Talk at meeting of Heritage Practice Communities in a Digitized World, Swansea, Wales, 11th Sept. 2025 https://alandix.com/academic/talks/HPC-SRN-2025-unspoilt-wales/ Twelve years ago, I walked one thousand miles around the entire periphery of Wales. One might imagine unspoilt coastline and mediaeval castles, but the coast is also the historic industrial heart of the country. Until very recently water was the fastest and most reliable mode of transport, meaning that centres of population, power and industry were never far from the sea or navigable rivers. In some places, the landscape has been literally despoiled, although even these, such as Paris Mountain, may have a strange beauty of their own and serve as a warning for new technology. In others, the landscape is not 'unspoilt' as in untouched by human presence but rather shot through with the marks of human making. From First World War shipyards to four-thousand-year-old copper mining, the remnants and traces are often far from current centres of population or invisible remembered only by an information board. In socio-economically depressed post-industrial communities, connecting with local heritage can be a way to reassert pride in place. In equally challenged rural areas tourists flock to the obvious vistas shaped by ice, sheep or Norman conquest, but may miss the hidden threads that connect the landscape to human life. Can digital technology help bridge these gaps exposing the past for the benefit of current and future generations?

1. Alan Dix
@alanjohndix
A walk around the
unspoilt coastline of
Wales
https://alandix.com/academic/talks/HPC-SRN-2025-unspoilt-wales

2. Welsh Coast Path
opened May 2012
linking existing paths
a single way marked route
with Offa’s Dyke encircles Wales
three full traversals in 2012 (one running)

3. vision
personal
encircling, encompassing, pilgrimage,
homecoming,
practical
IT for the walker & IT for local communities
philosophical
reflections on walking and space, locality and
identity
research
personal agenda and living lab

4. no hard boundaries
research – practice
personal – philosophical
19th
century science or
Mediaeval?

5. Wales – unspoilt coasts
and mediaeval castles

6. or is it … ?

10. Alan
Walks
Wales
one thousand miles
of poetry,
technology
and community

11. technology

14. Troedrhiwfuwch … on the
ground

15. Troedrhiwfuwch

16. QR codes with a twist

17. flexible infrastructure
QR code
mapper
scan
QR code
configuration
updateable by
community
offer
alternative
web content

19. invisible

20. Tiree heritage
An Iodhlann
island archive
15000 items
frasan
mobile heritage app
N.B no signal!

21. locality

22. maps
reclaiming the local map within technological space
mapping never easier ... so long as it is ‘standard’
“Post-Renaissance maps cover the surface of the
world with an homogeneous Cartesian grip”
Barbara Bender
local maps – local concerns

23. community and cohesion
abandonment and dissolution:
Rhyl – dustbin of Liverpool
Dee estuary – even the pubs closed
internal strength
Penmaenmawr – in the face of adversity
community enterprise: shops, pubs, arts

24. A walk around the
unspoilt coastline of
Wales
Alan Dix
https://alandix.com/academic/talks/HPC-SRN-2025-unspoilt-wales