Category: Walks

Woodland Walk 6th December

Sunday was a much more relaxed walking experience. Family drive, minus the eldest child, to Eaves Wood near Silverdale.

We had a happy couple of hours traipsing around to the tip of the hill and the Pepper pot monument with amazing views across Morecambe Bay and the sands.

Weekend Walk 5th December

We are fresh out of lock down, and I am fresh from a minor muscle strain, the weather for the weekend looks fine…

Time for a couple of walks.

Saturday I walk by myself with an audio book and my own thoughts. A longish walk along the canal to Hest Bank, down the shore to Bare and then back along the river to home.

Lockdown Exercise

I have posted a couple of my longer walks to this blog during the lockdown. I thought I’d share some of the other exercises I do. Just to show the variety, it isn’t much but there is some.

I own a treadmill. On the days I don’t go out I will mix jogging and walking on the treadmill. This is usually early morning and I do between 2-3hrs while the rest of the house is asleep. Distances vary between 15 to 22 Km.

I also do runs outside. These will be between 5km to 10km and take between 25mins to an hour.

I do mixed walking (Uphill walking as Lancaster has a nice monument that is 320ft or so above the river) then jogging a circular route back downhill and flat with some uphill back to the river. This is usually 2-3 laps and varies between 15 to 17 Km taking about 2hrs.

Today was the latter. this has kept my daily step average around 23,000 steps and distances daily between 18-28 Km. Keeping me fitter than I could have hoped considering all the other bad lockdown habits.

Thanks for listening.

Me with my virtual chum after today’s exercise

Saturday Morning Walk

As the title suggest this is another walk post with, you guessed it, more images from around Lancaster. I went a little further this time and so the walk covered a lot more to photograph including many canal bridges.

Anyway I went down Lancaster Canal towards Carnforth, got off the canal at Hest Bank, walked down to sunny Bare and from their to the Shrimp roundabout where I joined the riverside path to walk back into Lancaster City Centre.

Enjoy the photos:

Another Bloody Walk

At some point we will all get tired of this… Well I won’t but I will stop posting pictures as I will be covering the same walk… Okay to be brutally honest I will unlikely stop posting pictures as well.

This walk was across Ryelands Park, over Carlisle Bridge, along the river to the wetlands, up the lane to Aldcliffe and the canal, along the canal and then back into the City via Ashton Road to the Shadowcat Offices on White Cross

Pictures below.

Out Walking (Again)

Another day, another hours (which ended up as 90 mins due to a DETOUR) trek around Lancaster.

This time I trudged up the hill to Wliamson Park, down to the canal and detoured round the revitalised Fairfield Gardens and Nature Reserve before passing the castle and down the hill back home.

Some pictures below:

Out Walking

I came back to live in Lancaster in 2006 eventhough I could have chosen to live almost anywhere. I have been asked why Lancaster and not somewhere like Manchester or London and the answer has always been the views.

In the current pandemic crisis that has become even more true. Where else could I live in a city with access to art, culture, shopping and travel and still be within 20 minutes walk of the countryside?

Anyway here’s some pictures from today’s walk.

A Year of Effort

Over the past year I have been publishing results of my attempts to get fitter. Let’s be honest, tweet, blog, vlog, facebook and all. I have had Zombie’s chasing me around parks and updates in the wee hours from the gym.

It started almost a year ago (I started on the 6th January 2017 but it was as close as damn it to New Year) when I decided 2017 was the year to kill the excess weight I had and look and feel better. It was how I felt about my body and my overall health.

Since then I have lost about 60 pounds (to be fair I lost nearly 70 but have fluctuated up a little in the past few weeks due to lack of gym and running time and holiday over-indulgences). I still have some way to go, about 15 pounds now since I threw some back on. But I am confident that it I can achieve it and I have set a date of 2019 to lose that weight so I don’t have to push myself.

This post is the last time you will see the fitness graphics from 2017 and it shows a general high level of activity. In total last year I did nearly 5.5 million steps which is an average of 448,215 steps each month or 14,736 steps (about 14km) each day. None of that includes the gym time and the efforts to make a better diet.

I was aiming at doing this for a year to make a lifestyle change and I think I have achieved that Where I go from here is about 15 pounds lighter and to keep up the exercise that I do. I will probably randomly keep you informed (unless you follow my runs and I start getting chased by zombies at which point you are going to hear about it much quicker).

A year ago I honestly couldn’t run for 3 minutes without feeling very tired and out of breath and running up the stairs had started to make me sound like a steam train puffing up a hill. Now I can jog for an hour (usually between 6-10Km) and sometimes twice a day and feel satisfied. I am concerned that there is a toll on my knees and back, but for now I can enjoy feeling better.

I also know that I have the ability to dedicate myself to a very strong cause and to carry through with it.

Which means I probably need to find a goal for this year…

 

But it is all futzing stone

Yesterday’s challenge on the fast-running-out-of-days Castaway’s blog was to take a short walk and photograph something stone.

This was going to be easy, Lancaster is mostly stone buildings. The office complex we have offices in is stone, the steps leading to it are stone, the bridges on the canal next to it are stone.

So I took a few pictures as I strolled out to lunch along the canal, including the nice reflections from the water on the underside if one of the stone bridges.

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