Slow movement Slow travel Slow landscape

Does the Slow Movement ring a bell?
This item is on the slow movement, slow travel inclusive an iconic landscape travel TV, mindfull slow movement... 

This movement started with slow food ,

but rapidly expanded in many other cultural fields, including slow travel.

Well, by now you perhaps know I'm studying aspects of pilgrimage, landscape, movement and experience. So, I want to guide your attention on a spin-off. The nice concept of slow travel or slow tourism as an example of performed transmodernity. A concept related to backpacking, eco-tourism and volunteer tourism. A concept related to pilgrim/tourist traveling.

Encountering a new lifestyle.

Here are a few pointers...

Introduction

Wikipedia: "The slow movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life's pace. It began with Carlo Petrini's protest against the opening of a McDonald's restaurant in Piazza di Spagna, Rome in 1986 that sparked the creation of the slow food movement. Over time, this developed into a subculture in other areas, like the Cittaslow organisation for "slow cities". The "slow" epithet has subsequently been applied to a variety of activities and aspects of culture."

Ted presentation by

Carl Honore: In praise of slowness

(20:00)

Manifesto

"Slow travel is about making conscious choices, and not letting the anticipation of arrival undermine the pleasure of the journey. By choosing to travel slowly, we reshape our relationship with place and with the communities through which we pass on our journeys. In 2009 we launched our 'Manifesto for slow travel'."

See full manifest on:

A manifesto for Slow Travel, Nicky Gardner

More on slow travel

Carl Honoré, journalist and author of In Praise of Slowness, talking about Slow Travel

(7:59)

Carl Honore

Slow Travel,

presentation from Verena Erin

SLOW - A short film about van life- English version

Because life’s too short to live too fast.

"Synopsis: Two couples traveling around the world in two camper vans decide to discover the Ecuadorian jungle together. Through a word game they realize that everything is interconnected. This short film is a reflection on the structures Western society forces upon us.

Directed by: Marta Tibau and Marià Miño"

(9:59)

Mmviatges - Furgo en ruta

Topping off

How can we deal with the addictive nature of speed? Carl Honoré, Gervais Williams, Deepa Patel and Kate Fletcher explore how we can improve our quality of life, well-being and creativity by applying the principles of slow.

The slow revolution

RSA

(17:43)

And finally if you have some time to spend.
The Bergen line to Oslo, an iconic slow-TV program in 2009.
See the slow slowly changing landscape.

(7:14:13)

More on slow-TV in the article ´Slow TV is here´from Nathan Heller in The New Yorker 2014. 

A special type of mindfull slow movement is het meditation method of Kinhin, often performed between two sessions of Zazen.

More on mindfull walking is said and written by Thich Nhat Hanh .

The miracle of walking on the earth.

Perhaps here is a clue on taking the 'camino experience' home, at least partly!
See more on this website article 'From pilgrimage to walking meditation'

There are several 'slow' related books like..

(and many articles...)

An article on pilgrimage and slow travel from these books can be found on Academia:

" We are pilgrims through time - Augustine 

The path of modernity is one characterized by acceleration, interconnection and mobility. Amidst the increasingly fast tempo of life in late modernity, contemporary pilgrims and other ‘slow travellers’ express needs and desires for alternative experiences of temporality, while subverting the dominant ‘cult of speed’. My objective in this chapter is to focus on issues of temporality in exploring three aspects of slow travel: the potential contradictions it presents, its direct relationship to modernization and its link to pilgrimage."

Howard: Speeding up and slowing down, Pilgrimage and Slow Travel through time.

Link to website of Slow Movement here.

"As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow."

A. C. Benson

Take life slow !
See you next time with better hearth rhythm variability ;-)

Walk and Horreo

Sleeping in a Parador is perhaps not the place to sleep along the Camino de Santiago for a usual pilgrim.
But a traditional horreo, that's an option for the pilgrim living traditonal values, right?

Architect Nacho Gias from Madrid rebuilded four traditional horreos along the camino into luxurious 2 person cabins. (66$ a night)

By the end of 2016 two more are planned.

Catesby Holmes reports in Conde Nast Traveler

See also the Walk and Horreo site

Rural flight

Perhaps half of all abandoned villages in Spain are in Galicia. As processes of aging, rural flight (& urbanisation) and bad (economic) perspectives continue, this development will increase. Will immigration or tourism have an impact?

