3 things I love / about walking

1Time

I mean ‘time’ in a few different ways. First off, the gift of time: just giving myself a day, half a day, or even just an hour to go for a walk. Then the weird way time slows down on a walk, and takes you further and further away from real-world time and all its pressures, alerts and devices. And finally, time as memory: revisiting places I’ve walked before and remembering who I was with last time – and the person I was then.

2Breathing

I’ve had asthma all my life and an inhaler in my pocket since the age of seven, but it never bothers me on a walk. Like, ever. My badly-designed lungs love it when I take them outside and work them a little. Or even a lot: as a shallow breather I’ve had to develop odd little systems to cope with steep hills, and the oxygen rush of being at the top of one beats any stimulant, steroid or intoxicant I might ever have tried.

3Stories

Common to all of us on Country Walking is a love of storytelling, and it’s from walking that I find all the best stories to tell. I love walking with people who know stuff about places and I’m a compulsive reader of information boards, no matter how badly beaten or graffiti-scrawled they might be. Our landscape is one massive story; of geology and wildlife, of human endeavour and spiritual searching. I’m hooked and I can’t put it down.