Walking across Mexico City is more of a big deal than it should be. After walking the width of the city I can't help but wonder why more people don't walk across cities. After all, more than half of the world's population live in urban areas.------------- With local knowledge, good sense and a bit of luck the city offers all the ingrediants of a mind blowing experince that dwafs the experiences of your average tourist. Like remote wilderness adventures, urban environments are diverse and full of animals, it's just that more of them are human.---------------- >>>>Santa Catarina to Los Reyes (Sunday)>>>> We moved with pace through each of the places that we visited. The rythm of the walk was set to the photograph that I took every eight paces, while the rest of the team took photographs to contrast a range of themes across the city: women, graffiti, dogs, beauty salons to name a few. The pace was not so much a strategy for safety, but more to make sure that we could cross the city within the three days, although in places towards the end of the stage we certainly did not want to hang around. ----------- This was one of Anna's favourite places on the walk because of its village like nature and positive, welcoming spirit. As we passed through, people were happy and welcoming to us. Yet this is one of the places that we were most worried about as it is one of the largest areas of poor people in the city. This experience tells a wider story of many people's unfounded fears of cities, based on those relatively rare by poigniant memories that distort our understanding of places. Already, after just one day my memories are becoming skewed as the swathes of 'normal' places become smaller and the islands of extremeness increase in size reforming the city in my mind.------------------- Jammed between a bus station and two highways is an area of housing that is not even on the map. Containing thousands of people and streets with names, the main map of the city fails to recognise this place, yet does include a small traffic island on which we stopped for a break in the very wealthy area of Santa Fe. As soon as we entered this place we began to feel uneasy, scared of what seemed like a very unpredictable nature of the area. Sure enough we were warned by locals to turn around and stay on the main road, advice that we followed.-------------------- >>>>Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl (Sunday-Monday)>>>> Neza has a bad reputation in much of Mexico City. It is a city in itself with over a million people living in a dry grid of roads that stretch 9km east to west and upto 4.5km North to South only to be broken by the occasional industrial building, public service or park. Making up nearly a fifth of our walk this part of the city was easiest to navigate as we trailed up its long straight roads. Compared to the first and last sections of our walk, this area felt comparatively safe and we experienced nothing by friendliness from the locals.------------------- The roofs of Neza's houses are lined with well kepped beautful flowerpots and its walls (that enclose and protect its families) are covered in the bold colours of formal artwork advertising arabic dancing lessons to Magnum ice creams while grafitti tagged territories become more political as your work towards the city's centre. Horses are used to pull rubbish for recycling and tricycles were more common than cars on the Sunday that we passed through. This gave the area a particular charm that was often dampened by the constant sound of car engines for the rest of our journey.-------------------- This is one of the poorest parts of the city and this was clearest in its public spaces, many of which are islands between fast roads and at times smelt of the decay of flesh or the flow of sewage. At one point Etienne decided to use a vantage point in a playpark to take a photograph only to suffer a series of harsh electric shocks as he and the metal slide that he was standing on became charged by the overhead powerlines directly above. While the wealthier parts of the city enjoy small but green spaces for recreation, all too often where money, influence and space is limited children's places for play are squeezed into inappropriate or even dangerous spaces.------------------ Everyone seems to constantly be cooking or eating in Mexico City. As we left Neza we passed through the major meat market that feeds the puestos de tacos which feed the people of this city on what seems like nearly every street corner. After repetition of street after street of housing in Neza, the harsh reality of cows' backs being broken on the street, left over bones being thrown into the back of open trucks and men taking a nap on the carcases of pigs we quickly had to adapt to a rapid increase of people, movement and noise. After crossing a central reservation that housed a market that specialised in the equipment needed to make tacos, we crossed the highway and into an all together different place.