The Recuperative Powers of a Good Walk

Saturday 14th October 2017

After my walk in the middle of July with my colleague from work, plans were soon made for a return visit to the Lake District to tackle Striding Edge, but once again the British weather intervened. I was keen to not see a repeat of the awful weather that we had endured on Scafell Pike, but good weather never seemed to materialise on a Saturday when it was convenient for us to go. The general trend of poor weather continued throughout the summer and autumn coinciding with a downturn in my state of mind. I was feeling very tired from stresses at work and then less than a week after coming back from the Lake District I was distressed to hear about the death of Chester Bennington, the lead singer of the rock band Linkin Park. I love their music and was greatly saddened and disillusioned by the loss. It has taken me a long time to get over his death and I believe if I’d been able to do a good walk it would have helped me recover sooner. For me there is nothing better for clearing my head of troubles than a walk through the beautiful British countryside with the sun shining overhead under clear blue skies.

If the time is short and the sun is shining, then I can get a quick recuperation by walking out of my door and going for a walk along Mill Lane between South Wigston and Blaby. Within a couple of minutes I am enjoying the sunshine and the quiet of the countryside and suddenly all my cares and worries seem less urgent. Just getting out of the house and breathing in fresh air with open skies above my head lifts my spirit better than anything else. For a more sustained recuperation, a Saturday with good weather is all I need to have me grabbing my rucksack and heading out for a day-long walk. Places like the Peak District are several hours drive away, so often I will drive just half an hour to north-west Leicestershire and Charnwood Forest where there is excellent opportunities for a good walk through ancient woodland and up small hills that are bestrewn with granite outcrops.

I have a walk that I devised that takes in much of this special landscape and takes me up to six hours to complete. I have done this walk many times always alternating the direction each time for variety. Despite how beneficial this walk would have been to me last summer I didn’t have a chance to re-walk it with poor weather and the demands of work preventing me from getting out, and my mental health suffered. My recovery started with my holiday in the Outer Hebrides at the end of August, however the weather was not good for most of the first week of that holiday and this did not improve my state of mind. On the Wednesday morning in Tarbert, on the isle of Harris, it was raining as I felt it had been all summer. I had not been lucky with the weather at Easter and I had been rained on in Glen Dessary at the beginning of June, so I was beginning to feel like the Travis song in wondering why it was always raining on me.

Thankfully the weather started to improve that day and for the rest of that holiday I had generally good weather and so my recovery had begun, but it was a slow process. September showed a continuation of the poor weather and prevented my colleague and me from going back to the Lake District. Finally in the middle of October, while the Lake District suffered under strong winds and rain, good weather came to Leicestershire on a Saturday. By this time I was feeling desperate for a good walk to clear my head, so I headed out to Charnwood Forest, even though it meant letting some people down as I felt that my mental health demanded that I go for a walk. The weather was unseasonably warm and I literally skipped along the path at the start through Swithland Woods. It felt wonderful to be out enjoying the countryside after so many months of being stuck behind a computer at work. I wasn’t going to describe the walk on this blog as it was the same walk that I have done many times before, so I didn’t take my camera.

The above picture was the only one that I took on the walk, with my mobile, in the Outwoods, but it does show the sunshine and that I had no expectations with this walk. I was finally carefree and able to enjoy the walk with no demands, not even from this blog. I had a great walk through Charnwood Forest in great weather and more than anything else it served to bring me out of the malaise that had been afflicting me since the summer. A great walk never fails to lift my spirits and the memory of a great walk often motivates me to get up and stop moping about. Many walks that I have done in the Lake District come to mind as excellent encouragements to go out and enjoy the British countryside. The longer I am absent from the Lake District the more keenly does my longing become and so it isn’t long before I am once more planning another holiday in this most special place. Whenever I am feeling down I need only to think of the Lake District and my soonest return to put all my worries into perspective.