Walking

I love a good walk.

Ever since I was a child I enjoyed going down to town with my mum every Saturday; a couple of miles or so there and back. When I was around 14 years old I started going for short walks on Sunday mornings; nothing too strenuous, nowhere particularly special, just for the fun of the walk. We'd go on the occasional country walk as a family, again nothing too long, a couple of hours out in rural Kent. But on the 30th June 2011, I stepped off a train at West Brompton*, ready to begin a walk to Woolwich Arsenal*, nearly 16 miles away. It was longer than anything I'd done before; I had no map to guide me, just a vague sense of direction, east along the river. It took me almost 7 hours, and I was exhausted by the end of it. Little did I realise it was the start of something big for me.

Since that first walk, I've recorded over 50 walks of varying distances, from a couple of miles up to over 20. I've walked from A to B, I've done circular walks, but mainly I've walked transport related walks: the Underground (more on that at some point), pre-2015 Overground, DLR and Tramlink, and even a National Rail route. I've walked the Thames from Maidenhead to the estuary, and this year I'm planning to walk the London Loop (this is the project I mentioned in the last post). Overall I have over 700 miles worth of walking logged, around 10 and half days of my life spent pounding the pavements.

Which begs the question: why? To that I say: why not? Walking is the best way to see somewhere as it really is, to explore properly, to experience fleetingly the lives of everyone who lives in a place you're merely passing through. My walks have taken me to locations I never would have gone to in any other circumstance, some fantastic, some not quite so. Everywhere I've visited I'm glad I have, regardless of how good or bad it was, to experience the novelty of a new area, an unexplored neighbourhood, the idea of "I wonder what's round here?".

Work means I no longer have the freedom of days unfilled to pursue this most ancient of pastimes; nevertheless I shall carry on walking whenever I can, and starting now, I'll be sharing it with you as well.

*- These stations chosen because at the time I had free rail travel to both stations as a result of my dad working on the railways, in case you wondered why I chose two such random points!