I collected some fine articles, a book and a movie on the subject.

So, if interested, go ahead ;-)

Population increase (red) or decrease (blue):

(Source and also population map of Europe on CityMetric here (Jun 2015))

Have a look at this 13:11 documentary on Galician Ghost villages published by Celtico on the situation of the living landscape and on a family started to live in a former abandoned village.

See also this article in NPR (Aug 2015)

In Spain, Entire Villages Are Up For Sale — And They're Going Cheap

or this one in Christian Science Monitor (Aug 2015)

For sale in Spanish 'paradise': entire villages. Cheap.

or this one in Financial Times (Dec 2014)

A Spanish exodus to the cities leaves a desert in its wake
(FT subscription field may popup)

or this pictoral impression of Molina de Aragon, the least-populated place in Europe in MailOnline (Mar 2015)

This is in contrast with research from CheckmyBus (nov 2015) where The Camino de Santiago with place five rates among the top ten of tourist attractions in Spain, with Santiago de Compostela on the sixth place (LaVoxdeGalicia).

More information in

The Depopulation of Rural Spain in the Twentieth Century

by Fernando Collantes and Vicente Pinilla, 2011

(book review here)

In 'Reducing Depopulation in Rural Spain: The Impact of Immigration' the authors (Fernando Collantes, Vicente Pinilla, Luis Antonio Sáez and Javier Silvestre, 2013) discuss research on the impact of immigration that could lead to substantial reduction.

(Here available online)

Immigration and depopulation is also subject of the article 

'Silent blight in a countryside of empty homes and shut shops'

in The Guardian (Aug 2015):

"Young people are leaving rural areas of Europe for the cities at a time when birth rates are at historic lows. As the countryside empties, should rising immigration be seen as a solution, not a problem?"

(Click here to see)

(And for Dutch audience a link to a report from Henk Jan Slomp on depolulation in Spain, specific Matarraña, Teruel (2004))

Northern Spain Camino's on Unesco World Heritage List

The process took many years. But finally several Camino's in Northern Spain enter Unesco's World Heritage List.
Other sites as the old city of Santiago de Compostela or the wall surrounded city of Lugo (along the Camino Primitivo) are already on this heritage list. As is the Camino Frances, and we know it's success.

"Las diferentes rutas del Camino de Santiago propuestas para su inscripción en la Lista del Patrimonio Mundial cuentan con una longitud global de 1.498,91 kilómetros. La distribución por itinerarios es la siguiente:Camino Primitivo: 311,31 kilómetros ; Camino de la Costa: 936,28 kilómetros ; Camino Interior: 196 kilómetros ; Camino Lebaniego: 55,32 kilómetros"
(La Nueva Espana, 6/5/2015)

A mere formality is the acceptance of the proposition of Icomos (International Council on Monuments and sites) by Unesco, this summer in Bonn.

The Camino Lebaniego is a lesser known camino. The major place on that camino is the Convent of Santo Toribio de Liebana. They celibrate their Holy Year in 2017.

Website Camino Lebaniego

The efforts of the Asturian government pays off, touristic succes is expected.

Link to the article in La Nueva Espana

Link to the camino Lebaniego

L'Allée des Alyscamps

Recently the painting L'Allée des Alyscamps by Vincent van Gogh was auctioned in New York. The new Asian owner was prepared to pay 66,3 million dollar (about 59 million Euro). The landscape painting dates from 1888.
Alychamps is a necropolis near the centre of Arles. Originally Roman along the Via Aurelia, but in use untill late medieaval times.
It's interesting to see how the painting compares to a photo from about the same period. And then compare the place to how it looks in our days. So that's what I tried to find out.

left L'Allée des Alyscamps by Vincent van Gogh (Wikimedia commons), right present Alyscamps (Wikipedia Hawobo)

The following photo of the L'Allée des Sarcophages des Alyscamps was taken between 1859 and 1910.

L'Allée des Sarcophages des Alyscamps (Wikimedia commons, Bibliothèque de Toulouse, domaine public)

With growing pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela it became more important. It's the starting point for the Via Tolosana, one of the four main routes to Santiago de Compostela in France as mentioned in Aimeric Picaud's Codex Calixtinus (Via Aegidia).

Via Tolosana