Introduction
The Long Walk Back is a document of an unusual journey through England: a 500-mile walk, back to the place where I came into the world.
It came out of a desire both to confront my own memories and identity, and to explore the identity of my homeland and it’s people as they are today – hoping that these two strands would overlap and that I would learn something about myself and my country. This desire came out of a sense of disconnection from belonging to a place, or a people, or from the notion of being English. Conversations I had with others suggested this was not an uncommon set of feelings, and so I decided to explore them; to try to discover what it was, if anything, that connected people to a place and to each other, in this country in this time.
In order to do this I decided to quite literally go back to my roots: to walk from my place of residence (on the South Coast) to the place where I was born (just shy of the northern border) through all the places I had lived in-between. This would take me through a huge swathe of the country: cities and villages, fields and forests, national parks and industrial wastelands.
The journey took 54 days, during which time I only walked, avoiding using all vehicles, motorized or otherwise. I was especially drawn to the idea of walking through the country rather than driving around it or taking public transport; of seeing the whole thing, the places in-between places, and of connecting with something more ancient in it, through travelling in the most ancient and innately human way there is.
I documented the journey in photographs and words (on a blog), and my vision for the finished project includes words, images, a graphic representation of my trajectory through the country, as well as old photographs from my past and that of my family.