Kati sends us this lovely card about her family in Ballinasloe; a lovely card with stories that must be shown as well.

It says: "My mom used to pause for ages before crossing beneath the arches to reach her home because, when the wind blew, the arches echoed the sound and it was like a high-pitched wailing. My mom was sure it was the Banshees that her gran was always warning her about.

Pokidi sends us a card from Amsterdam this time, because she wants us to see the fantastic aquatic parade with two beauty queens in a boat that looks like a car - or is it a car that thinks it's a boat? This is such a fantastic idea for dressing up in silly boats and having a festival for four!

Yanna sends this card from Kuressaare, on the island of Saaremaa. The big surprise is that this island also has a crater made by a meteor. The crater is full of water, so the island is a ring of land with water in the middle and water all around. Well, not exactly a ring, because the island is much bigger than the crater. As you can see on the map. But isn't it great?

Pokidi sends us an image of water, trees and sunset from the Netherlands, shown 'just the way a 17th century painter like Ruysdael or Vermeer would have enjoyed!'

This scene is a bit like Brasside Ponds with the broad expanse of water, reeds and trees.

Here's a lovely card from 'funny, smart and i'm deffinitly crazy' Queeeny that isn't about a city, but about going somewhere. She translates it for us:

less hesitance and more risk, more often pause, instead of hurry, live today, instead of postpone, live our dreams, instead of dreaming our lives.

It could be about walking through the trees along the river, taking some time to enjoy what's there, taking some other way into town or back out again.

Traumateddy has a great idea for a comparative postcard. This is a place called the Twelve Apostles, at Port Campbell National Park, Victoria. This scene looks a bit like places along the Durham coast. And look at that cute Wombat on the stamp!

BigPikaChica sends us this cool little postcard of the courthouse and a mural of a cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail. Cows! Texas Longhorn, no doubt. I wonder if there's a mural of cattle anywhere in Durham. Perhaps that's a possible mapping adventure!

mjbcosta says hello from sunny and historic Leiria, Portugal!

Gemielicious went to some trouble to get us this postcard of Lake Havasu City in Arizona, USA. We want to know just what kind of trouble it was! We also think it is quite entertaining to see the London Bridge next to palm trees in the sun! We also think it would be fab if Durham's Belmont Viaduct got a double row of palm trees along it! No speedboats though. :(

Iloinenpiru tells us of her night camping in a snow cave, which sounds like a splendid outdoor adventure!

Xpaula's card shows rural Finland through the seasons, and teaches us the name of each season in Finnish. We can see some familiar flowers and trees, and a lot of sunny skies!

Lucky12324 sends us a lovely and informative card about the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota, which are said to have been made by the hoofprints of Babe the Blue Ox.

From Katherin in Chisinau/Kishinev

from magependragon

Lifrhasil says Heidelberg sometimes has more visitors than residents.

This part of our journey is to be somewhat easier, as we are at the highest point on our route, but we are not prepared for the ancient cobbled surfaces as SOUTH BAILEY snakes away into the distance. ADAM decides to use the footpaths, a challenge in itself, for they are just a little wider than his wheelchair, with the occasional downspout protruding into the narrow path, it turns out to be as troublesome as MIKE's chosen route along the cobbled street!

May bank holiday Saturday, our team of three set off from Clayport library to travel along the river side to Prebends bridge, where we would return via South & North Bailey, Slater St, Market place & back to Clayport Library.

You may think it is a short, relatively easy journey, but we are in wheelchairs, Adam is confined to an electric wheelchair (he has a muscular disease) I am using a lightweight wheelchair with a hand cycle attachment & a small hub motor for some assistance (I am Mike, I have an amputation & suffer with poor circulation due to diabetes). The third member of our team is JOHN, a frequent visitor to the library, who is a keen walker, with knowledge of the many paths around DURHAM. (He was press-ganged into helping us by BETH).

Durham University are contributing to the Necklace Park map events by creating real-time Google map-trails using electronic tracking devices. This map is a reduced version of the display here that you will be able to monitor during the mapping weekend. The software behind the map is pretty intensive, so be prepared to wait a bit longer than you would for a regular Google map to load.

 
Have you sent us a postcard? Have you been sent a Necklace Park postcard? Would you like to comment on a card you've seen, or sent? Look here to see the cards we've received, and here for further blogposts on the topic.

The Necklace Park Postcard Project is part of the Twinned Cities strand, where people from other places tell us something about where they live, especially if it has something to do with outdoor activities (fishing! dens! skateboards!), water, bridges, trees, wildlife, livestock (cows! pigeons! critters!), old buildings (churches! ruins!), towns and countryside. That covers just about everywhere, me thinks.

We want your postcards and descriptions of where you live, the kinds of things you enjoy doing outdoors, your favourite building or tree, things you like doing on or in the water, what you do in the countryside or town. We also like fanciful stories, so if you know one about the cow that slept in the church, or the magical talking broccoli that lives under a tree by day and runs a jazz club in the vennels at night, please do tell!

Send us a card, and we'll put it on display. Visitors can leave comments here, so you may find a new postcard pal in addition to having your card seen and appreciated by people in Durham! You can send us a card directly, or via PostCrossing, the world-famous postcard-sharing website.

The disorienteering are busy pulling together our materials and our little challenges and now we are looking for victims/participants/mappers/guinea pigs!

We want to do our mapping over the bank holiday weekend - preferably on the Saturday and need some mappers to help us.

The activity will be simple and fun - we'll arm you with some tools and send you out into the park to explore and disorienteer! You will hopefully come back to us with some interesting thoughts, inspirations and daft pictures (cameras supplied!)

