From car parks to the canals beneath Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction, some truly unlovely locations sparked the imagination and provided solace in lockdown
What was your lockdown special place? I think most of us had one: somewhere away from home, where we could exhale, enjoy a change of scene and appreciate the peace and beauty of our surroundings. A park perhaps, a riverside or a wood? For Jess Rickenback and Rachel Hein, that place was the path beside the Seafield sewage works in Edinburgh. “Unloved, litter and dog poo strewn, and often very stinky,” says Hein, a photographer, who often took the path in lockdown with her husband, son and labrador, Finn.
“It frequently stinks. Really stinks,” agrees Rickenback, a PhD student in atmospheric and environmental science. “It’s conventionally very unattractive.” Her picture confirms their shared verdict: under a leaden sky, a chain-link and barbed wire fence on which trapped plastic bag remnants flap in the wind like grim bunting surrounds weather-beaten grey cylinders, rectangles, and a sphere – child’s building blocks made by a brutalist for a giant. On the other side of the fence, a scrubby grass verge is littered with takeaway cartons and cans. Yet both feel affection for the sewage works path. “It’s a surprisingly tranquil spot,” says Rickenback, who enjoys its “apocalyptically sci-fi” aesthetic. For Hein, it’s a “portal” to the beach beyond.