Cycling for culture : experiential tourism and cultural and natural heritage (part 1)

Experiential and green tourism is everywhere, for various reasons - not only is it a way to reimagine tourism in general (hopefully impacting some not so nice sides of it), it itself is also impacted by and a part of our technological participation, which in turn helps us share our experiences. What is technological participation? It is a phrase I will be using here to describe our relationship with technology we use - from various online maps to smart phone cameras to social media like Instagram - as a part of our daily life as well as our extraordinary days...days when we want to show or share that we did or experienced something special. Experiential tourism, therefore, and a large part of green tourism within that sphere, have appeal to both sides : the organisers and communities that wish for tourism to be more thoughtful, kinder, and the participants, who wish for tourism to offer something of an adventure, or at least something that is out of the ordinary scope of taking holidays. And both has a connection to the technology at our fingertips.

Sharing experiences is not new. It is, I believe, as old as the world itself. A part of it is undoubtedly down to evolutionary benefits : sharing information on predators, areas with food and so forth, as well as immediate things like danger, are a part of all animal life, including human. It allows us to survive in a world that can be complicated to survive in. A part, though, is about social bonding. Through sharing the same experience, or through sharing an experience with someone else through means available to us, we can focus on togetherness (even when it is just imagined, when a "wish you were here" or "guess what I did yesterday" is narrated or expressed in some way to someone who wasn't there, but we wish had been; it's a replacement of actually being there), strengthening bonds of partnership, kinship, friendship. When mourning loss, those memories will come out whether we are alone or with someone else who knew the person; looking forward to an experience is also looking forward to being together and experiencing it with someone else; and sharing, in general, may even have cultural meaning. (See p 2 of the pdf especially, and the part on historic pilgrimages from the second link. Also, be aware that many cultures have sharing habits that will tie specifically to liminal periods like absence, or specifically try to tie these and other parts of our lives into sharing...like the most widely spread concept of a common postcard.) Sharing, in many ways, very quickly becomes sharing information about something as well as its physical representations : be it through the (for me utterly charming) practices like omiyage, to sending that postcard, to creating an album of photographs to, ultimately, posting photos on social media (for people we know but are too far to share them to physically, as well as, sometimes, to strangers for various reasons).

This is where technological participation plays a role : while things like narration of a story, showing of a photograph and giving of a gift require physical presence, using connective technology such as social media does not. It is free (sending photo albums or even postcards isn't) and it has a greater success rate than average (hands up all who have sent packages and postcards that never arrived, or have had long adventures of their own on the way to the recipient). Tech available, be it a humble camera or indeed a fancy smartphone, also allows us to do more and more to collect semi-tangible memories to share on our own terms, but it also enters the sphere of travel itself - no longer do we have to carry any number of large, awkward maps that take up space and may or may not end up ripped, wet and stained, we have it all at our fingertips on that magic phone (in theory, not accounting for mistakes, bad reception and similar problems). At its best, this means that, while a map is telling us where to go, we can communicate and share in real or almost real time with someone halfway across the globe. Sharing, therefore, has entangled tightly with technology by now, as well as with the concept of travel and experience itself.

And this is where Voies Vertes : Green Routes Project comes in. Presented under a slightly more academic sounding title on its home page (linked here in the article) but findable under #voiesvertesgreenroutesproject on Instagram (via @anthropologyiseverywhere), this ethnographic project has been what my wife (and frequent co-researcher) and myself have been working on for about a year now, and will likely work on for the next one or two (given how the weather impacted this year's active fieldwork stage, that will be very necessary). The objective is to explore how Green Routes work to connect potential local or foreign experientially interested traveller with local well or less well-known cultural history; what kind of accessibility they have; and, of course, how well are they findable online (both on maps and from the perspective of inciting interest in visit). As many localities (including Loiret, where we live and where this project is effectively taking place) turn to promoting experiential and green tourism (often in connection), this project seeks to ask questions that need to be asked if such tourism is to be successful...questions that should be useful to not only localities themselves, but also solitary or small group travellers (spouses, families and friends) interested in joining the fun of cycling with the fun of learning about and being a civilian custodian of cultural (and in many ways natural) heritage of this area. The project will ultimately be bilingual, with one of us covering English and the other French, and we hope to present it not only through visual, cultural and social anthropology tools (utilising and reporting through academic means as well as online, occasionally in real time as a sort of participant or theoretical participant observation, where we are simulating what a person might do through our own use of the routes and social media), as well as any other tools that become available to us.

