Take a step in the right direction with a gentle ramble

Sometimes, a piece of news comes along that is so dispiriting, it is difficult to know where to begin. Yesterday brought the revelation from Public Health England that 40 per cent of middle-aged adults are failing to achieve merely one brisk, 10-minute walk a month. Not per day, you understand, not even per week, but per month.

So much for magazines enthusing about midlife triathlons, or even the Government’s recommendation that we bestir ourselves for a paltry two-and-a-half hours a week (a 20, rather than 10-minute, daily stroll). For many, merely launching themselves off the sofa is clearly too much effort, despite the prevalence of “athleisure” wear among those who have opted to remain static.

To solve this collective paralysis, we need to aim for lowest common denominator activity rather than Olympic feats, and there is no better means of doing this than the great British walk. Ambling, rambling, or whatever one cares to call it, is an activity that offers not only enjoyment, but reward: physical, mental, spiritual even, should that sort of thing be your bag.

Our bodies are designed to walk, and we’ve been at it for seven million years. It is “low-impact,” as fitness types say, coming with no negative effects for knees, breasts, or dignity, and achievable regardless of age. No expensive kit is required beyond a decent pair of shoes. Walking thus appeals to the British love of amateurism, of simply turning up and doing something rather than making a great song and dance about it. (Although, obviously, everyone will prefer it if you bring a dog.)

The whole of Europe got the bug during the Romantic period, yet no one walks like we Brits. So many of our most loved writers have been trudgers, from Jane Austen and William Wordsworth, via Dickens and WG Sebald, to Robert Macfarlane today. Eighteenmillion Britons enjoy country walks; over 100,000 of us are members of the Ramblers’ Association.

We have a history of defending our right to roam like no other nation: hence our extraordinary rights-ofway network, that has foreign visitors goggling as one marches them through farmyards. City pedestrians go no less unpoliced, with none of the regulations regarding how to move about found in other, lesser countries. Telling people how or where to walk is simply not British.

Striding is a civilising activity, transforming necessity into a joy. We may be obliged to walk as children, only to discover a love of perambulation in later life and require our own offspring to do the same. Its plodding logic produces a mindful lack of mindfulness reflected in the Latin phrase “solvitur ambulando” – “it is solved by walking” – brought to us from Diogenes, via St Augustine, and Thoreau.

For, it is not only our bodies that benefit, but our brains: midlife walking prevents everything from cognitive decline to sexual dysfunction. It is also supremely social. The highlight of my year is an annual trek I take part in with colleagues aged 28 to 70. We stroll, we talk, and we solve.

Those of us who have witnessed parents fail know that moving is life; keeping going is literal as well as metaphorical. To go voluntarily “off ” on legs in middle age is an abomination. This, then, is where we begin: with one foot in front of the other.