The Lovely Wife and I love walking. It has been commented on in our home town that we are seen out and about more than might be considered average. To be frank, if we have an hour or two to fill, footwear will be donned and we will take a turn around wherever we are at the time, even if it is the same circuit of up into town, down and around the park and back again – a three-mile circuit that never really gets boring. I know that may sound odd, but the very frequency of doing the same walk becomes its making; you see the differences through the seasons, for example, much more clearly – know when the kingfisher is likely to appear on the river, and later when it is not worth looking for it anymore as it has now moved upstream to breed, for example. The changing views of the town as the flowers and trees put on growth, change colour and fade away to the starkness of winter produces different vistas, and after a while, year after year, you can also begin to compare – last year the ducklings were early, this year, after the cold snaps, we are still waiting. Walking a course in the sun means other people and therefore the ability to people watch; properly equipped in the rain and it is peace and solitude with only us and a few hardy runners and dog walkers.

All relationships are different but we have found that rambling about together to be a good thing for how we relate. Aside from any fitness benefit to our weary limbs, mentally even the soggiest wander generally lifts both our spirits and helps sort out some of the tensions that inevitably build up. We talk more while walking than probably any other time – the world around us always throws up new things to talk about, so the conversation will never run dry when we can eb speculating on whether we will see little grebes on the lake today, or whether the Man In The Red Waterproof will be feeding the geese as he is oft to do. We do not take big decisions while walking – those are best done for us in the pub, and I kid you not on that – but we might have laid the framework for those decisions while engaged in an extended walk to the pub in question.

Ah, and there’s one of the other delights, rambling the same route across and round your home town, a walk that, oh, there is a surprise, might just end up in your local hostelry for a cheeky one before going home. Call it an incentive to exercise if you like, but it is a fine pleasure and as we are such regular walkers the right pub is a good pseudo home. Although it is fair to say that in the winter weekend walks to the pub do mean getting their early enough to raise the eyebrow of the Landlord; but if you want to walk in daylight, that means early and therefore and early liaison with the desired pint of the day and possibly some pork scratchings. And then, home, for a well-deserved sit down and the satisfaction of a fitness tracker interface adorned with the happy green indicating that today’s targets had been reached, nay, perhaps overachieved. It’s making me smile while writing. At the moment, life is throwing enough things at us that the things that can lighten the mood are to be cherished.