What are Voies Vertes, or Green Routes?

Green Routes are cycling paths criss-crossing much of France, and which ultimately connect with other countries in Europe (the continent as well as the EU as the socio-political concept; it is possible to cycle further according to the Lonely Planet's 500 Itineraires a velo en France (p 21) ). As a generality, these are routes devoid of all or most other traffic...though hikers, inline skaters, runners and occasional local people going home frequently share them. Elsewhere, these routes become parts of smaller or larger local roads, where traffic is unfortunately present but in various more or less frightening ways. (You have not known fear until several white vans speeding along such a road pass you aggressively about an inch away as you are cycling and keeping those eyes on the horizon, saying to yourself, just a few more km...on the other hand, some of those roads can be very empty, or have drivers that are kind to cyclists too.) They pass through towns, cities and villages, and connect the countryside with the urban centres. They are part of many concepts of cycling : from becoming a way to go to work, school or even store or local market, to engaging in movement for health and joy, to of course longer or shorter trips that have a specific goal in mind...for instance local or more distant cultural heritage. And as you can imagine, this makes them the very centre point of interest where experiential tourism intersects with cultural and natural heritage tourism (which are themselves linked); using a bike enables a person or persons, local or otherwise, to engage very specifically, on their own terms, with their surroundings, have an adventure, experience all that goes with it and ultimately reach the goal of connecting with the cultural heritage of choice (eg cycling to a well-known castle like Chambord or discovering smaller cultural monuments along the way).

If you have been reading this newsletter often, you probably know that we are passionate about outdoors, and that we love to cycle. Green Routes Project was, undoubtedly, born from those roots...when we would go for a ride, with or without a specific historic or natural point of interest in mind, or would find some along the way, and would inevitably start talking about what we saw and experienced. We have an online presence, to some extent, and we both look for inspiration in other people's mini or larger adventures. Our own sharing and observing the community around sharing what is essentially a mix of experiential tourism/adventure and cultural/natural heritage content, we began to wonder how Green routes as a concept might feature in how ourselves and others connect with the content, find inspiration for trips and, ultimately, what this may mean for cultural/natural heritage and experiential tourism locally. And under locally, we mean the space, not the people; people who share the interest may be extremely local or utterly global. One has no trouble finding foreign tourists on the Loiret Green Routes among the multitude of locals. The interest, therefore, is widely spread, and cycling as a mode of transport is popular. But often, especially smaller historic monuments and spaces have little to no presence online, and little to no information is available when you reach them. These, especially, form a lot of interest for us, as does observation of how information is becoming less scarce as their value is revalued by the local communities.

This summer formed the first fieldwork stage, and, immediately, things went sideways. The project was supposed to have stages - general research during the late autumn and winter phase, when cycling becomes complicated because of weather, spiced up with some preliminary interviews; then, from mid-spring to early autumn, we would engage in the fieldwork stage, with a highpoint of August, when 3 weeks of holiday give us and others space and time to go exploring properly. (You have to remember that we both work as well, and that this project isn't, at this point, paid; my own business, Culture Contact, is the sole sponsor, predominantly through my decision to do unpaid ethnographic work instead of looking for paying clients - it is more about letting go of finding money than of pouring money into the project, though all expenses are, of course, covered from our own pockets, making the word "sponsorship" a lot more real.) Autumn and winter were full of sick spells; and, when we finally reached spring, the weather made it difficult - and at times impossible - to go anywhere far, let alone use technology to record the trip. As we are hoping to mimic an average person's approach to documenting their journey and interaction with the cultural heritage, we are using what most people have available - predominantly our smart phones, with the likelihood of adding a simple camcorder in the future. None of this equipment is National Geographic Explorer level, so we have to be ingenious when it comes to beating the weather conditions and other difficulties, something that an average person also has to deal with.

These conditions, in a sense, can and do impact an average traveller as well. Weather can be very unpredictable here (on one of the trips, we got sunburnt before we got into some truly torrential rain before the end, all in a matter of hours, and totally out of sync with not one but two weather apps), and while a person may choose to press forward, doing so when they are unsure of what they may see along the way isn't very likely. Less known, smaller examples of cultural heritage become especially appealing if you are weighing your options...do you turn back and pass up on seeing that little gem, or do you press forward? But to even be weighing those options, you need to know there is something to see along the way...something that is often down to the interest in the online community rather than available, organised online presence.

But why connect cycling and cultural (and to some extent natural) heritage at all?

