ABSTRACT

The reasons people walk are varied. People walk as necessity, or for leisure and recreation, often with a pedagogical purpose, as sport, for spiritual purposes (pilgrimages or processions) or survival (transborder migrations), to surpass themselves and as self-actualisation (extreme walking, strenuous treks), as contestation and protest, to express support and solidarity, for health, to connect to others and to connect to place. Ultimately, walking is ‘constitutive of human beings’ (de Baecque 2016), and a fundamental human activity and means of interacting with the environment (Bassett 2004). One reason is that walking allows for a multi-sensory experience of place and time–space (Edensor 2010). This aspect of our ‘lifeworld routine’ (Wunderlich 2008) gives meaning to place, shapes our engagement with place and triggers an affective relationship with it. But this should not be taken for granted as something that just happens without planning or design. Since walking is also ‘constitutive of place’ (Lee 2004), it may be recruited to shape place, especially in heritage sites. Indeed, as walking allows place periodicity to come to light, it reveals the layers of history in that place, the ‘incessant stomping’ that occurred there over time, and the ‘superposed fossil itineraries [that are] unconsciously reactivated by walkers or flâneurs who come after’ (de Baecque 2016; author’s translation). This study thus brings together heritage-making, place attachment and walkability design to highlight the ways in which heritage sites in rural France endeavour to organise and design space to foster an engagement with place and with the past on the part of temporary visitors and permanent residents alike.