Grounded Conversations

Josepth Potts

Birmingham

It’s nice to just go on the hills and meeting with other people travelling along the way. When it’s quiet and you’ve got the hills to yourself, but also when it’s busy it’s still very special. It’s a place that people want to come to for the vistas and a place that people can come to to get away from everyday life. It’s got its own rhythm that’s different to the city rhythm.

And today it’s this wild kind of windswept landscape of clouds and shimmering bits of sky, well to me it’s magical. Walking itself is a meditation. When it’s empty, it allows me to release thoughts and ideas and just hop, skip and jump around the hills.

The Malvern Hills is always a great day out from Birmingham. It's a place that you can see from the Clent Hills, which is a local hill that I've always loved. You can always see the rippling hills in the distance. That Malvern ridge is always so appealing from such a distance.

I've come here with girlfriends and I come with friends. I used to come here with my friends when I was a teenager to do a bit of wild camping roundabout. There's nothing else like it around in the Midlands for this. You think know the hills and the area, and then you always find a bit more that you want to explore.

There’s Castlemorton Common which I was fascinated by because of the free festival that took place about 30 years ago and became culturally significant and led to the passing of the Criminal Justice Bill. Some of my friends saw it on TV and said they've got to go. And they went and it was this crazy kind of wild rave in this wilderness. I know it didn't go down well locally, but it was a cultural milestone.

Then there was the great Whiteleaved Oak that I went to on a date a few years ago. It was an odyssey to see that very special place for the first time which then became a kind of pilgrimage point. It's on a lay line, the hills do have this kind of magnetic pull. It was this pilgrimage point for people to come and leave notes and leave things in the tree, it was a very safe space, and very welcoming. It was a very old, not religious but a kind of living, mythical place. And I was actually there the week before it got burnt down.

It's nice to just go on the hills and also meeting with other people travelling along the way. When it's quiet and you've got the hills to yourself, but also when it's busy it's still very special. It’s a place that people want to come to for the vistas and a place that people can come to to get away from everyday life. It's kind of got its own rhythm that's different to the city rhythm. And today it’s this wild kind of windswept landscape of clouds and shimmering bits of sky, well to me it's magical. At other times when it’s clear and the sun is out there are often loads of people out and about. It becomes a kind of collective pilgrimage that can help see life from different viewpoints. Here sometimes you are rising above it and you're in the clouds. And sometimes above the clouds as well, I've been here when these clouds have been below it and it's, it's a clear blue sky above and it's fully misty below. That's always magical as well.

Even today like this, it’s really refreshing to get the exercise in and wake up into nature, walk up into nature. The encompassing cloud is its own kind of comfort blanket. It’s this kind of elemental feeling that you're walking in the clouds. There’s heather blowing, and then the the odd walker that you nod to. Walking itself is a meditation. When it's empty, it allows me to release thoughts and ideas and just hop, skip and jump around the hills. For me, it allows creativity to come in because it releases you from the everyday. It’s a different way of being in the landscape that brings you back into the body. It allows me more creative space to think, to declutter my everyday mind.

It's always lovely to see when they've got some of the livestock on the hill. I’d like to see more trees because it can look a little bit bleak sometime. I don’t know it it ever was a forest before. It's good that they are doing some management to control the erosion. I think it needs to be continually managed, it needs to be continually looked after, because it, the hills are changing with, with so people on them, and it does need conservation to keep them in balance.