After a slightly rocky start, the discussion seems to have settled down into an interesting sharing of experiences and views.
I am intrigued though by comments describing me as "
an urbanite" (scottk) and "
a true townie" (Skip).
According to the online Urban Dictionary an 'urbanite' is aged between 17 and 44 (making me exactly 50% older than the upper limit) and it lists '10 expectations' urbanites have, none of which apply to me in the slightest. Perhaps '
urbanite' was intended to mean '
townie'?
According to the OED, 'townie' is a derogatory term for someone who lives in a town. Collins adds:
If someone who lives in the countryside refers to someone from a town or city as a townie, they disapprove of that person because they think they have no knowledge of the countryside or country life.So the question is... do I actually live in a town? Hmm.. I'm not completely sure. I live in the parish of Chestfield, and Chestfield is a village on the outskirts of Whitstable. Walking from my front door, the nearest agricultural field is 1 minute away, the nearest farmyard is 8 minutes away, and The Blean - one of England's largest ancient woodlands at over 11 square miles - is a further 7 minutes past the farmyard along a gravelly track between fields.
It's true that I don't live on a farm or in a shack in the woods or in a caravan in a field, but I do spend a lot of time in the countryside and I love it. Like many other walkers, I've learned to identify many wildflowers, trees and crops, and I'm becoming ever more understanding of both the natural and farming lifecycles.
I do roughly 90% of my walking in Kent - mostly solo, but with my wife on Saturdays and on our walking holidays - with the remaining 10% being on those holidays. According to Garmin Connect, in the past 365 days I've done 3,131 miles of recorded walks and ascended over 186,000 feet. In recent months, our walking holidays have included weeks in north and south Snowdonia, the Peak District, the Auvergne, the Outer Hebrides (South Uist, Harris and Lewis), Islay and Kintyre (near the Mull of...), the Coigach & Assynt region and more. And next month we're off to the Brecon Beacons...
...which brings me to another thought that might prove slightly controversial.
Another little irritation for my list is the impression I get from some people that 'proper' walking (or perhaps I should say hiking) is done in National Parks over hills and mountains, while walking in woods and on farmland has far less street-cred (or trail-cred?), when in my humble and modest experience (see above!) nothing could be further from the truth.
For example, our most recent mountain/hill walk was Cul Beag in the Assynt (north of Ullapool). A couple of miles of pathless bog took us to the foot of the magnificent monolith that is Cul Beag. We climbed a sub-peak then down to a lochan then up to the main summit with its incredible views. For the return, we skirted the sub-peak and returned across even boggier bog. We saw no-one, it was brilliant fun and totally hassle-free and relaxed - a real walk in the park. Our route wasn't constrained by anything or anybody, and we encountered not a single one of the 10 irritations in my OP!