And the Suffolk walk described in this book is an exemplary walk, a case study - this is exactly how to do it. Those who try it report that their walking is never quite the same again. It's a kind of walking that burrows beneath the guidebook and the map, looks beyond the shopfront and Tudor facade and feels beneath the blisters and disgruntlement of the everyday. On a second level it sets out a unique kind of walking that the author has been practising for many years and for which he is quietly famous. On one level On Walking describes an actual, lumbering walk from one incongruous B&B to the next, taking in Dunwich, Lowestoft, Southwold, Covehithe, Orford Ness, Sutton Hoo, Bungay and Rendlesham Forest - with their lost villages, Cold War testing sites, black dogs, white deer and alien trails. But Phil Smith's own walk soon becomes quite as extraordinary as Sebald's and he matches Sebald's erudition, originality and humour swathe for swathe. Sebald, whose The Rings of Saturn was an account of his walk round Suffolk 20 years ago. Phil’s publications include A nywhere: a mythogeography of South Devon (2017), A Footbook of Zombie Walking and Walking’s New Movement (2015), On Walking and Enchanted Things (2014), Counter-Tourism: The Handbook (2012) and Mythogeography (2010).This is not the first walk in the footsteps of W.G.
Also working as a site artist for Tracing the Pathway’s ‘Groundwork’ project in Milton Keynes and with Threshold Studios on a ‘Storylines’ project as part of Digitalis in the same city. Phil is at present developing a ‘common dance for threatened subjectivities’ with choreographer Melanie Kloetzel (Calgary University). He is company dramaturg for TNT (Munich). He is a core member of site-based arts collective Wrights & Sites, presently working on a new publication, The Architect-Walker. He is a performance-maker, writer and ambulatory researcher, specialising in creating performances related to walking, site-specificity, mythogeographies and counter-tourism. Phil Smith is an associate professor (reader) at Plymouth University. Author, A Footbook of Zombie Walking writer and performance-maker associate professor, Plymouth University
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