---------------------- The next residential area we passed through, south of the highway which lines the southern edge of Neza feels completely different. This part of the city still has a grid pattern and the houses modest, but traffic calming measures (the roads are blocked off) at every other crossroads meant that families were out in the street and despite being wedged in a triangle of major roads felt like it was a far stronger community. For our walk from here to the historical centre, houses became bigger and whole roads became increasingly gated with glass capped walls which aimed to protect the increasinly wealthy inhabitants.-------------- >>>>Historical centre east to west (Monday - Tuesday)>>>> The historical centre of Mexico City is the Zocalo, a large square which is surrounded by government buildings, expensive hotels and a Cathedral that all date back to Spanish colonial times and are now tilting and sinking into the ground as the water table under the city lowers and earthquakes take their toll. The historical importance of this place is of even greater importance becase of the Aztec pyramid that became uncovered after the last major earthquake that hit the city in 1985.------------------ Skirting this centre by 1km to the East, North and then West their is a clear line of division that runs through this space. To the East we walked through the largest market in the city and then into the red light district where at midday, young girls stand on the highway looking for customers. East of the Zocalo is packed with people and seemed even denser because works that squeezed people into ever tighter spaces. This side is poor and market vendors shout for your custom. As we walked further east the city rapidly transformed into spaces for the middle class and tourists with cafes and global chains. The difference is sharp, striking and what amazes me most, is the lack of dilution between the two sides.---------------- >>>>La Roma to Periferico (Tuesday)>>>> Unlike the much newer blocks of Neza which are large, dry and cheap to service the smaller, greener and higher rising blocks of La Roma are littered with comfortable cafes and streets that could easily be in a European city if it were not for the green and white VW Beatles that splutter through the streets. The three and four story buildings here are beautful and make an efficient use of space with gated parking slanting undrerground and away from the main roads. Here people run in tracksuits while listening to their iPods and being followed by their dogs which all too often have legs that are too small for their bodies.---------------------- The busy road that we followed towards Periferico (a road that marks what used to be the limits of the city's urban footprint) is flanked by imports that have mostly come from the USA. Burger King, KFC, Circle K and much larger department stores, cinemas and office complexes including Mexico's World Trade Centre. After the La Roma's smart casual streets with lovers kissing more than any place in the city, this is place is a fast paced stream of buying, selling and moving with women in heels and men in suits.------------------ Before crossing Periferico and into the car park of Costco we were reminded of a past life of this place, the remains of an Aztec pyramid that is now surrounded by the right angle of two major roads. I wonder what these previous inhabtants would make of the city that now surrounds them.----------- >>>>Barrancas to Santa Fe (Tuesday)>>>> This was physically and emotionally the hardest part of the adventure. This stretch contained both the richest and poorest places in full view of one another. Above and looking across the city are the sky scrapers of Santa Fe which balance of the edge of the valley flanked in places by steep cliffs and looks down on a poor and large informal housing settlement.------------------ As we walked up the slopes of Barrancas we started to feel unwelcome for the very first time in our journey as the occasional local called abuse at us. These initial uncertainties grew stronger when a local on a motorbike warned us not to continue on our present route as it would lead us into a very dangerous area where we would certainly face problems. This was now the most worrying part of the walk as we took a second and better route, but none the less through an area where it was very difficult to be. At one stage I felt physically sick with fear as we walked up and through a place where I felt even more alien than I had done previously in a city of very few foreigners. With the help of an abundance of local help from largely female members of the community who were out and active as well as the police, we managed to make a line for a main road that took us from harsh poverty to extreme wealth.