Yesterday I was reminded of why I stopped wearing the Garmin watch, replacing it with Casio watches instead. It’s because Garmin, Suunto and Xiaomi don’t count walking as real sport. Imagine, you’re wearing a watch twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, every day, and charging it every month with the Garmin Instinct, and every few days with the other devices, and you see the absurdity of certain trackers.
Yesterday during my walk I bought a new clam shell cap. It’s the type of cap that you can take off, fold and put in a pocket. The one I had before this one was used daily for years, and eventually became bleached by the sun and sweat. It went from dark grey to light grey. What I really appreciate is that aside from the colour fading it’s fine.
Today I noticed that my second pair of Trail Glove 7 are worn out. The base on the left foot is worn to the point of almost being punctured. The time has come to retire this second pair of shoes.
I have walked in London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Lausanne Florence and other cities for many hours at a time. I would often walk in London until I got too tired to continue, and then I would catch the tube back to somewhere I knew, and then I’d walk some more.
I did the same in Rome and Paris. When you take the tube, or the Metro in Paris or Rome then it’s easy not to know how close places are. If you walk though. you do. That’s because you generate a mental map of the places you walk to and from. You don’t get that on the tube.
A year or two ago there were road works along a bit of road. Now the road works are back, on the same bit of road. Due to it being spring, and due to rain being quite enthusiastic this year, the route (pronounced root, not grout), is impassible. It’s not impassible because of mud, but because of long grass. In the past I would have walked through the long grass to get from A to B, or I would have walked along the river side walk, but because I wear different shoes than before, and because I don’t want ticks, I no longer walk that route until the works are finished.
Yesterday I went for a walk, during which I listened to two podcasts via AudioBookShelf, but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is that the seasons have changed. The snow has melted and there was a brief interlude in rain so plenty of people went out for bike rides. So many in fact that I seemed to be one of only two or three people on foot.
When some people see that it’s grey or rainy they don’t want to go for a walk. They don’t want to get rained on and they don’t want to experience the discomfort of being in a wet environment. I don’t mind the rain. I don’t mind wearing a rain coat and rain trousers, and waterproof shoes, and ensuring that I don’t need to fiddle with the phone when my hands are wet with rain.
Every so often I get in a car to walk somewhere different. For two or three days we have been in the fog. Yesterday the fog was so thick that when I was driving I decided to slow down. I wanted to be able to stop in half the visible distance.
When the wind is still, and fog forms, there is another advantage, if you get above it. The water on lakes is flat. It’s so flat that the lake becomes a mirror. This is great for photography.
Yesterday I decided that I would start my walk by going along a dangerous bit of road, at the start of the road. The idea behind this is to avoid being endangered by selfish car drivers when I’m fatigued. It’s better to put up with their dangerous behaviour ahead of a walk, rather than after it.
I spent time thinking about walking, and avoiding cars, and I came to the conclusion that I no longer want to walk across a bridge. Every time I walk across that bridge I see cars driving too fast and to close to other people, as well as myself. One day someone will be injured on that bridge. The bridge is barely wide enough for one car to drive by, and cars often play chicken with each other, and play Russian roulette to see if they can get away with running the gauntlet without hitting each other.
Yesterday I took a picture of brilliantly yellow Colza with the Jura looking dark due to storm clouds overhead. If you walk at this time of year you will see a lot of cola. At the moment it is brilliantly yellow and at it’s prime. Later on, the colza will be passed its prime, and at this moment it will lose all of its petals, and become green, before drying up and becoming brown. Colza is not beautiful for that much of its growth cycle.
Yesterday I walked with hiking sticks and whereas one watch told me that I had 13,000 steps, or so, the other said I had 9000. It is the second time that I notice such a difference in step count.
Walking stick step count. The count is lower than without walking sticks
The first time I noticed this issue was a few days ago, after a similar walk. I knew that the walk was over 10,000 steps so when I saw the low count I thought something was wrong, but didn’t worry about it. It happened again yesterday. I went for an 11 kilometre walk that should be at least 12,000 or more steps but it was undercounted by at least three thousand steps. The Apple watch had over 13,000 and the Garmin Instinct Solar had 9000.