Paul Stones Strolling Tours
Spacewalk
Since I was young I’ve looked out at the stars and dreamt of space travel; the spaceships, the rockets, the space-stations, the astronauts.
Travel the Solar System in under an hour, seeing the sights and finding out some impressive facts and stunning numbers; i.e. The Parker Solar Probe is the fastest spacecraft ever built – and if it could speed in a straight line toward deep space – it would still take over 4,000 years to clear the Oort Cloud; the gravitational edge of the solar system!
This is a walk of a kilometre or a mile, and scaled down to fit in it, is our solar system. In this way we can imagine more easily the size and the distances that define our ‘local’ arrangement of planets, asteroids and other celestial bodies. We can, given this scaling down, reach into science-fiction and stroll at 12x the speed of light (or Warp 2 for Star Trek fans) finding out some intriguing stuff about the people who have explored and are exploring it.
The universe is home to the great questions of existence and though I have few answers to the profound ones, I can, at least share some of the facts that have ‘wow-ed’ me.
Endurance
Explore the limits of endurance and survival with Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 Antarctic explorers.
This is the story of Shackleton’s ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition; “…a transcontinental journey from sea to sea, crossing the pole.”. The ‘ice-ship’ Endurance departed from Plymouth on 8 August 1914; by December, the ship was stranded, then crushed by pack-ice with the crew camped out on the frozen Weddell Sea. 1,000 gruelling miles by land and sea and more than 2 years later, the expedition was finally rescued.
According to legend, Shackleton posted an advertisement in a London paper, stating: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”. He received more than 5,000 applications for places on the expedition, including a letter from “three sporty girls” who suggested that if their feminine garb was inconvenient they would “just love to don masculine attire.”
This is a good winter’s walk, preferably by the sea, but just as effective on wind-swept downland or around a park with a much more likely hope of a timely rescue and a warm drink in a café nearby!
SITE-SPECIFIC TOURS
Devil’s Dyke
Take a walk around the Devil’s Dyke on the Downs just north of Brighton and discover many delights from when it was a Victorian pleasure ground; a fun fair, cable car and gypsy fortune-teller being several of the attractions.
In 1891, James Henry Hubbard, game hunter, taxidermist and showman purchased the 190-acre Dyke Estate, with the Dyke Hotel, fun-fair and switchback railway. He added to the site, building a steep-grade railway and camera obscura amongst much else, turning the estate into a vibrant tourist attraction attended by royalty and commoner alike.
Since 1995 the land has been looked after by the National Trust and though there is little left of the ‘pleasure grounds’ that once greeted a million visitors a year, there is still some evidence in foundations and impressions left from those exciting times.
Accompany me on a walk around the site and I will show you these things with the splendid views of Sussex and beyond as backdrop; and relate the tale of how in 13 years James Hubbard went from wealth to bankruptcy and how the great Victorian show fell into ruin.
All the walks are 1 km or 1 mile. They can take place anywhere apart from the site specific walk on Devil’s Dyke.
