Routeways and Connections
Friday, February 27, 2015Between March and June 2015 Routeways and Connections will be engaging communities in a physical and hands on way, with the heritage of the Kingswear and Brixham Peninsula. Lead artist on the project, Shelley Castle, shares here some of her experience on the journey preparing for this project.
I’m an outsider for this project, coming from Kingsbridge every day and crossing the handsome Dart River by the lower ferry from Dartmouth to Kingswear, but so far I’ve been welcomed warmly by everyone I’ve met in the peninsula, from Brixham to Galmpton, Kingswear to Churston. I’ve met passionate birders, knowledgeable local historians, lots of dog walkers, some incredible sea-faring chaps, an awesome chainsaw wielding Ranger called Rosie and a horse named Mo with the patience of a saint and the muscles of Hercules.
Whilst sitting above Churston Cove I saw my first pair of seals and am looking forward to finding more about the areas significant wildlife as well as it’s plentiful farming animals who come and go regardless of boundaries. There are bats, eels, beetles and birds coming and going every which way, so mapping might be a never-ending job which hopefully the community will enjoy getting involved in.
I also discovered that Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust are taking four huge larch trees out of the woods in The Grange and taking them via boat to a yard near Galmpton where some local wood-turning guys are going to create a Napoleonic signalling mast to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. The boat will pass by Forward Point, one of the most amazing look-out stations I’ve visited, where volunteers keep a keen eye on the comings and goings across the sea that surrounds the peninsula.These are just some of the sites where I hope to create events with the various communities in the peninsula both from along the coast and inland. During February I’ll be researching, mostly with the help of volunteers from various organisations including our partners. Workshops will begin towards the end of March.
Routeways and Connections is a partnership project between Encounters, South Devon Area of Outstanding Beauty, Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust, the National Trust, Lupton Trust, and local community organisations and is part of the multi-agency Green Infrastructure project taking place across Torbay. Encounters Associate, Shelley Castle is the lead artist on this project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Kingswear Parish Council and the South Devon AONB.