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Part of my Gables in the Wild Series. A Tudor timber and brick nogging mash-up in Saffron Walden. Glorious geometry and handsome herringbone.
Give me the long straight road before me,
A clear, cold day with a nipping air,
Tall, bare trees to run on beside me,
A heart that is light and free from care.
Then let me go! – I care not whither
My feet may lead, for my spirit shall be
Free as the brook that flows to the river,
Free as the river that flows to the sea.
There have been moments in my life when the world I thought I knew has suddenly opened up and revealed something else beyond it. They have happened at different times and in different ways, but each has left me with the same sensation: that the boundaries I had taken for granted weren’t as solid as I imagined them to be.
The first was perhaps the most remarkable, because of the impact it was to have upon the rest of my life.
At school I had already made my mind up about Shakespeare. I thought I knew what it was before I had really read it: something written in a language that belonged to another world and to people very different from me.
Then a teacher took the time to sit with me and encouraged me to stay with Shakespeare’s Macbeth. I struggled at first, but one evening, I untangled all the words and symbols and drew out a chart that followed the plot lines. Then I sat down with the play once again and read it from beginning to end in one sitting, and a new world opened up for me.
I can still remember the effect it had upon me: the realisation that something I thought I already knew could open up and reveal itself to be something far richer than I had ever imagined.
To best convey the feeling, I’d like to share some sublime words by Horatio Clare, written about an experience of light and mist in West Yorkshire. They hold within them the atmosphere of revelation I had from that first moment when one world gave way to another:
“We glimpsed a burning silver disc of sun, and then quickly, so quickly, the sky paled and blued, and air absent of mist grew like lakes in the distance. Now another bluff appeared three miles away, and now another a mile beyond that, and sun and mist and the noses of the moors swam together, shoaling and clearing as if a pod of orcas were surfacing in an Arctic bay.”
After reading Macbeth, the foggy bounds gave way to an extraordinary shoal of humanity: ambition and fear, loyalty and betrayal, the supernatural moving through landscape, the power of suggestion, and the potency of words to gloss the world with.
For the first time I discovered that the world was much bigger and far more nuanced than I could ever imagine.
That first revelation started a process of stepping beyond some of the boundaries I had unconsciously placed around myself.
The experience also became a kind of inoculation. It helped me sort the wheat from the chaff and begin to understand what mattered, what I might stand for and the kind of person I wanted to become.
It didn't prevent the breakdown and depression I had many years later, but somewhere inside me there remained the seed of that first opening: the knowledge that a world which feels complete and incorruptible can suddenly be breached by another way of seeing. When my own world narrowed, I had something folded deep within me: the sense that there might be a door out of the darkness.
Since then there have been other openings. Photography and architecture, of course.
Old buildings began to reveal themselves as much more than the material, and landscapes became layered with memory.
Art taught me to look again at things I thought I already knew and history made familiar things porous to other lives.
If anything, each new encounter has made me less certain. I have come to relish the possibility that a new journey might dislodge the things I take for granted and allow other possibilities to enter.
Looking back, I can see that these openings have accumulated around me almost like a second landscape. Shakespeare sits somewhere within it, alongside photography, architecture, history, art, memory, grief, light and place. Each has breached the world I thought I knew and made it larger, stranger and more alive. I keep travelling in the hope of encountering those thin moments when something deeper comes briefly into view.
In an attempt to convey the wonderment of my experience, I have put together something which pulls together many decades of these encounters into a journey that can be taken on the page - something I call a Mini-Camino.
I hope I don’t offend anybody by using the word ‘camino’. The name has become increasingly relevant to me, because my travels feel more like journeys that bring me back to something sacred in the human experience: attention, connection, memory, wonder, and the feeling of being part of something larger than ourselves.
In a world that often feels as though it is collapsing, I hope the Mini-Caminos might offer a journey that gives us permission to look again at what has become familiar, recover something of our curiosity, put down roots in the world again and move forward with a wider perspective and new ways of navigating what lies ahead.
I invite you to accompany me for a while through some of the openings that have changed the course of my own life - and, in doing so, to leave a little more room for your own. Because the most valuable opening may not be the one I point towards at all, but the one that appears unexpectedly somewhere along the way.
Mini-Caminos
Each mini-camino has its own narrative selected and arranged so that the journey gathers meaning as it unfolds, culminating in a revelation that casts everything before it in a new light.
I've put them together in a format where you can record your journey as long as you keep the page open or saved. I hope that you enjoy them!
Three Mini-Caminos
Follow The Light
I’ve always been taken by the story of Charles I on his deathbed. On his last day on earth, instead of asking for the precious gems that surrounded him, he asked for the curtains to be opened so that he could see his final sunrise.
This Mini-Camino travels from the interior towards a spectacular revelation of light and the many ways it shapes our world. It explores mental health, wellbeing, curiosity, awe and wonder.
Travel this mini-camino here:
Andy Marshall
Held By Place
TV personality Richard Mabey once said that he was so awed by the world around him that he called himself a transcendental materialist. This Mini-Camino explores how certain places - including so-called mundane places - can ground us and ultimately change us. It celebrates place-making and quality of life within communities, while helping us find unexpected comfort and joy in the places we live.
Travel this mini-camino here:
Andy Marshall
Learning To See Again
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer shares a moment in which she sees herself and the world differently:
Yes, That’s When
I like my body when I’m in the woods
and I forget my body. I forget that arms,
that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,
that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain.
I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower.
This Mini-Camino challenges how we see ourselves and the world, offering alternative perspectives that can deepen our understanding of our place within it and our connection with others.
Travel this mini-camino here:
Andy Marshall
Can you help me keep going to extraordinary lengths for remarkable places?
Membership starts at £2 a month - supporting my photography, writing and art, and helping me champion historic buildings and the communities that care for them.
See membership optionsEustace
Certain places move beyond the material and become portals to other worlds.
A few years ago, a member of the Digest contacted me to say that they had begun the process of saving a local historic building. They had used some of my digests to demonstrate the special qualities of the place, including its intangible significance.
That prompted me to create a section of the Digest that advocates for our historic environment and helps people formulate arguments and counter-narratives to protect buildings that are valuable assets within their communities.
To that end, I have been working on an advocacy toolkit. I’m delighted to be able to share it here with those who might need it:
Andy Marshall
Member support gave me the time to turn my ideas into the Eustace Toolkit - now free for anyone who needs it. Thank you.
For Members - The Norbury Video Reel
Beautiful video showing the exterior and remarkable interior at St. Mary and St. Barlok, Norbury.
Click to ViewView More Members Only Content for Norbury:
Andy Marshall
The Secret Door:
Andy Marshall
Norbury was photographed for free because of Member Support. Help shape the next journey
A single membership can become part of the next journey, the next story and the next free photo shoot. Thank You.
Explore Membership OptionsSolar Eclipse
I was on Anglesey during the eclipse, which meant that I experienced only a partial eclipse. I thought I’d record a time-lapse to capture the dip in the light.
During the time it took the moon to cross the sun, I worked on a little watercolour of the tower of St Cybi’s Church in Holyhead - part of my concertina book of church towers.
Thank You!
Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with iPhone 17 Pro and DJI Mini 5 Pro.
🔗 Connect with me on: Bluesky / Instagram / Facebook / X / Tumblr / Flickr / Vimeo / Pixelfed / Pinterest / Flipboard/ Fediverse: @fotofacade@digest.andymarshall.co
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