------------------ Santa Fe is a complex of large new buildings that house people, multinational companies and all the services that they need to avoid travelling into the main city including a heliport to skip the main city all together when flying further afield. This is not a place for the walkers. Santa Fe is like an island that can only easily be reached by road and one which is lined by barbed wire fences at that. Where there is not fencing and fast dangerous roads are steep cliffs that are next to impossible to climb. This is a bubble of people that baffle me. There houses directly look over some of the poorest people in the city and the open Santa Fe reservoir that is choking in sewage and rubbish. The sharp difference in wealth between some of the richest and poorest people in the country is geographically divided by a matter of metres yet a moral, empathetic, political and economic gap which in my mind is inexcusable.------------------------ As the urbanist Marilin suggested on the walk, travelling across a city on foot should be mandatory for potential Mayors so that can can get a true sense of place for the city. If we are to share our urban habitats, surely the people who run them should get a sense of these places at first hand. >>>>>

Words by Dick Palfrey The plan was to walk across the entire conurbation of Newcastle, from North West to South East, as another in the series of Dan’s Urban Walks. This would take us 6_ hours with one very short stop. Participants were invited to record whatever they liked en route. I chose note-making: ∑ Sunday – Bankfoot Metro station – rendezvous 9.0 a.m – I’m very late, due to infrequent trains early on on a Sunday morning - Will they still be there? – It’s now 9.30 a.m – Yes! (I had impressed on Larch last night – don’t go without me, I’ll be there – he’d remembered. I’m so glad.) ∑ So…four of us: Larch, Kye, Dan and me. A starting picture is taken of us in the Metro station at Bankfoot. We set off. ∑ Kye had put the wrong guinea pig food in a cage and a top of her son’s in her drawer, (he told her by mobile). ∑ Memories of mine surface that it was 20 years ago that I brought a sixth form group to Redesdale and took them on this Metro with an A3 map of the route for plotting urban land use from the train. ∑ A woman comes out of Number 9 Stuart Court in her dressing gown, then quickly pops inside again where she sees us coming – Dan with his every eighth step photo. There’s a Eucalyptus and a massive satellite dish. ∑ They’re glad I was late because a heavy shower came over. A good forecast from last night’s weather. ∑ Occasional slight friction shows itself between Dan (who has recce’d the walk so thoroughly on Google Earth beforehand that he almost knows the route off by heart), and Larch, who has been given/taken the job of navigating with a street map – hardly needed at times, but who can often spot an equally good route that Dan didn’t happen to pick. ∑ Big Tesco ahead Carphone Warehouse next to Next and Boots, private car park of St. John the Evangelist, Kingston Park - people going in! ∑ McDonalds – Belvedere Retail Park – Comet ‘Now open on two floors’. Diesel 98.9p per litre, Four Chefs, ‘Trolley Park’, ‘The Priests – Debut Album out now’. ∑ Plastic Centre and ‘Sandra Gallon Curtains’. ‘You can be prosecuted for drinking alcohol in public in this area. The Police may confiscate your alcohol and dispose of it’. ∑ A girl with a pink hat rides on her daddy’s shoulders back to the car while mummy pushes the trolley – ‘Every little helps’. ‘Let’s take care of it’ (Kingston Park Estate) ∑ Ooh! Hazel catkins out already! on a dual carriageway cutting – a bush swamped in plastic sheeting, bags and cans. ∑ Edinburgh 117 miles, Berwick upon Tweed 61 miles, Morpeth 12 miles, Alnwick 31 miles. Alder catkins out! Litter! With nearby litter bins nearly empty. ∑ A ‘Magpies’ cushion in the back of ‘Dad’s Taxi’. Redland Avenue, Saxondale Road. A coloured football is stuck high up in an ash tree where two collared doves watch us pass. ‘Support our Lifeboats’. ∑ Amaryllis in flower. Gutter pipe loose on a small community hall with jagged black anti-intruder rails. ∑ Sound of a girl screaming persistently. A small gnome looks out from last year’s dead hanging basket. A USA flag basketball net. Beijing 2008 on a car. A garden of absolute litter and junk. ∑ North Kenton bowls pavilion. North Kenton Veterans’ Club ‘U can’t beat our prices’ (name of shop). Sunbed £20 per month, unlimited use. ∑ ‘Who Noe Th