Ten walks explain everything
A new multimedia and book project hoves into view
Hello everybody.
Here’s an exciting announcement: this still-embryonic Substack is going to be an integral part of a big multimedia journalism project that I’m working on that seeks to explain everything and anything (there’s nothing like ambition), starting with the great country of the Netherlands. And it also involves writing another book.
The idea is simple: by walking across a country you can see and hear and experience the elements that explain it, its history, its people, society and economy, its challenges, and even its future. I did something similar when I wrote ‘Singapore, Singapura’. The spine of the book was a 53km single day walk across that island state, from its international borders and industrial zones to its commercial heart, its CBD housing, its cultivated leisure sector. I think it worked out well (even if the walk hurt).
I’m currently researching my next book – ‘Orange sky and rising water’ on the Netherlands. I’ll structure the book around ten separate walks. Each walk is an enjoyable and interesting day hike, but together they ‘explain’ this most fascinating of smallish countries. It’s ‘show’, not ‘tell’, speaking to people as I go, and some of the thoughts in there are from this Substack post that I did a while ago.
I’ll be walking across the great Delta Works that keep Dutch feet dry; through the industrialised farming companies of Delftland; across the beaches of Texel near where the VOC ships mustered before heading off to the spice islands of the East Indies; and through the reclaimed polders of Flevoland to the fishing outpost of Urk. There will be ten walks in total.
But this isn’t just about the new book (due early 2025); I want this to be a multimedia project. I’ll also have videos of each walk as I tick them off, and probably audio too. This Substack will be part of it. I’m going to try to include practical guides to the walks so they’re something that others can do too – I know quite a few people used my Singapore book as inspiration for walking across the island (despite my warnings about how bloody my feet were afterwards) but at the time I had no maps to share. I’ll fix that this time, maybe online. As I said, this is all new so I’ll feel my way as I go.
After the Netherlands I’m going to see if I can push ahead with explaining Italy in ten walks, and then after that who knows? I could do the multimedia version of my Singapore walk. I’d like to look at Poland, one of my old BBC correspondent haunts, or the Industrial Revolution.
That’s part of the reason why this Substack has been a bit dormant. I’d already laid out the bones of my thoughts on ‘climate comms’, and, thanks to the World Resources Institute’s ‘Stories to Watch 2024’, I’d been given the chance to explore my ideas in detail in conjunction with some of the Institute’s great minds. I may return to that occasionally, but now I’m going to start pushing on with the ‘Ten Walks Explain Everything’ project (probably involving a rebrand from ‘Il Gufo Scorbutico’).
If you’re not interested, now’s the time to unsubscribe – no hard feelings. But it should be interesting for those who want to see how it develops. If you like hiking and/or understanding how the world works I think you’ll enjoy it.
No promises when I’ll get it all up and running, but thanks anyway for subscribing. I’ve never tried anything like this working alone, so wish me luck.
Thanks,
Nicholas.