Engaging positively with one's own and other peoples' cultural heritage is important. Not only is it often easier to preserve cultural (and natural) heritage if there exists interest in it, because interest means fund and often active national and international protection; various negative behaviours, like Othering, can also be combated with positive engaging with cultural heritage. Narrativism that devalues Other, appropriates cultural heritage for various purposes or destroys or seeks to destroy it (think, for instance, of appropriation of various cultural heritage by extremist movements, or deliberate claims that someone else's history is actually not their own but another's, or, indeed, deliberate erasure of cultural heritage to erase the presence and legitimacy of an Othered group), becomes more difficult, because it has to work against facts and positive personal experiences both. And, of course, our sometimes incredibly bitter histories teach a lesson about conflict and its consequences that is often encoded in ruins and monuments; knowing them means understanding our history and learning from it, including from the bad, so that it might not happen again.

Furthermore, cultural heritage is a vast concept. Exploring it and engaging with it, and realising that it might be found in many places, not only deepens our understanding of this concept and makes us ponder it, it also lowers the often dense numbers of people going to see "the" cultural monuments of a space...often the only thing they know about it. To see France is to see Paris, and, more strictly still, to see the Eiffel Tower and maybe the Louvre; it is to, perhaps, visit some of the many well-known castles in the Loire Valley. There, the knowledge and understanding of French culture ends for many, and as much as the numbers of tourists thronging to see just those monuments can be onerous for the locals, so, too, have they arguably become devoid of deeper meaning...they have become touristified to the point where they are not something to learn about, but a tick of the things to see to say you have gone somewhere.

That is not, under any circumstances, meaningful engaging with cultural heritage, and a great part of the responsibility for this is shared by the travel agencies that do not offer people to dig deeper, as well as locals who, sometimes, support this boom for a while because it means revenue...but all too soon, the boom can become too much, and the spaces of importance lose their meaning.

Instead, looking for an experience and joining an adventure with meaningful engagement offers the possibility for smaller numbers of tourists who are also anxious to travel under their own power, and who want a connection with the space they are visiting. Those visits are not likely to become a tick on a visit list; riding a bicycle for tens of km is an act of interest and devotion. One must brave the weather, getting lost, occasional swarms of insects and various other problems to get somewhere rather than step of a plane or train, board a bus to a hotel and then another to a landmark, and then return. Cycling takes love and grit; but, in turn, it is rewarded by breath-taking scenery, stunning interactions with history and unforgettable experiences that we will want to share all life long.

Of course, within all this lies a snag. Experiential tourism, in a sense, is sometimes a part of our wish to show that we are not so ordinary. Especially the existence of Instagram, with its visual content (there is a reason we are using it as a part of our research and project platforms), can cause people to do incredibly dangerous and stupid things; moreover, selfies and seeking a pristine and calm environment can make a dangerous space seem safe when it really isn't. Even just the heat and humidity of the summer in our area can pose a serious threat to anyone, especially those who are not aware of how dangerous they can be. But this, in many ways, is where the official interaction can change things in my opinion. When sharing and engagement is down to an online community, we often only have someone's word that what they are doing is safe (and, sometimes, legal). If localities participate actively, they can impact this by controlling the narrative around their space and the modes of visiting. That may also be useful when it comes to protection of cultural heritage; seemingly unattended and uncared for heritage, while it may exist in relative safety due to its obscurity, is nevertheless potentially subject to vandalism, including taking parts of it or climbing it, by those who do not feel looking and placing a hand on it (I get it - many of us are tactile, but a touch should be enough...that is, in cases where physical contact is safe for the object in question) is enough. Showing that its presence is noted can give a definite message that the site is protected and that there may be consequences for vandalism.

This, and many more reasons, is why we believe that it is important for local communities to be actively involved with experiential tourism as well as its intersection with cultural heritage, and why we have undertaken a project that looks to study these intersections especially through anthropological lens and all the tools we can possibly utilise. Understanding how we do things and why, but also what steps may be taken both to promote the positive and avoid the negative, is the best way to create a tailored approach (perhaps one that can apply elsewhere too) for localities to create good and meaningful engagement with their space, be it for themselves or for others. This way, cultural (and natural) heritage can be celebrated and engaged with, documented and cared for by official powers as well as citizen custodians (and we all become custodians through our engagement). Adventure can be experienced in real, safe and positive ways. And how we see ourselves in our space and in others' spaces can be reinvented, positively, mindfully and respectfully of past, present and future everywhere.

Next week, I will be discussing Loiret and cultural heritage from the project perspective.