Me and Ronnie in Princes Park today.
Today, me and my partner, Ronnie Hughes have been walking in Liverpool. He has written this piece about why we walk.
Today, we have walked, all day. Like we do at least one day in every week. This one was an urban walk, though most of them are not. Through miles of South Liverpool parkland and the streets of Granby and the Dingle, down the docker’s steps to the wide, wide River Mersey. Along the coastline and back through crocus filled springtime woodland, stopping for lunch at our favourite vegetarian café, Greendays in Lark Lane. Then across Sefton Park and back home.
We used to view this sort of thing as a ‘day off’, but now we realise it’s one of the most important things that we do. We walk because we must. Because we are walking ourselves, and our futures, into being.
In her glorious book ‘Wild’, Jay Griffiths talks about the importance of this walking:
‘Active in an environment, people may be serene. Passive and inert, people feel a cage-rage so pervasive that they do not recognise its cause: our exile. We, though we know it or not, long for the open road, the path yearning on, swinging past, lean and agile, full tilt to the horizon. Not knowing if the wind will whip you or soft sun stroke your face, but walking on in trust, a kind of faith, not that some overweening god will show you the way, but that the way itself will show you the way. And all you need to do is put your boots on and walk. But walk you must.’ Continue reading
