Lovely fresh air and muck on your boots
I love being outdoors doing almost anything, so long as it’s legal and involves exercise in some way! I can’t be precise about why. Is it the cleaner fresher air, the lovely views, the effort involved in exercise, the escapism of normal life, time to think, the health benefits for my prostate cancer or the people I meet? The truth is that it’s probably all of those – there is no downside in my opinion.
This week, as part of my race training I managed to unusually get all the ducks in a row and finally met up with the Surrey Long Distance Walkers Association (LDWA) for one of their group walks.
I have been a member of the LDWA for a while as they have a great online resource of tried and tested longer walks by members who have actually done them, but I’ve never been to a meet before. I already knew Jackie, who led the walk, via a running friend and was introduced to the other eight members who, like me, were looking forward to an 18-mile hike around the North Downs with all the benefits I mentioned before – although, thankfully, only one other person was doing it for the cancer benefit reason.
There were smiles on everyone’s faces all day as we followed Jackie down hills, across muddy fields past Highland cattle and sheep, plus all the usual wonderful stuff you would expect to see in the countryside – some of it ending up on the bottom of my boots!
I managed to chat with everyone at some stage and learned so much about how to improve my own treks as many of them had undertaken colossal distances. Jackie and her friend impressed me with their plan to walk the length of Great Britain next year, not by the quickest route but the most scenic, spending probably three months non-stop trekking.
The final bit of our walk was the ‘sting’, a lungbusting steep ascent back to the start point, but when we turned at the top the view with the sun setting over the South Downs was worth every ounce of sweat. At the finish, a couple of them had even made some amazing cakes to end the day with! So, thank you Surrey LDWA for a great day and I hope you too consider joining a local group for a hobby or sport that you love.
Like me, I don’t think you will regret it.