 
I started my Necklace Park vennel mapping last week: meandering, climbing, poking, peering, moving on. I looked for gaps, cuts, ascensions and glimpses mainly in the city centre and discovered a long journey of slow promise.

I can feel a story developing. Wait and see....

Today the Readers of the Lost Art - or those of us who could get away during the day - put our boots on, and went for a walk in the park, escorted by historian David Butler. The plan had been to go as far as the Belmont viaduct and back in the morning, but that hadn't taken into account how much there was to look at and to ask questions about, and how many stories there were to tell.

What is a map?

‘Mapping’ is a process of discovery. It is the process of making an element or area visible or understandable.

Note by Pat Bernard: I envisage the Necklace Park journey of Durham folk song ‘Bobby Shaftoe as a trumpet flourish, lingering on the wind, caught here and there by trees. I am a musician and musicologist living in Canada (with its own forests and rich folk music history); and so I am sending this as my musical message, hoping that others might want to build on this flourish through their journeys mapping the Park itself.

We’re all getting ready for the Explorer’s Awayday May 6 in the Necklace Park, during our big Mapping the Necklace weekend. A lot of work is going on in the background to be sure that this bit of the weekend goes without a hitch…particularly the Food Map Feast in Old Durham Gardens to which all working Mappers on that day are invited.

I was that mildly feral, long-ago ex-pat Santiago de Chile child you track on Twinned Cities...very different from the born-again Santiago de Cuba adult.

This tour explores Santiago de Chile and Durham at the same time, and takes in several interesting features of both places. The tour makes nine stops along six connected segments, starting and ending at Plaza de Armas in the city centre. There's a lot of ground to cover, and loads of stuff to stop and enjoy, so the tour could be spread over two or more days.

This post lists each of the stops briefly, and will continue the explorations over the next few days.

Durham is not only the city of the aristocratic Prince Bishops and the learned gentlefolk of the University. It is - or rather, it was, until the coal ran out - also the focal point for the miners who worked the Durham coalfield, and their families. The work was hard and dangerous, but there was an annual day out to look forward to, organised by the Miners' Union: the Miners' Gala or Big Meeting.

Earlier today I was given a secret message.

Glocky is a young person living on the Sherburn Road estate that overlooks Durham's Necklace Park. His story shows why and how this natural space is so special.

A photo taken in the early 80s looking at the back of Fowlers Yard cottages.

balance mapping...
1. points of chaos versus points of serenity
2. edible versus poisonous
3. hard landscaping versus soft landscaping
4. magic moment views versus don't go there
5. want to linger versus want to race

A lot of ideas about mapping are coming to the surface.

Here's another one!

From babe to teenager to digital artist, I have been coming to Durham's riverside when the Necklace Park was a 'twinkle in the planner's eye!'

This is an image of me in the buggy being pushed near Finchale Abbey!

I'm intrigued by the themes of 'Mapping the Necklace' and maybe I can help with some expertise - if someone wants to map trees, or plants, but doesn't know enough about them, perhaps.

It has taken me some time to get to grips with the thinking behind this project and the notion of mapping a "virtual park" from somewhere in the Midlands ( or anywhere in the world) but... at last I am there!

I keep thinking of all of the crunch-underfoot experiences of the Durham Necklace Park: trodding on locally-branded "Love" bricks at Houghall near an abandoned pit...crazily steep, iced-over wooden steps leading down from the road into Finchale Priory...the slip-and-slide of autumnal fruit-and-mud at Old Durham Gardens...the clay suck of the riverbanks near Shincliffe...the sponge-spring of the sports ground at Maiden Castle...the heel-grabbing cobbles in the City Centre running alongside clackety pram wheels...

I work in The Park.....

Today I had to deal with some difficult news
It was nice to watch the snow falling on the Park floor
I just breathed slowly for a while and watched
I didn't even leave my desk!
I feel very lucky to be here

Cast the net far and wide... haul it in... see what awaits...

The people, their interests and their connections.

'Where did they hear about the website?' I wonder and entertain myself by imagining the train of thought, websites, people and emails that may have led someone, like a trail of breadcrumbs, to visit here.

The artist Alvin Lucier made a recording with thermal sensors attached to his body.The uninspired part is that he recorded a ticking clock. The tick is fed though an echo which speeds up or slows down depending on the body temperature of the artist.
So you could record the level of physical input involved in your activity, telling you if it's too strenuous or indeed a walk in the park.

Did you know that the swish of a golf club is a musical learning experience? A walk in the Necklace Park could be music to someone's ears.

Professor decodes life note by note

"Much as people thump a watermelon to test its ripeness, Stanford composer Jonathan Berger wants them to use sound in novel ways to figure out the world. So he put sound to the way professional golfers swing their clubs. The result: It's now possible for pros and duffers alike to improve their game by listening to their own strokes. In another experiment, runners, rowers and other athletes can "hear" how their bodies are performing -- from heart rates to stress levels -- while practicing. And Berger's sounds for digital images of microscopic cells can help doctors distinguish cancerous ones by the "music" they make."

The big decision when sending out the invitation is how far to go...but maybe that's the point: cast the net, see what returns, filter and match. My version of widespread is usually geographical but it's also about netting a wide range of "curious creatives"...who are much like the "curious cows" on the Roaming the Necklace photo gallery, one of my favourite Park images. We could do a lot worse than follow the Necklace Cows and see where THEY go, and as far as I know they're grazing just below Sherborne Road Estate today...