Some people walk to get somewhere. I walk to find something.
Walking It Off is a series of walks, discoveries, and whatever crosses my mind along the way. No organised tours. No National Trust car parks. Just familiar roads seen properly for the first time, villages with more history than you’d expect, and the kind of thinking that only happens when you’re moving.
I started walking properly in 2022, after Covid stopped everything. I haven’t really stopped since.
Walking It Off — The Series
Part 1 — The Day I Finally Saw the Village I’d Lived In for Over 30 Years
Thirty years in Colnbrook. It took one afternoon on foot to see it properly. Murder, ghosts, royalty, and my wife’s old pub — all within half a mile of my front door.
Part 2 — A Walk to Walk Off the Pain of Remembrance
After closing my cancer story, the memories were too close to the surface. So I walked. Through Longford, past an old churchyard, to the quiet of Harmondsworth Moor — a rural idyll under a flightpath.
Part 3 — Rochester Castle
After my son’s sudden collapse, I needed somewhere to put the worry. Rochester Castle gave me old stone, a quiet chapel, and a view that held two worlds at once.
Earlier Walks
A Walk That Changed My Day — Runnymede
There are walks you do to exercise, and walks that do something to you. Runnymede was the second kind.
Walking Back to Fitness
How I went from struggling to climb the stairs after Covid to completing a million-step challenge.
1 Million Step Challenge
Three weeks in and over 250,000 steps. The Windsor and District Ramblers took me through the best of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.
