I
have walking boots! Proper walking boots! With pink laces! The Man of the House
is very dismissive about those laces – I think he feels pink is far too
frivolous for sensible footwear for a woman who wants to be taken seriously.
But I don’t care. They are so beautiful and so comfortable that I love them to
bits. I tell you people, until you have worn shoes designed to for walking, you
have no idea how uncomfortable fashion flatties and spindly heels actually are.
So here the boots are, for my Saturday Snapshot, with a map, and
the new pedometer.
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| Monday: I'm ready for action with walking boots, map and pedometer. |
The
old pedometer which was indescribably unreliable, went back to the shop less
than a week after I bought it, and I invested in a better one, which is dead
easy to set up (even for a technophobe like me), very simple to use and, most
important of all, very accurate. So this week I feel as if I’ve really got into
my stride with this daily walking business, and I’ve been boring everyone silly
telling them where I’ve been, and how much ground I’ve covered and how
wonderful it is. Anyway, here are the walking boots on their first outing... they
looked so nice I was worried about spoiling them and nearly left them at home!
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| Tuesday: Our first outing together... the new boots and me in action down on the towpath. |
Walking
is good exercise for people who don’t like exercise – and I don’t. I hate
games, and gym, and athletics, and exercises, and jogging, and anything else
like that. My family wasn’t really sports-minded, but on the whole I blame
school, where I was forced to do this stuff, despite the fact that I hated it
all, and was too fat, too short-sighted and too uncoordinated to do anything.
I was always in trouble with the PE staff, who offered no encouragement or help
and refused to believe there were people like me who couldn’t do these things,
and the girls laughed and never wanted me in their team. I used to hide in the
loo, standing on the toilet seat so no-one would see my feet, but I was always
discovered and marched off (generally in tears I’m ashamed to say) for hockey
or gymnastics, or whatever else was the order of the day.
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| Tuesday: I spotted this milestone alongside the Coventry Canal at Tamworth, between Glascote and Amingon. Five miles to where I wonder? |
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| Wednesday: Moss on a wall outside a house - close to it looked like a forest of trees and bushes. |
I’m
aiming to walk for at least 20 minutes every day, even if I only walk into town
rather than using the car or hopping on a bus, with a couple of longer
expeditions each week where I can drive out to one of the villages or somewhere
a little more rural than Tamworth. And, silly though it sounds, I’m trying to create
a record of my efforts by keeping track of how far I walk, and taking photos
each day to show where I’ve been, and if I put them in some kind of album or
journal, with suitable poems or extracts from books, it might encourage me to
keep going.
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| Thursday: Looking across Minster Pool to the Cathedral on a cold, misty morning. I was going to take bread to feed ducks but I left it behind. |
So
far, 12 days into the New Year, I’m really enjoying it. I like being in the
fresh air, and listening to birdsong, and looking at plants, insects and birds,
and I think it’s lovely that other people stop and chat. I get back home
feeling all refreshed and enthusiastic about Life, the Universe and Everything,
and seem to have more energy, which I think is odd.
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| Friday: Trying to be arty here with a view of boats on the canal at Kettlebrook, which is part of Tamworth. |
