Buckingham - Coombes - Padbury, 5 miles

Daughter and I walked out for a pub lunch and taxi home today. I wanted to take her out and thought lunch in a pub was a good incentive. She seemed to enjoy herself and was on cracking form. It was five somewhat hilly miles on a warm and eventually sunny early-autumn day where tops and sleeves were discarded before the first mile was behind us. The New Inn in Padbury provided a lovely setting for our ham, egg and chips and burger shared over a pint and J20. It'll be a day remembered for a long time to come.

Walking for Wellbeing

I've been working on starting a charity called Walking for Wellbeing which helps sufferers of depression by taking them out for walks in the countryside. It's been great getting my head back around HTML and stylesheets and writing all the copy, and I'm really happy with the result. You can see the site at Walking for Wellbeing

Buckingham - Foscote - Leckhampstead - Thornton - Buckingham Canal, 7.5 miles

This was a three-hour steady walk with a couple of medium hills, occasional lovely views and some woodland. I started after work at 4.50pm and got home at 7.50pm. It was almost dark when I got in!

This was the second walk in as many days and the second in my new boots. My feet held up pretty well but I've now got painful blisters on the bottom of each of my little toes. My feet ache somewhat but that's to be expected.

This walk was very windy - it's the first time since Spring where I've felt the need to wear sleeves from the start of the walk. It's definitely starting to feel autumnal out there.

There wasn't much of note on the walk other than a couple of beautifully friendly horses and a rabbit - possibly blind - which I managed to get within a couple of metres of. It was a nice walk but I'll probably have to rest my feet for a couple of days now.

Sibford Ferris, Little Cotswolds, 9.25 miles

A nice Sunday walk with my parents which was pretty hilly with some wonderful views. We passed through both Sibford Ferris and Sibford Gower. This was the first walk with my new boots - I was a little worried I'd be full of blisters by the end but I only had a small amount of 'impact' pain at the front of my feet which soon disappeared when I took them off and stretched my toes. I saw and heard spring pumps, ate plums from the tree and sat on a hillside with a great view for lunch. A good walk.

Edit: eight months later and I have no idea what 'spring pumps' are. How odd!

My walk log

I've been meaning to do this for ages, and eventually hope to run a custom walk log on my web site, but for the time being blogspot will have to do. I want to keep a record of my walks - where they take place, how far they are and interesting things seen, so the memories don't just disappear. I'm also passionate about trying to keep a log of all the miles I've walked. I'd love to be able to look back in a few years time and say I've done more than a thousand miles, or whatever.

A quick total of miles I've recorded elsewhere lists 185 miles of walks since 21st February 2009, and doesn't include a six-week period in June/July where I wasn't keeping track. I don't think I walked too far over that period. I may have done a few miles before February too, so I'll tentatively put my total at 215 on starting this blog and keep track from there.

I'd like to think that eventually this blog will give an overall picture of walks I've taken, notes on weather and wildlife, and include photos and maps, or at least routes on Google Maps/Earth to keep a good record of the miles I've covered.