Sometime this year I had a revelation about my transport to work.
For years I have cycled to work when the opportunity to rose, earlier in my career cycling 6 -10 miles a day to work and sometimes longer, but as circumstances changed and my practice was closer to my home the cycle became 4 -5 minutes. I use the car as little as possible and 1 or 2 days I began to walk to work and realised what I had been missing.
My walk to work takes 11 -12 minutes, it’s just over a mile and a half. I go through paths and through a field, past a leisure center, through some houses and straight into work. Often I walk and listen to a talking book, it’s on the same route as I take my dog. The advantages of walking to work are as follows:
- It is quality time on my own.
- If absolutely essential I can make a phone call.
- I can listen to countless talking books throughout the year in time that I wouldn’t have available.
- It seems to be helping me loose and maintain weight.
One of the greatest benefits though is the pond. There is a pond I walk past on my walk to work which I walk past with my dog and I walk past when I go to school with my son. The changes in this throughout the year are absolutely staggering and astonishing: there are some swans and ducks that live there and phenomenal vegetation which dies in the winter, it freezes over in the winter and glistens in the summer and the more you look at it the more beautiful it becomes.
I would never have seen the pond if I hadn’t walked to work.
A suggestion – if you travel to work by car find somewhere nice to park your car 10 minutes away and walk the last bit to work. Believe it or not it is quite life changing stuff.
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