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Ouse and Wash up the Nene
Continuing my grand 3000 mile E2 walk. I’m now connecting up the bits I’ve walked this year (Pennine Way (250m), Alpine GR5 (350mile), Fen Rivers Way (50m)). So on Wednesday with my new found walking companion, Sally_from Norfolk, we walked from Kings Lynn to Wisbech along The Nene Valley Way.
A great day, with the excellent start in a charming tiny ferry across The Ouse owned by a husband and wife team – it is in fact part of the public highway, started in 1200).
Then a walk along the windy sea defences around The Wash, at times smelly, firstly from Kings Lynn sewage works (come on boys and Burack – clean up your act) then by a team of squaddies doing nefarious activities on the small island off Walkers Marsh who had liberally splashed diesel all over the footpath. Then its straight up The Nene and yes it is straight. Past hamlets with delightful names such as Foul Anchor and into Wisbech.
A good walk, 
Sally’s first over 20 in a day,in fact 21.9 miles in 6hr 22min walking plus 33min of stops. Here is Sally taking a very short stop on one of the Nene Valley’s stiles. Flattest profile to date as well. Notice the zero bit at the start, when we were on the ferry
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Political Art and Justice
Yesterday CRASSH event was by Vikki Bell discussing Art memory and politics from Buenos Aires and Belfast. She mainly focused on Art and the disappeared ones in Argentina . This was one of the stunning pictures she showed.
by Nicolas Guagnini “In this work, which I have named 30,000 (the number of disappeared in Argentina), I used the picture of my father, a journalist who covered national and international politics. he was disappeared on December 12, 1977. As the spectator moves around the image, my father’s face appears and disappears.” (Picture and words from North Dakota Museum of art).
She also had images from Fernando Traverso “350 bicycles” as apparently the first sign of the disappeared was that their bicycles were abandoned in the streets.He “paints 350 bicycles all over his home city of Rosario, Argentina, one for each person disappeared.
He photographs the graffiti bicycles and mounts them in the exhibitions as scenic “postcards.” Very moving indeed. (picture from his site).
She also went into some detail on the role of ESMA (Escuela de Mechanica de la Armada) although what happened within its walls had nothing to do with engineering in the navy (400 out of 5000 survived). Wonderful expression “Taking photo’s is about decisions” (it was a pun about taking as in clicking and taking as in stealing) also spoke about Carlos Filomina and his umbrella hand and the fact that the junta didn?t get his paintings.
Waves across the Ocean
On Monday I went to one of the regular lunchtime talks at CRASSH. totally fascinating discussion and talk by Margaret Rigaud-Drayton lecturer in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages about Word and Image in Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘Lettre-Ocean’.
This, apparently, is a fictional letter written to his brother in Mexico. Personally I think it’s a neat way of expressing your opinion without having to endure any more defamation lawsuits. Margaret found many meanings contained in both the language (French, Arabic, ) and the words used (eg chirlMOYa).
The layout of the text 
also has many meanings, visually like Paris pointing out to Cuba and Mexico or the opposite Paris being colonised by foreigners (the writer was Polish by birth with an Italian mother) or even in the shape of a women’s pubis, also the waves to symbolize the ocean and distance . Many other asides like Bleriot and the modern abolition of distance with The telegraph and air travel (and now the internet) the visual emptiness of the letter O as a mirror into the soul. All totally fascinating and would love to learn more.