Curating Walking Routes
T he dictionary definition of the verb ‘to curate’ is: ‘to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation’.
Recently, Jack and I have been exploring further afield, curating new walking routes to add to our portfolio.
One new route in particular stands out as now being right up there with some of the best walking in Somerset. But we didn’t just stumble across it, we had to look at existing routes, then try to plot out a new way on the ground. Several times our planned route was thwarted by closed footpaths or current construction work, so we had to backtrack and divert. But with perseverance we finally came up with an excellent circuit.
For fourteen years now, Jack and I have been curating walking routes for a living, both for ourselves and for a walking specialist company. To us, taking one or more existing and well-known routes and crafting them into something even better, is the great joy of what we do.
Being able to then share the results with walking enthusiasts is the buttercream on the carrot cake.
Curating words
H aving finally finished the first draft of the first part of my trilogy, I am now beginning the editing process, and I find myself undertaking much the same kind of exercise on the screen as I’ve been doing ‘in the field’.
Rather than simply taking the historical facts, I’m working to craft, mould and amend my settings, characters and conversations to ensure that what I’m presenting is much more than you can find on the pages of history books. In effect, I’m curating rather than writing to ensure my story is as good as I can possibly make it and that my characters, both historic and fictional, are fully rounded, three-dimensional individuals that the reader will care about.
When we curate walking routes we use the OS map to help determine whether or not a route is likely to work. The maps are far from foolproof, but they are indispensable in helping us to identify possible alternatives that we can then test out on the ground.
In editing my novel, I am currently using an online course with Jericho Writers which is proving to be the equivalent of an OS map, but for writing. Thanks to the insights I’m getting, I can look at what I’ve already written (the existing route if you like) and then find ways to enhance and enrich it so that the finished product has far greater impact than the original draft. And it has been a revelation.
Curating vs writing
U ntil now I’ve relied entirely on instinct to compose my writing but now I realise that although my instincts appear to be sound, my writing can be so much more if I take the time to craft, or curate it. The course has shown me how to view each character and every scene not just as a standalone but as part of the bigger picture in much the same way as we mould multiple parts of walks into one route.
When I realised the similarity between what I was doing on the page with what I was doing when designing walking routes, I thought maybe I was exaggerating the connection in my own mind. But interestingly, when I type ‘curate’ into Thesaurus, one of the few synonyms that pops up is ‘edit’.
