This piece was inspired by a walk in Brandenburg with Nicky and Greg Gardner. Nicky is the co-editor of Hidden Europe, and you can read her own impressions of the walk by following the link below.
Many writers would argue that if you want to walk for inspiration you need to walk alone. I have some sympathy for this view, and often find that a solitary walk gives me the time and space to get things clear in my head, finding solutions on the pavement or the parkland track to problems that seemed insurmountable sitting in the accusing glare of the anglepoise lamp on my desk. It is for this reason that I rarely leave the house without a small notebook in my pocket, using park benches, stone walls and tram-stops as temporary office space along the way.
But sometimes it is company and conversation that can make a walk inspiring, and so it proved on a wet Friday afternoon at the beginning of October, as I walked with friends around the lake at Buckow, fifty-odd kilometres east of Berlin. “Normally I am known for taking copious amounts of notes when I walk,” Nicky said to me, about halfway around, but her notebook, like mine, stayed firmly in the pocket. Instead, we talked.
Under a Grey Sky 