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And so it begins


 

The name of this blog is obviously an allusion to the cliché about the start of a journey of a thousand miles. But it's also about the act of metaphorically putting one foot in front of another: a nod to the fact that sometimes life is just hard and you don't much feel like going on; but that there's value – and perhaps a little virtue – in simply plodding onwards, whatever the goal might be or even regardless of whether there's a goal at all.

I was prompted to create this thing primarily as a way of recording a long trek I'm planning to do at the end of this year, when I'll be walking the length of the Tokaido, the ancient 500-kilometre route linking Tokyo and Kyoto. I'll write more about the Tokaido later, but while planning a dive into the scary world of blogging (isn't that something famous people do?) it occurred to me that it could also serve as a record of other, less lengthy walks. Not that I expect anyone else to be particularly enthralled by what are often eccentrically routed ramblings through some of the world's least obvious beauty spots: it's just for my own pleasure in recollection. I've done a lot of walks over the years, and most of them have gone unrecorded. For the sake of conservation I'll try to create an archived trace of some them here, from memory and photos and GPS tracks.


Most of my walks have been (and probably will continue to be) solo affairs. In part that's to do with the nature of the walks, many of which – as mentioned above – are unlikely to represent attractive propositions for anyone of average sensibilities. But it's also to do with the nature of the walker: I don't mind solitude and prefer to walk at my own pace, stop when I want and not feel obliged to engage in conversation. There's no better aid to thought than walking, I believe, and I've always found it difficult to think and talk at the same time. (This is obviously a personal failing.)

Although I'm mildly antisocial, I'm not a purist. I hope to walk from time to time with other people, and I hope they'll allow me to record those outings here.

Despite the bucolic delights of the cover image of this blog, my walks are increasingly urban ones, or – if I'm really lucky – incorporate a mix of bush and suburbia, the natural and the industrial. One of the delights of living in Sydney is the extraordinary variety of its vast sprawl, with pockets of apparently untouched bushland reaching to within a few kilometres of the city centre. One of my heroes is Alan Waddell, who in retirement set out to walk every street in every suburb in Sydney. He managed to cover almost 300 suburbs before, well into his 90s, ill health forced a second retirement. It's exactly the sort of gloriously pointless self-inflicted exploit that appeals to me, and while I don't think I'll ever get close to  replicating Alan's feat, I do get a sense that I find a similar pleasure in the juxtaposition of the mundane and the quirky that suburbia often throws up.


In recent years I've being following the network of tracks across the Sydney basin mapped by the Walking Volunteers, and will add here as I trace more of the web. The 'routes' (such as they are – for the most part they exist in no sense except on the map) use parks, reserves and established scenic walks where possible, and where not simply follow suburban streets. This can make for boring, even slightly depressing, stretches, but allows for a slow-motion, immersive appreciation of the diversity of Sydney suburban life that's impossible to obtain from any other form of locomotion.

If anyone else does stumble across this blog, I hope you'll find at least some of it interesting. Walking, in all its forms – from routine commute to hair-raising adventure – has been a big part of my life and often an essential therapy, and I've endeavoured to reflect some of my love of a good stroll here. And if it inspires anyone else to lace up their boots and step out the front door, so much the better.

Mona Vale, April 2023

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