Taking steps

I just got back from a walk and feel knackered. There was a time when I could walk all day and often did. As a kid we had no real alternative until we got bikes that is, and then we didn't walk anywhere. Walking is a wonderful way to pass the time and in the main it is pretty healthy. Walking through inner city streets may not be so but even there the experience can be very pleasurable.
There is no better way to see a place than on foot. That way you can peer over fences, examine gardens, stop and talk to people or, just stop for a while and take in the view. You can even look back and see the places that you have passed from a different perspective.
Many years ago, when i was alive, i would take parties of kids on walking holidays. We'd go to places that were outside of most of their experiences and show them both the pleasures and pains of walking everywhere. Accommodation was always the Youth Hostels, and in the old days one was expcted to arrive at a hostel under one's own steam. Motor vehicles were frowned upon, and so we'd be dropped off by our coach and abandoned in the Welsh mountains for a week. Everyone carried their own kit in rucksacks, and booted and anoraked, we'd wander from hostel to hostel, often losing the way, and being Wales, nearly always getting wet.
I loved those walks and, despite the moaning and complaining so did the kids. To do that now seems an impossibility to me. I no longer have the fitness or stamina that such walks require, and on top of that my hips and knees are no longer up to the task. Three of four miles is about my lot, and today I have been reminded of it.