Go on a colour walk

Can you collect a rainbow in photo form?

This week I met up with an old friend, who told me she loves reading this newsletter (hi friend!). We used to run events together called Colour Walks, where we’d lead a group of people around a pre-planned route in a UK city and search for colour. It wasn’t really about finding street art, or posing for Instagram photos in front of colourful houses, it was about meeting new people and visiting new places, finding friendship through a common interest. I no longer run these events, but I still love colour. I continue to marvel at street art and appreciate rows of pastel-hued houses. I wear colourful second-hand clothing and have painted every room in my house a different colour. I continue to be friends with people I met through those events too, so they fulfilled their purpose. But my own personal Colour Walks look different now.

Each day I find myself dazzled by unexpected shades on my dog walks. I await the first flash of white snowdrops in February. I zoom in of the bright yellow lichen that inhabits my roof. I research why the leaves change colour in autumn. I (sometimes) know what shade of grey signals rain. And, instead of leading walks where I show people a hidden gem in the form of a bright pink front door, I lead walks where I share facts about bluebells, point out the other green and inconspicuous plants hiding within a patch of grass, encourage people to stop and admire the magnolia, not just because of it’s blushing blooms, but because it was here long before we were.

Back in 2016 I was pretty unhappy where I was living and decided I needed to focus on something positive, so I searched for colour on my daily dog walks. I created a hashtag #DogWalkColourSearch to share my finds and invited others to do the same. Only a few posts remain on Instagram, but it’s interesting to see the mixture of natural and man-made things people posted. I loved being in nature back then, but I didn’t prioritise it, and I certainly didn’t know the names for most things I saw, let alone any facts about them. I just knew they made me happy, and that was enough.

A couple of weeks ago, I found an old post by

Rob Walker

of The Art of Noticing called Collecting Colour, in which he shared some gorgeous colours he’d found while out on his bike. Rob also mentioned a TikTok trend from a couple of years ago, similar to #DogWalkColourSearch, which invited people to find and photograph a particular colour. If my days of Instagram addiction and hosting Colour Walks in big cities taught me anything about nature, it’s that spring is a great time to search for colour. Photogenic trees like cherry blossom and magnolias are in bloom at the beginning of spring and plenty of Instagrammable houses will be covered in pretty purple wisteria much later in the season. Many city streets are transformed by these blooms and, in certain areas, people flock to visit them and take photos to post online. I love to see people travelling to appreciate nature in all its glory, epecially in built up areas. So by all means, take your photo. Post it on social media with some emojis in the caption if you want to. But don’t forget to stop and appreciate the colours with your own eyes while you’re there - sometimes they are only here for a fleeting moment.

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Noticing Nature Task

A few photos of colours I spotted on my walk this morning

Your task this week is to go on a Colour Walk!

You could try and collect colours from the whole rainbow, or you might prefer to focus on finding just one colour and seeing how many things you can find in that colour. Perhaps you might like to fill out a spread in your nature journal about the colours you have found. Here are some questions to help you…

• How many of the things you come across are you already familiar with? Have you noticed them before or have you only spotted them because you were looking in a new way?

• Can you name any of the species you have found?

• If you can, does their name reflect their colour in any way? I came across some green alkanet this morning, which I always accidentally call blue alkanet - I think you’ll see why:

  

• Do the things you found remind you of anything else?

• If you were to create a paint colour inspired by one of the things you found what would you call it?

• Look out for colourful man-made object too - they could lead you to lichen, algae, nests, bugs, birds, insects or spiders, like this guy I found living on a life saver along the river:

  

  I’d love to see how your Colour Walk goes, so tag me if you do post any photos. Have fun!

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