Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
origin (Hall 2005a, 2005b). This means that second home ownership outside the weekend
leisure zone is relatively independent ofthe location of the primary residence; the second
home is visited once or twice annually. However, second home location is not dependent
solely on travel times. Instead, second home locations are also influenced by the
geography of amenity rich landscapes that concentrates the geographical patterns of at
least purpose-built second home to coastal and mountain areas. Furthermore, fashions
and tastes can act as a powerful influence on demand as the following example of
walking suggests.
WALKING AS A LEISURE PURSUIT: A FUNCTION OF
RESOURCES AND FASHION
Walking is a human necessity for able-bodied people to achieve mobility, to engage in
work, social activities and non-work functions. Although the industrial and post-
industrial period has seen a move towards more mechanised forms of transport such as
the car, giving people a greater spatial reach and flexibility in travel patterns, walking
remains a key activity in everyday life and as a leisure activity. As Short (2001:4) noted,
'Walking has created roads, trade routes; generated local and cross-continental senses of
place; shaped cities; parks; generated maps…. This history of walking is an amateur
history, just as walking is an amateur act'. The desire to walk as a leisure pursuit is the
result of history over the last 300 years and according to Short (2001) is based on specific
beliefs, tastes and values. Prior to the eighteenth century, the desire to walk for pleasure
was the pastime of a leisured elite, many of whom resided in mansions, castles and
palaces and who walked within the confines of corridors or enclosed garden spaces, many
of which were formally designed. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the rise of
romantic notions of nature through the writing of Wordsworth in the Lake District (such
as the 1807
Poems in Two Volumes
) and other romantic poets, where the taste for the
natural, long-distance walks, admiring natural features and the associated landscaping of
country house estates in the natural style of landscape designers such as Capability
Brown, created environments with opportunities for views, solitude, natural surroundings
and the removal of traditional designs with geometric layouts. In the case of Wordsworth,
de Botton (2003:138) argues that his poetry led to 'regular travel through nature as a
necessary antidote to the evils of the city'. The significance of such surroundings for
pleasure walking was extolled in Jane Austen's novels, where escapism from house-
based social groups and gatherings could allow leisurely strolls. Such virtues gradually
permeated the evolving middle classes in the urban industrial cities of the western world
in the nineteenth century (see Chapter 5) and eventually the working classes, as more
leisure time was made available after the 1850s. The provision of urban parks and other
spaces for walking allowed for formal walks or promenading on Sunday afternoons,
which was governed by social rules and norms. This also manifests itself in the day trips
to the coast, with formal areas provided for promenading for the Victorians and
Edwardians at leisure. Gradually, walking clubs and organised groups emerged which
saw the spatial extent and dispersion of leisure walking as rambling (British term),
bushwalking (Australia) and tramping (New Zealand) evolved into popular culture and an
important factor in gaining increased access to the countryside and the creation of parks,