Crew’ graffiti. Mountfield Primary School. A half eaten wet Marsbar on the floor, still in its wrapper. ∑ Braintree Gardens – two cars: BMW semis, all with a second VW. Kye talking about cars she likes, Dan likes helicopters. T.V on in a front room – 10:30 a.m. ∑ A191 Duke of Wellington ‘We’re closing in’ – an anti-crime poster. Brown garden waste bin. Tesco diesel 98.9p ‘Helping you spend less everyday’. A man carrying a huge goldfish bowl box. ∑ We talk about Fair Trade - the palm oil ingredient in Kye’s biscuits is debated. It says ‘sustainable palm oil’ – Is there such a thing? Big mansion on the left, we go right. ∑ Emblehope Drive. Bulbs poking up. ‘Dave’s, The Gentleman’s Barber’. A191 (A167) going out of the city. Student accommodation available next to Roberts’ Funerals. ∑ Nice, old stone wall. The sun shines brilliantly off the old cobbled street. A 20 mph zone. DP434 - my initials on a telegraph post. ‘Arse rodents’ written on a dirty, white van. ∑ Gosforth 3 – Meadowfield Road. Little oranges growing on a citrus bush in a front room. Some very hard coarse-grained igneous rocks used as curbstones round here, some worn shiny. ∑ Elmfield Square, Viburnum bush flowering – the last month of. Bigger older houses. 3 big cars. ∑ Mahonia in flower – and a big camellia – with no flower buds on – like mine. ‘£1000 fine – Maximum penalty’ for not clearing up dog poo. More amaryllises. A BMW street. A butterfly bush/tree is taking a wall apart from growing on the top. ∑ Town Moor – Ah! This is the historic public open space which was the focus of a talk at the weekend conference yesterday morning, and the subject of the photo gallery/exhibition/book – of distinctive pictures which try to capture the essence of this place, but which, without any people in them, I found generally rather empty. ∑ A full litter bin, no litter. Old man with a walking stick and a VERY big plaster/pot on his arm. Allotments – well maintained. Little garden shop in a container. Busy traffic and joggers. Snowdrop buds. North Highbury Allotment Association AGM (saw a clump of snowdrops as I had a wee). ∑ Railway bridge. Opuntia cactus. Christmas tree still out. Lyndhurst Gardens, mature tree suburb. ∑ ‘Student rental area’, Kye says. Newcastle University students and Northumbria University students (the latter who all have part-time jobs and most are from the area/region). ∑ Newcastle Uni.(like Durham) do ‘Sloane’, shorts and flip-flops. ‘Newcastle men are hard but wouldn’t be seen dead in shorts’. ‘Our students show less social confidence’. ∑ Jesmond Pool – after bin alley. A Library. Jesmond Methodist Church. A lot of pedestrians. Jesmond High Street – Oxfam, even to let. ∑ Basalt stones – Whin? Queens Terrace. Furry St George’s dice in a car. Broken glass, Carling lager cans. Devonshire Place: a long terrace, car-lined. White brick on the left, red/white brick on the right. Lots of ‘For sale/to let’. ∑ Jesmond Park Hotel. Back-to-back housing. Daffodils coming up here. Cemetery on the right. For sale/to let. Purple and white cabbages. ∑ Antiques Village – Fern Avenue A1058. Tynemouth – City Centre. Osbourne Ave. Big Church on the left. ∑ Jesmond Dene: This is the place where a speaker from Newcastle City Planning Dept. at the conference this weekend told us the bridge was built over the Dene, but which teeneagers wouldn’t use it, as they felt a bit potentially trapped. Apparently, any burglar in Newcastle ends up in bushes in the Dene – so this should interesting! (OK, that’s at night). ∑ We descend into Jesmond Dene: slippery bank, lots of water in the bottom Burn, thundering through. Allotments. Dogs. A man scooping a poop of his dog on the path ahead calls out to us: ‘It’s one of the pleasures of dog-ownership!’ ∑ Trainers and shoes are spied in trees. There is a reference to this in ‘The Taxi Driver’s Daughter’. (Julia Darling, Penguin 2003). A Sycamore tree, up to 40 metres tall, which has become known as ‘The Shoe Tree’ after an unusual form of protest at a tree being proposed to be felled, or branches pruned off it. There are probably hundreds of shoes in the tree now. ∑ Polish girls and their mum. Snowdrops out. Discussion of which is more ethical/uses less energy: road-hauled Scottish potatoes or shipped Spanish oranges. ∑ Jesmond Vale Terrace – ‘The worldwide web uses more energy than global aviation.’ assertion - ? ‘Two Google searches use more energy than a cup of tea’. Debate about circular brick structure railed off. Ninth Avenue etc. ∑ Polish cigarette packet. Welcome to ‘Chillingham Garden Village’. A canyon wall effect. ‘The Chillingham’ – pub. We stop for a drink, but no food. A double tomato juice and Worcester sauce for me with ice (should keep me going!) Grafitti sample in the men’s toilets: ‘Die Ashley’ ‘BNP’ etc. ‘Nazi scum’ etc. Dan mobiles the reporter from the Newcastle local paper who wants to do a feature on us. ∑ ‘Slow down – there are people around’ – Chillingham Road Safety Zone. We cross over a rail bridge, with a train going under slowly. A tent on the roadside verge – someone’s home? ∑ Chillingham Industrial Estate – more open space. Stronger, colder wind now – not sheltered by houses/streets. Industrial ‘wasteland’ areas – cleared/renewed of industry, then a landscape of barbed wire, etc. Burdock bushes in an industrial verge!. Asian women with saris. ∑ Brough Park Trading Estate – the Fosse Way – road on English side of Hadrian’s Wall – razorwire (symbolically?) is to our North. ∑ Valentia Avenue. The Fosse Pub, old factories – Buddleia taking over behind a screen. Newcastle United – huge crest on a car windscreen – parked. ∑ The reporter intercepts us at Sutton Street. Fossway Tandoori. We pose for a photo, each doing something different: Dan photographing ahead, Kye obliquely, while Larch navigates and Ii make these notes. West Farm Road – A ‘semi-scape’. ‘No unauthorised persons beyond this point’ – land to the left (grass) in which a magpie struts. ∑ ‘Hurray!’ The Swan Hunter shipyard cranes are sighted ahead – the River! Millers Dene Football Ground and now ‘Walker Fosse F.C sponsored by the Fosse Pub’. A small copse near the road is a feature. Daisy Hall. The Tyne Tunnel is road-signed straight ahead. ∑ A CCTV mast looks into an estate of terraces. A grey terrier pup on a lead in a garden. Broken kids’ toys in the street and the CCTV at the other end moves to pick us up. ‘Communities demanded this security’, Kye says. It has led to more prosecutions (Larch says) but has not stopped break-ins. ∑ A park with parents watching their kids’ football matches, including a girls’ match. Metro train on embankment. It’s Sunday afternoon now. Tower blocks – still pure sun! Larch has another pee. ∑ Here, in trying to exit the park, we find, as with a couple of other places on the walk, that, although Dan has recce’d the route meticulously, the vertical aerial perspective of Google Earth, however close in, and even with ‘tilt’ cannot verify that iron railings won’t block our way. We retrace our steps and go round another, slightly longer, way. ∑ Bamboo creeping under a fence. ‘Warning: anti-climb paint.’ Garages for Walkerdene House Terraces. Kye say, ‘are like Middlesbrough’. I remind her not to mention Boro today, if she wouldn’t mind – they knocked my team Wolves out of the FA Cup yesterday! 2:50 p.m now. ∑ Alongside the Metro embankment there is graffiti everywhere; wall, fence and the bank is strewn with rubbish. An 1823 pub on the corner – ‘Strict dress sense Friday & Saturday after 8 p.m.’ On the reverse of the board are arrows pointing to the Smoking area. ∑ Wallsend bus station Graffitti on tunnel walls/underpass: ‘1985-2003 (18 years old). Henders’, ‘1990-2007 (17 years old), McRushy sadly missed xxx.’ Drug deaths? Cross Station Road. A couple with a Tesco bag. Swan Hunter cranes are close now. Skirting round to the North. Holly Avenue. ∑ Broken dead Hoover chucked over the rail embankment fence. Seagull cries becoming more common. Two geranium pots in a south-facing house window. ∑ Wallsend main street up to the left. Wallsend Engineers’ Club/Wallsend Business Centre. ‘To let’ signs are common again. Sunday dinner smells. Hay Street. sunset – good! ∑ Tyne Tunnel A187, Hadrian Road, Hadrian Lod_ _[ge] Hotel. Sun still! Hadrian Mews. ‘Sod the dog it’s the kids that are wild.’ Wallsend Slipway and Engineering Company. Point Pleasant Industrial Estate. A wind turbine. You are here(arrowed!): - all the rest of map faded except tagging, and the box above! Gasometer. ∑ We’re having a tantalising relationship with the river but there, at last, is us on a bridge over a (tidal) Tyne inlet with small leisure craft. The Albion Inn: ‘Lovely lunches served 12-4’. Hadrian Yard Production Systems – a big shed for shipyard. ∑ ‘The Tyne Tunnel’s exhaust funnel,’ Kye pointed out. The Verve Hotel & Café Bar. We asked a couple coming out of the bar, who direct us back up to the road. There are ghosts of old Tyneside here, (and some survivors) in all this landscape. We breast the crown of the hill to a view of the river, and landscapes to the South. ∑ Tyne Pedestrian and Cycle tunnels. The Stevenson Trail and site of Stevenson’s cottage. Willington Quay. Purple fish sculptures. Cyclists tunnel to the right, Pedestrians tunnel to the left (and an EMAS sign). ∑ 1951 – ‘County of Northumberland/County of Durham’, in tiles at the mid-point under the river. ‘Domestic animals must be carried’ – escalator (not working). ‘Hold small children firmly’. ∑ We emerge on the South Tyneside side: Tunnel Street, Shakespeare Street. A terrace – garden with cigarette packets. The Queen’s Pub. Old ‘Burton’ Cinema. The Jarrow Crusaders Pub. Tower blocks – Ellen Court. Viking Centre. Old High Street. 