My Walking Story

Every Saturday afternoon we, my sister, mum and dad piled into my dad’s car and he drove us to his Mum’s. She, my Grandma lived with her sister, in a very small, simple house with an outside toilet, which was accessed via the farm yard. We headed from there across a track into fields, upon fields, climbing over stiles, into the woods. Sometimes we took a picnic, and sat by the stream that ran through the wood, dangling our feet and legs in the water, batting off flies, and midges. We were happy, and free. My mum had an incredible knowledge of all the flowers, she knew their names in english and in latin. We were all happier outside in the fields, in the woods, running, climbing, and walking.

I dreamt of living in a place from where it was possible to walk directly into nature, without having to get into a car, or catch a bus; a place from where the transition from being inside to outside was easy, and back again.

I am grateful everyday for walking. At home I walk the same walk every day, sometimes twice with some minor variations.  However the first part and the last part are the same path, only different of course. I see different things, the view is different, I feel different and the day or night has moved on, as have I through it. I often feel better without necessarily having consciously taken a thought for a walk, I return clearer, easier, freer and usually happier.

I live on the South Downs Way, in East Sussex, UK in a semi-detached house that was built in the late 1940’s for the land girls by the army. They lived on the land close to the farm and the land on which they worked. When I lifted up the linoleum in the small kitchen I found nail marks in the tiles, presumably from their ‘hobnail boots’.

The lay of the land would have been very different then to now. Hedgerows and pathways marked the edges of fields in which there were pigs, cowslips, and cows. All that is gone now, and the fields are filled with crops, great rolling swathes of barley, wheat or rapeseed. In the summer the green crop moves like the ocean, wave upon wave rolling across the land. It ripens to yellow, is harvested and the land returns for a while to earthy brown, before it is planted and the whole cycle starts again.

I am grateful everyday for being able to walk. Walking is my medicine, my father used to say. It was when he was no longer able to walk that his zest for life also left him - without his medicine a part of him gave up on life. He got out in a wheelchair, but it was not the same.

I build in time to walk, to get the lay of the land. I arrive early and so long as the walk is under an hour to wherever I am working that day I walk. It is an essential part of my preparation for the work that I do, partnering with leaders; part of finding my feet, of being present to the day, to the people with whom I am working.

I have incorporated ‘the walk and talk’ in my work. From my childhood I knew that side by side conversations whilst walking were often easier, and sometimes deeper. Now research confirms the power of thinking on our feet, and of walking together, stopping to pause, to think, to take a breath, to notice. People know me for ‘the walk and talk’ be that in person, in teams, one to one or via mobile phones where we are each walking in different locations.

In addition, together with my colleagues, and friends, we have co-created Walking Partnerships and three times a year we invite leaders to join us to experience the power of incorporating being in nature, and ‘the walk and talk’ in their team working, and their everyday meetings. The three points of the year mark transitional moments of Autumn, Spring and Summer. For anyone reading this, and who would like to join us on 28 September, 2023, the venue for this walk is in Surrey, UK please do get in touch with me anni@annitownend.com