‘I became fitter, more positive and a lot happier in this crazy unpredictable year than I could ever have imagined.’

Why the nation’s favourite sage Stephen Fry is sold on the world’s best walking challenge.

There are so many reasons to walk. Almost every week there seems to be a new story in the press making claims for walking as the new superpower. It fights ageing! It helps sleep! It deals with depression! It lowers blood pressure! It eases back pain! It spanks the bottom of Type 2 diabetes and stamps on the toes of heart disease!

It’s a great way of seeing the world. You notice things when you walk, especially birds and the change of seasons, the opening of the buds or the falling of conkers. It connects you deeply to the rhythms of nature. And if you walk regularly and in the same place, you get to know some of the people who march to the same beat.

It’s a perfect time to have a conversation with yourself. Take your thoughts for a walk too and see where they go. The mixture of elation and sheer pleasure that comes with rhythmical striding, and the achievement of a good distance walked, seems to set me up for the day. And I’ve found that walking has become an indispensable way of coping with the potential threat of depressive moods. And it can become a selffulfilling prophecy: if I convince myself that I need to walk to feel good inside then it becomes true.

Fun, fitness, fresh air and freedom of movement. Freedom to think – to swing the body and feel that you can change yourself, one step at a time. And if the steps add up to 1000 miles of distance, they might add up to a thousand other benefits too. Walk 1000 Miles seems to me an idea without a flaw.