Back in the Spring I bought myself a Garmin watch with the aim of getting myself a bit fitter as particularly post wound infection my stamina was pretty low. Rather than set myself an unachievable target of 10,000 steps a day, I started on 5,000 in May and I’ve been increasing it by 1,000 each month. So far it’s working pretty well, I’m also calculating it over the month, rather than daily, so if I have a bad day, I can catch up (hopefully!) in later days.

So on Sunday after a day socialising at a BBQ with friends, I found I had only done about 1300 steps towards my 8.000 target. I didn’t want to be so far behind at the beginning of the month, so I went for a brisk walk round the neighbourhood, taking a few detours to increase my steps.

It was a lovely evening, I walked up the old railway line behind our house and under the old bridge. I noticed probably for the first time it’s actually a pretty substantial bridge with three arches for a path which may at the most have taken a horse and trap, but I wouldn’t have thought ever a car, there’s only a winding footpath on the other side!

I walked round a nearby residential area, through the park and back up on the railway line. The sun was just starting to get low in the sky so it looked lovely through the trees.

The council come round every six weeks or so to mow the verges, trying to keep the nettles at bay. They’ve obviously just been as everything is neatly trimmed again. They do seem to enjoy churning the mud up too but luckily this time the ground was fairly dry. This is a track up to the farmers field. I always glance up here as occasionally we see a deer in the field or a hawk sitting on the fence post.

There’s a lovely bank of rosebay willow herb, just round the corner from our gate. It’s all in flower at the moment and it looks just as nice when autumn colour starts and the seed heads are all white and curly.

So I was back home having walked nearly three miles and back on track for my target. I should get a lot of steps in next week as on Saturday my walking buddy and I are going up to Ravenstonedale for a couple of nights, aiming to tick off another four of the Dales 30 – that’s the plan anyway!