Walking

Last Saturday I spent the day walking with my boyfriend along the coast from Exmouth. It was a warm and sunny day and at times it was so windy it nearly knocked me over. The scenery was beautiful and the sea looked especially dramatic due to the choppy waves. We didn’t really know how far we were going or where we were going but we ended up in a small seaside town where we stopped and shared a much appreciated cream tea for lunch. It was so nice to be outside, exercising and enjoying each other’s company and exploring new places.

Being out in the fresh air whatever the weather always seems to lift the spirits and provides a fresh outlook on things. It can give the chance to admire nature in all its beauty and this can provide a new perspective on life. It can provide a challenge, physically and mentally. For example, keeping on going even when you feel you have so far to go or you don’t feel all that confident you are even headed in the right direction. I really do think that you can go on a walk starting with one outlook on life and ending with a completely different one, no matter the surroundings or the distance. In my opinion, walking is good for the soul as well as for the body.

When you walk, you go on a journey. Yes that does sound like the beginning of an average poem but at the end of the day it gets you from A to B and back again. What happens on that journey is unknown, which can be quite exciting really. Perhaps your walk is extremely uneventful or perhaps you have the perfect opportunity to chat to someone walking with you about something you may not feel as comfortable chatting to them about face-face. Perhaps, you get so lost that you may never feel orientated ever again or perhaps you let the fresh air blow all the buzzing bees in your head away and leave you with a clear mind. You never know, that eureka moment maybe found on your travels! Whatever ends up happening, even if it is just that your legs feel tired at the end, you have used your body and mind to go somewhere and it appears that this is a very healing process.

The benefits of walking on your body are plentiful: improved cardiovascular fitness, muscle tone, mobility of the joints, endurance, the list goes on. I think it is a really great way to get fit, you can nearly always find time for a walk and because it doesn’t have to be high impact it has less stress on your joints than some other forms of exercise. It is also very sociable as it is easy to talk and walk and you can really get to know someone on your way. You can walk anywhere, to and from work, round the roads where you live, around a beautiful lake in the Lake District on a walking holiday, up a mountain, up and down the high street in town… anywhere. Yet the potential for them remains the same.

Where will your next walk take you?