1951 clock on the red brick Town Hall Jarrow Town Hall – 1902. Larch gets the mick briefly taken out of him for assuming that the clock date was the building date. ∑ Two Vikings statue, Church and big pub on a corner – ‘The Ben Lomond’. Viking Tattoo Studio. Seagulls overhead. Big herring gull next to the path. ‘Home Bargains’ store. Sun going down now, though it is still warm. Jarrow Public Convenience. ∑ Over Jarrow metro station. Caroline Street. Bede Burn Road. Basalt flagstones again. ‘Jarrow Dental Laboratory’. Victoria Terrace, small square park opposite. Observation: spotted laurels have been very popular throughout this walk. ∑ A car being washed. ‘For sale’ here, not ‘to let’. Car sticker: ‘Retired and happy spending our kids’ inheritance’ but still BMW and Rover cars nearby. Between a back-to-back terrace – jasmine is flowering. It’s shady in these ‘canyon streets’ now. A ‘tuning fork’ Scots Pine on central reservation. (the top nicked for someone’s Christmas tree) Festival of Britain – 1950 trees planted in the park – low valley, road goes over. ∑ Bamburgh Grove. Thirlwell Grove. Aydon Grove. Three girls giggling in a doorway in pink tracksuits shout out, “Take me”, striking a pose when they see Dan taking a picture every 8 steps. Sunshine – a lovely day still (3:45 p.m). ∑ Alnwick Gardens, St Matthews R.C. Primary School. Lots of washing hung out. Larch says ‘Oh my feet are aching’. Over a little stream, full water level, with rubbish. We’re now on the last page of the A-Z street map – a psychological boost for group. ∑ Colwyn parade, becoming rural to the left, apart from the busy road and Metro rail. A wee in a plantation wood. ∑ We end in a field. Larch decides to cross the stile and symbolically place his foot in a horse’s field. I decide this must be done too. 16 miles apparently. Deserves a group hug. ∑ Reverse slightly, back to Fellgate Metro station. 4.0 p.m. past Roman Road bus stop. ∑ We catch the Metro back into the City, shaking hands as we individually get off at different stations. I hadn’t finished walking, as I had to go back to my hotel in Byker to pick my guitar and bag up, then walked a mile into central Newcastle to the main rail station, where I got the next train south to Leeds and Huddersfield. ∑ On the way, with feet singing, I relaxed and gently reflected on a day well spent geographically – a new way of getting the feel for a city. ∑ We had drifted through outer and inner suburbs virtually unnoticed, and witnessed Sunday life in various parts of Newcastle, the local communities, the string of villages in the City, which we had strung together into a meaningful whole. The periodicity had also been a strong factor: the fact that it was a Sunday (very different to a week day, or even a Saturday?), the fact that this was a sunny day in late January, the fact that we hit various communities at different times on the Sunday, i.e. the woman in a dressing gown early on, the Christians going into church, the Sunday dinner smells later, followed by afternoon football, etc. ∑ I hope that the flavour and essential character of different sections of the city come out from these notes, but they are subjective, humanistic, i.e. they are essentially my experience, no-one else’s, which would be different, and record my particular observations i.e. the fact that I love plants, gardening, trees and house plants – very different to Kye’s discussion of car-types that I know nothing about. Hopefully this is part of the interest of a personal journey. ∑ I hadn’t really spoken to anyone in different parts of the city – perhaps I should do next time. I’m not very good at starting conversations, and one line friendly openers. Perhaps I should say to people I meet at each stage: ‘What’s it like to live here?’ as an open-ended question to invite further humanistic judgements. I wonder whether the woman in her dressing gown would have still gone inside – I’ll never know. ∑ I read this screed to my wife a couple of months later, when it is all transcribed (Well done Nikki!) and I have edited it lightly. Having just had a cartilage operation on her knee, she is laid up on the settee, and cannot hide or make excuses to do something else. However, she sits back and says it’s best to close your eyes to listen to this, easier to imagine the city districts we journeyed through. She remarks at the end that it’s rather like a literary ‘Journey Stick’, which I think is a good comment. ______________________________________________________________ www.urbanearth.com – Dan’s site plus, see critical seminar website too.