk tales. It was a potent path indeed, and the trip soon led to others.

By walking the ancient paths, visiting the sacred sites, and immersing ourselves in the folklore and customs of these isles, we hope to fan the faint embers of magic that still smoulder in the grate and conjure that elusive temporal trackway of history and mystery, a weird walk that bypasses nostalgia and leads us back towards optimism and re-enchantment.