A Facebook group - "Daily Mile Melksham" has been set up for April - "This is a virtual challenge to help you move more by getting out to walk 1 mile a day! Walking is the most underrated forms of exercise, let’s go!!!!". Nothing to do with me, but I'm going to take part and see how I can do in the case of my daily life and you can too!

I have never exercised just for the sake of exercise - I get easily bored and would much rather build my exercised into other things I do during the day. But it IS a good idea to keep tabs on how much exercise I get - again I would get bored logging that, but (accidentally) there's an app on my phone that I hadn't realised was turned on a while back and it's built a history.

Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1179685273542626
More on my blog at https://grahamellis.uk/blog1549.html

 
I walk around 7 miles a day, one walk at lunchtime whether I'm in the office or WFH and also in the evening after dinner.

My work means that I am rarely at a desk all day so plenty of additional (unmeasured) pottering around but the 7 miles is "deliberate" walking if that makes sense.

I am fortunate to live in a rural setting where there are loads of options for very pleasant walking, great low impact exercise for those with ageing knees which spent too many years in the front row too!

 
I'm a fairly keen walker (perhaps there's some nominative determinism there) .  For example, I probably covered more than 12 miles yesterday....but that was a day out walking, of which I do a fair few.
It would not surprise me if the mean average comfortably exceeds 5 miles per day, especially between the spring and autumn.
I'm so pleased that I was brought up to enjoy walking from childhood and to a greater or lesser extent have kept it up ever since.  Keeping "in practice" continues to be a great joy in life.....both with company or on on my own little jaunts.

 
Two days in.


1st April 2025


2nd April 2025

 
Certainly less than a mile, the arthritic knees won't have it. But normally do at least 15 km a day on the bike.

 
And four days in ...

3rd April - walk from Devizes to Roundway Hill Covert and Olivers Castle for an evening meeting of the Melksham Amateur Photography Group. Picture taken afterwards waiting in the Condado Lounge in Devizes whileI waited out the 2 hour gap to the last bus at 22:10.  See my post on Facebook



4th April - from home, around the park and back through the shopping area to the Town Hall for a photocall for the Melksham News

 
From Saturday, 5th April - writing with a transport bias

From Melksham (Western Way) across the floor plain (though crops with lost paths to stiles topped with barbed wire) to the Pack Horse Bridge where that path and other from Whaddon and Semington converge to cross the river


Across the fields having crossed the bridge, again recently ploughed and a bit of a scramble, but now more easily followable


This path crosses the railway - it's not one of the ones I've been asked to comment on, but I really don't think it's going to be reachable by people who are less able bearing in mind the previous picture showing the state of the path


A slight pause awaiting the train and marvelling at how far forward we have come with the service over the years.


An so on across more fields and a stream to Broughton Gifford where I picked up the bus that runs three time on Saturday via Bradford-on-Avon to Trowbridge.  I spoke with another couple of seniors in the church yard and they were amazed that I had walked "All the way from Melksham"; the asked, worried, how I was going to get back.   It seems that although they are residents of Broughton Gifford, they had no real knowledge of the bus there and wouldn't have thought of using it, let alone knowing when and where it went.  It shows just what a big job remains to be done to make people aware of the public transport we have.

 
That report ought to go to your council rights of way officer. Illegal to top stiles with barbed wire (always carry snippers with you & legally allowed to remove), nor should footpaths be ploughed without some reinstatement to flat & level afterwards. They will be writing to the landowners of each

 
Thanks for the bridge photo in particular.

Mark

 
From this evening - a welcome to Melksham and some local characters to greet you

 
Very effective photos and the local talent clearly see the underpass needed murals and also plumped for very sombre blue lias faux masonry. (The real thing would have needed to be fetched some distance...)

Next, guerilla gardening on the spiral ramp thing would be positive.

Mark