Weekly Rundown: Sunday Walk

This year's big resolution is to walk more; not just to be more active but to actually go out places on walks. Luckily I have a group of friends who are happy to go a good long walk occasionally and so this time last Sunday we set out for a rather long Sunday stroll.

The estimate for the walk was that it was going to be somewhere in the region of eleven miles, so last Sunday I got myself organised, pulled on my walking boots and plugged myself into my mp3 player, then walked a mile up the road to the place where we had agreed to meet.

We had a rather muddy walk across the Meadows (our local playing fields) before getting onto the main road. The plan was to walk from town diagonally across the island to Ettrick Bay, a beach at the north end of the island. There's a little cafe at the beach where we were able to stop for some lunch before walking back into town along the front.

The week before our walk we had some awful weather. Storm Henry hit, bringing with him 90 mile per hour winds. The Sunday we went walking was probably the only decent day out of seven. It was pretty sunny on the way out to the beach, only starting to spot with rain when we arrived there.

Along the way there was a lot of chatting, laughing and pausing to take photos.

Arran looking all moody and Middle-earth-ish.

As I've been using my daily walks to count towards my progress across Middle-earth, I decided to have mushroom omelette when we reached Ettrick Bay; after all, according to my Middle-earth mileage tracker I was roughly at the point of the book 'A Shortcut to Mushrooms'. The mushroom omelette seemed fitting.

It was very drizzly on the way back. I ended up absolutely soaked, helped along by a car which drove through a puddle at the side of the road and splashed water over the three of us walking on the path! Despite that, I really enjoyed myself and we've already spoken about planning another walk at some point in the future, hopefully making it a regular thing.

It was a very good Fitbit day as well! I earned a whole bunch of badges, my favourite two being for walking 30,000 steps in a day (I may have put my laundry away one item at a time before bed to hit that quota) and climbing the equivalent of 50 floors!

 

The twelve miles did kind of kill my walking boots though.

I've had those shoes for well over a year now, but the recent increase in walking seems to be wearing them out quicker than before. The walk on Sunday finished them off and I wore right through the grips on the bottom. My new walking shoes have arrived now and I'm slowly breaking them in.


I'm curious to see how long these ones will last me!