A Lot of Walking in Circles

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People think that you need to get in the car, drive for half an hour to two hours, hike, and then drive home for from half an hour to two hours but this idea is wrong. We can do a lot of walking in circles. In reality we don’t walk in circles. We walk in loops. We walk from home to home, but via a different variety of villages. Some days it is the villages that overlook the lake, and other days it is the villages that are under the Jura.

The walks are in almost the same place, but with different dynamics. One takes you along fields, trees, the camino de Santiago and the trail of the Hughenots and the next takes you along vines, orchards, woods and more. They also take you along different groups of people.

Most people seem to walk from village one to village two in a loop. They usually finish within an hour but I often walk from one and a half hours to two, and sometimes three, depending on whether it is summer or winter. There is more time to walk in summer. So much walking, 365 or so days a year, does mount up. Depending on the app it amounts to 2600 or more kilometres of walking. That is a considerable distance. 28,000 metres gained, despite not going up to the Jura, or doing sporty climbs this year. Simple walks, with the occasional bike ride thrown in.

In a normal year I might spend less time doing sports, but the carbbon footprint from driving to do those sports would be higher. I would also have more to write about, as I would have been exploring and discovering new places. At this rate my discoveries were books in lending libraries. I don’t mind walking. I show that I have the stamina to do a real hiking journey, rather than the loop walks. With the way the pandemic I could spend many more walks wearing out shoes going around in circles.