2025 Terminalia
Hope Circle / Scrap Circle
Follow along with the account from the day in the section below if you wish to make a self-guided walk of the area or to repeat the walk in your own time.
What is Terminalia?
Terminalia is a festival of psychogeography and walking on and around 23rd February each year with a number of free events across the UK and the world!
Peregrinations - Hope Circle / Scrap Circle
Join us as we take a slow group walk round a map-found oddity between Persley and Danestone in Aberdeen. We will consider the changes the weeks and seasons bring, the difference in experience between solitary exploration and group investigations, and the geometry produced by and imposed upon the landscape, as we make a hopeful ritual of walking the man-made circuit among the growth and winter die-back obscuring the site's paths.
Simplified from data on Open Street Map. Thanks to all their contributors.
Meeting time - 11:00 GMT, Sunday 23rd February 2025
Meeting point - Danestone, Aberdeen, Scotland.
At the pedestrian path from the Tesco Extra car park to the A92 (The Parkway). Opposite the entrance road to the scrap merchants RGS Hutchison & Sons.
57.179910, -2.150402
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/83537790
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DRj1Wfige1Xr2k59A
https://w3w.co/timing.reveal.hurray
What to bring - sturdy shoes, warm clothes, a waterproof and a camera/phone/notebook to record observations. Be prepared for some rain and mud!
Duration - approximately 1.5 hours and we will have time for a review at the local Tesco cafe after.
Cost - Free! Please donate to a local environmental charity if you enjoy the walk.
Contact - peregrinations@lostpathpress.co.uk
Recording Your Experience
A simple note book can be made echoing the circular nature of the walk. (Instructions and templates to fold your own.)
Optional
Share your findings and creations:
- Tag us on social media - #hopecirclescrapcircle
- Pics from the day - @peregrinationsscot.bsky.social
- Email us - peregrinations@lostpathpress.co.uk
We would love to see what the walk has inspired you to record and to hear about your own psychogeography adventures.
The Day
Hope Circle / Scrap Circle - Danestone Hill, Aberdeen
23rd February 2025 - Terminalia Festival
Persley
It feels just like we’re walking on broken glass sings Annie Lenox from up the road in Ellon. And often we are.
The Roman god Terminus (lit. boundary stone) was the embodiment of the outer limit. Between places, between years, between people, between spirits. A feast of celebration was held at the end of (possibly - opinions differ) the old Roman year to see in the new year at its starting bound - Terminalia - this took place around the 23rd of February in our modern Western calendar. A festival of reflection and yearly renewal marked with garlands on the boundary stones.
I yield to no one - concedo nulli - a statue on a terminus, a squared off column, defies. Planted firm, keeping the peace between adjacent lands. No hands, no feet, just steadfast on the boundary.
Psychogeographers are people in motion, walking the land, ignoring boundaries for the most part and following their intuition, the feeling of poetry the place offers them as guidance to their meanderings.
Walking is a hopeful activity, progressing from a start to an end, allowing you time to carefully observe the world around you with all your senses and to connect with that environment through physical exertion. The point of walking is not to record the activity, but movement and thought have long been associated, ideas flowing along the path trodden and often worth making note of.
Slow noticing finds beauty in the mundane details, the rain no longer a torment but the revealer of jewel tones amongst the rubbish, the cold a crisp balm to exerted lungs as you ascend a hill, the wind an animator of the grass, branches and clouds reconfiguring patterns to be recognised and lost. It takes energy to go slowly and to appreciate everything around you. Hope and hold fast.
Circles are believed to form protective barriers, inscribed by walking or built into the land as this asphalt road circuit is, a radial verge. Quietly circling its perimeter on foot could be taken as a performative meditation on hope. The symbolic ritual of returning to the beginning marks a renewal of intention to explore and experience a place with new eyes, crossing the boundary of the ring brings a calmer more relaxed feeling as the days objective has been found and investigated. It is still a curious place of questions but it is a remarkably peaceful place too, of shy wildlife and dramatic weather.
Wire Scrap Circle