Notes from the Day
Hope Circle / Scrap Circle
Danestone Hill, Aberdeen
23rd February 2025 - Terminalia Festival
Simplified from data on Open Street Map. Thanks to all their contributors.
The Walk
The path between the car park and the Parkway offers no shelter from the driving rain or wind, and while the weather has certainly been worse up here - once those who confirmed have gathered - we are off sharp at 11am with no extraneous hanging about. Keep moving, keep warm.
Crossing the road is treacherous. The speed limit on this section means that by the time a car exits the junction at the roundabout another could be flying halfway down the road in the other direction, however crossing as a group has the advantage of many pairs of eyes and some (imagined) safety in numbers.
Fences
To the left , the path’s entrance is obscured by parked vans and piles of rubbish, but the entry gate is just behind and it is easier than clambering over a new gate placed further along by the road. The thrum of the traffic muffles as the mulch of weeds obscures us from the Parkway. Skirting the scrapyard‘s perimeter, we follow the path uphill to the white woods and the open fields. Tones of mud, brown and black tree limbs against the slate grey sky, russet bracken die-back and cut straw grasses flattened to the ground by rain and wind. The way is much easier without the head-high bracken, thistles and brambles of summer. A derelict cow byre can be seen now the greenery is in winter retreat, layered with graffiti and looming askance just off the track. Aside from our own human boot prints the mud contains the occasion trace of deer or bird in the deeper ruts made from cycle tracks and quad bike tyres. We hide in the woods, there is a hide in the woods.
Hoof prints
All is grey or brown - the occasional blue, green, red, orange, pink rubbish standing out on the neutral scene. The view from the top of the rise towards the Granite City is no more colourful. Only the bright yellow storage warehouse breaking up the endless shades of grey. The sky, the clouds, condensing vapour and smoke from chimneys, the mist rising from the damp valley, the rain driven horizontally in the wind, the granite and breeze block buildings, the pavements, the roads, the dormant trees, the fallen branches dark from the rain or pale where the bark has been stripped off by eager white teeth looking for food or sheltering nest materials. It is a muted world.
Persley
Paths churned by a 4x4 leave bare dark earth - small plants growing bright green in the black soil ruts. Some of these paths will be obscured by new growth soon, the bracken will once again top 6 foot, ground cover obscuring the fly tipped debris.
Downhill over limbs felled by recent winter storms - the higher elevations feeling the wind, rain driven in stinging pellets like hail. Views out over to the Mastrick tower, the Persley brick stack, new builds white voids against the grey clouded sky.
Car parts scattered and ornamenting the parterre sections formed by the criss cross of bike paths - little pieces of orange rust, silver wire and green plugs winking in the wet undergrowth. Dull black car bumpers broken and scattered to the edges.
Wire Scrap Circle
We reach the asphalt map feature by the long route. Returning to its shambolic oval I try to hold some thoughts of hopeful ritual and memories of the medieval maps and charts from a recent talk 1. East at the top, downhill to the rivers mouth , blades of the offshore turbine farm idling in the gales.
We find two Tesco shopping trolleys left by late night revellers. Chariot racing is inevitable, even in the driving rain, the opportunity for irreverent play is too good to miss out on. It is strange that one part of the brain can be contemplating inscribing the figure eights and diamond symbols from Byrhtferth’s 14th century diagram and another part trying to work out the centre of gravity for a shopping trolley so a slightly perverse sculpture can be assembled.
Two Yamaha motorbike panniers lie discarded, stolen probably, contents gone. Emerald shards of windscreen glass, broken and melted, a modern mosaic with the start of an ad-hoc impluvium beginning to fill.
Trolleys and glass
Loch
In the center, muddy runnels feed into fake lochs, truck tire gouges creating miniature versions of the countryside lined up like a model village gone horribly wrong. Having completed our widdershins perambulations, a new orbital passage formed through the re-wilded country, it is time to exit the protective circle and see what else awaits on the route back.
Mud. Mud awaits us. Slithering down the slick mountain bike paths we come to a burnt out car, melded to the land by inches of thrown up dirt. Parts are almost unrecognisable, the colander back of the headlights, seat headrests wire arches over back panels, the box of the radio out of place between the seats. Trees line up in the rust pool of the roof.
Muddy burnt out car
Walking uniform
Rust Pool
We reach the back fence of the scrap yard, unknown debris hangs from the chain link fence, blown to a point of seeming levitation. The route out, downhill along the side, leaves us covered in persistent burrs wanting us to carry them to a new seeding field. They just end up by the roadside the inspiration to invent sapped by the rain and already usurped by De Mestral.
Burrs
Back to the thrum of the traffic and a long anticipated cup of hot coffee. A little ritual in itself.
1 - Chris Fleet, Talk at the National Library of Scotland, 20/02/2025