Remember back in 2020 when we were only allowed outside once a day for one hour for vital exercise? Well, after a few circuits of the local rec, I decided in May 2020 that if I was going to go outside for a walk every day, I might as well make it worth while and not do less than 2km. And here we are four years later and not a day has gone by when I haven’t walked at least 2km!
There have been times when I haven’t wanted to do it. Now I’m back at Rangers and Brownies, it can be a pain to fit it in, now I’m going out and doing things, now I’m not furloughed anymore. But I’ve done it. I’ve walked in pouring rain, I’ve walked hoping that the thunderstorm really is over, I’ve walked under a blazing sun, I’ve walked first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I even walked when I had covid. Let me defend that one. The official guidance by that point (this was June 2021) was that you could and should go about your normal life but “try to avoid crowds”, so I went for my walk relatively late in the evening when I knew all the dog-walkers would be back home and sitting in front of the TV and if I saw anyone coming, I crossed the road. I never got within twenty metres of another person and I never touched anything except my own phone.
I feel like there’s a book in this somewhere. One of those books that crosses nature writing with mindfulness, one of those books they put out on a table in the bookstore and they sell in their billions but no one ever actually reads it. You know? I’m not sure I have the particular combination of skills to write that book but it’ll probably be in the back of my mind until the day I die. I’ve lived here for most of my life at this point but I’ve never actually explored the place I live. Barely five minutes away are allotments. I never knew the allotments were there. Now I walk past them almost every day, comparing their beans’ success with mine (mine are usually better!), looking at their raised beds and protective covers and the size of the leeks and onions and the wildness of the rhubarb and I absolutely wish sometimes that I had an allotment. Unfortunately, there’s a very long waiting list for allotments and I probably don’t have the time to devote quite as much TLC as an allotment would need. Still very interested to have a proper look at them.
I see the allotments all year round. I see them flourish in the summer, I see the gourds appear in autumn, I see everything die and turn grey in the winter and I see people out working on them before it all bounces back to life in spring. I’d like to add that I see my entire regular walk circuit and how it changes throughout the seasons but mostly it doesn’t. There’s an alleyway between two sets of terraced houses that I call Cat Alley because a number of cats used to live down there and there are some hedges that get thick enough in winter to almost block it off before the owners emerge into the pale sun in spring, take a look at the world and trim the hedge.
Actually, there are a few notable trees. There’s a big copper beech – really, more a mahogany-purple than copper – which changes colour throughout the year. There are some trees that turn deep red in the autumn, a couple of blossom trees that turn pink and white in early and mid spring respectively before everything goes green. A few patches of lavender that start humming with bees around June. A tree that starts humming with what I assume is a wasps’ nest in summer. Blackbirds and sparrows that start yelling as I pass by.
I see the same dogs over and over again. There’s a couple who have three small fluffy things that bumble around enthusiastically. There’s the big fluffy “Nosy Dog” husky-thing who loves to stop and have a sniff (“Come on, nosy”, said the owner to the dog one time as it stopped to sniff me). There’s the man who has the two tiny fluffy sausage dogs – they’re adorable! And, of course, one of my favourite things about winter is when dogs start sprouting LED collars.
Some people really don’t like winter. I don’t like it when it stretches on as late as it is this year. I shouldn’t be getting up in May and putting on my fluffy socks first thing. But I like it in November and December when the dogs are all illuminated, the houses twinkle with the Christmas lights and the sky sparkles. I like to go outside straight after work at 5.02pm, look down the road and say “Hello, Jupy!” because I’m in the habit of addressing the biggest planet in the solar system as “Jupy”. I like to stop on particular corners where I can look across the sky and see the constellations stretched out in front of me. I like how they change throughout the year, how by January I start to see Sirius over the fields, the nights when with the tiniest movement of my head, I can see more than half the solar system at once.
I like it in January when I start to notice the skies getting lighter in the evening. I have to go out later to see the stars but by the second week of work in a new year, the sky is visibly lighter at 5pm than it was before Christmas. Maybe if you’re not going out for a walk every day, you might not notice that but I do.
There’s a whole world out there just waiting to be noticed. I do the same tedious semi-urban 2.3km loop pretty much day in day out – sometimes I might spend a weekend away or I’ll walk to Rangers or walk up to Lidl or I’ll be out during the day so I’ll do the walk then but probably more than 85% of my walks over the last four years have been the same loop.
In four years, from May 1st 2020 to April 30th 2024, I’ve covered 4,525km. That’s the equivalent of walking from my front door to the middle of Saudi Arabia or Iran or to the Kazakhstan border or to Prince Edward Island. That’s a respectable distance. Maybe that’s what I need to turn it into a book – England to Iran by the Allotments. Definitely some possibilities there. My grandad used to have an exercise bike and while in reality he was staring at the spare room wall, he was plotting his daily distance onto a mental map of the journey to my uncle’s house. Short regular exercise as a stand-in for more epic adventure. Hmm.
What am I trying to say with this post? Well, I guess one thing is that there’s value and interest even in walking a short repetitive suburban route if you start noticing all the things worth noticing along the way, that nature doesn’t have to revolve around vast mountain ranges and ferocious oceans and that getting outside doesn’t have to be an epic feat.