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I'm British and I found the article funny and relatable. I'm sick to death of aimless walks.

by binbag 6y ago

babygoat 6y ago
It’s entirely optional, no? Surely you’re no sick to death of other people having them?
- yellowapple 6y ago
  I think it's more the social pressure to engage in these walks, in spite of one's preferences, that's more at issue. At least that's how the article seemed to portray it.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  In the Netherlands gyms have been closed for months and if you complain the excuse is ‘just go for a walk’. It’s not entirely optional if the only option for exercise is going for a walk or (adventure!) a bike ride.
  - ncallaway 6y ago
    It’s not the only option. You can do a wide variety of exercise without a gym or equipment. Body weight exercises are a great form of strength training you can do anywhere with no equipment. You can replace walks with runs, sprints, or interval training. If you have an appropriate body of water near you, you can also go swimming without going to a gym or pool. Start intervals of boxing the air (if you haven’t done it before, you’ll be shocked at how long 45s is while you’re punching as quickly as you can). With a minimal investment, you can take up jumprope. An excellent cardio exercise. Alternatively, grab a hula hoop, and learn to hula. There are tons of exercises you can do that aren’t walking or going to a gym. It’s not a binary option.
  - helij 6y ago
    Push-ups, sit-ups and some aerobics is another option.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I doubt the lockdown rules say "only walk or bike".
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      No, it’s just the government wondering why the population is becoming obese. You know, that risk factor that makes corona ten times as deadly.
- twic 6y ago
  In some circles, such walks are viewed as an axiomatically good thing. You're expected to go on them, and to do so enthusiastically. You could decline, or do so under protest, but that would be seen as deviant. I think the author is attacking the normalisation of such trudging, rather than the trudging itself.
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    >In some circles, such walks are viewed as an axiomatically good thing. You're expected to go on them, and to do so enthusiastically. You could decline, or do so under protest, but that would be seen as deviant. You just described my entire family. The advantage of being surrounded by folks like this is I get to exercise (as in "keep it in shape") my built-in aversion to peer pressure daily.
  - nickkell 6y ago
    Not sure why you're being downvoted. I would have hoped that the introverted savants here would have more sympathy for being forced to take part in social activities
    - babygoat 6y ago
      I’ve never heard of anyone being forced to take a leisure walk.
  - babygoat 6y ago
    Normalization implies that there’s something abnormal about going outside for some light exercise, fresh air, and a change of scenery. I enjoy those things but it’s not hard to abstain from other normal activities that I don’t.
pitspotter 6y ago
Clearly you are a golfer.
nickkell 6y ago
I agree about the humour, I even found it quite British! Maybe the author is being assimilated without their knowledge, and will soon become fond of aimless walks. The people in the comments here seem to think this innocuous article is a personal attack on them or their hobby, or that people aren't allowed to have a good moan if they feel like it (moaning being another great pasttime of the British).
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
It's not the aimlessness. Real British walks are rarely aimless. They're often mapped and planned. It's more the fact that apart from three weeks a year, British weather is relentlessly miserable. So a "walk" - always in the country, because no one walks in cities - means shivering joylessly around an obstacle course of mud, rain, fog, marshy ground, drizzle, sleet, and snow. For reasons I have never understood, this is considered a fun thing to do.
- downut 6y ago
  From "The Birth of The Modern" by Paul Johnson: "So people walked, women as well as men. When Keats went on his tour of Scotland in 1818, he went by public coach as far as Lancashire and on foot thereafter. Worsworth, his sister Dorothy, and Coleridge began a similar Scottish tour together on foot, Coleridge branching off by himself at Stirling and continuing for nearly 300 miles until there was nothing left of his shoes. Dorothy Wordsworth, with a friend or relative, regularly walked from Penrith across the Pennines and moors to visit the Hutchinsons near Halifax. Hazlitt would walk from London to his writing base at Winterslow in Wiltshire. His first wife Sarah, while waiting for her Scottish divorce in Edinburgh, walked a total of over 200 miles to vist places of interest. Painters were great walkers, too, like the 'Ancients',who walked from London to see their friend Samuel Palmer on the Kentish coast at Shoreham, or Michael Angelo Rooker, who spent his summers 'pedestrian excursions, 18 miles a day.' So were musicians: The young Richard Wagner, despite his short legs, walked from Dresden to Leipzig and back. Saving money was one motive, seeing nature another, exercise a third. When the painter John Hoppner stayed with the nautical Duke of Clarence at Petersham, he was taken off every day after dinner for 'a walk of 10 or 12 miles." No mention of the weather. I have more than once on reflecting on this passage wondered at the quality of their shoes. [edited some egregious typos]
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    Whenever I hear stories of the 19th-century great English walks, I can only assume that that was a much more tolerant era where people could stop and sleep in the open air, or successfully ask random local people for a night's shelter. Today, England is so hostile to travelers who aren’t able to stop at formal accommodation every night, that bicycle tourers have to be very stealthy when free camping (as compared to Scotland, where free camping is still allowed).
fartcannon 6y ago
The worst is when the walk has achieved its natural climax and mercifully you're on your way back home, and someone suddenly suggests a new route to explore some unknown space adding unknowable length to the death march. Even worse is camping. Once youve trudged to a treeless brown spot in the middle of the woods, set up a tent you're left with nothing to do. So what do you do? You walk.

I'm British and I found the article funny and relatable. I'm sick to death of aimless walks.

by binbag 6y ago

I'm British and I found the article funny and relatable. I'm sick to death of aimless walks.

babygoat 6y ago

It’s entirely optional, no? Surely you’re no sick to death of other people having them?

yellowapple 6y ago
I think it's more the social pressure to engage in these walks, in spite of one's preferences, that's more at issue. At least that's how the article seemed to portray it.
tinus_hn 6y ago
In the Netherlands gyms have been closed for months and if you complain the excuse is ‘just go for a walk’. It’s not entirely optional if the only option for exercise is going for a walk or (adventure!) a bike ride.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  It’s not the only option. You can do a wide variety of exercise without a gym or equipment. Body weight exercises are a great form of strength training you can do anywhere with no equipment. You can replace walks with runs, sprints, or interval training. If you have an appropriate body of water near you, you can also go swimming without going to a gym or pool. Start intervals of boxing the air (if you haven’t done it before, you’ll be shocked at how long 45s is while you’re punching as quickly as you can). With a minimal investment, you can take up jumprope. An excellent cardio exercise. Alternatively, grab a hula hoop, and learn to hula. There are tons of exercises you can do that aren’t walking or going to a gym. It’s not a binary option.
- helij 6y ago
  Push-ups, sit-ups and some aerobics is another option.
- watwut 6y ago
  I doubt the lockdown rules say "only walk or bike".
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    No, it’s just the government wondering why the population is becoming obese. You know, that risk factor that makes corona ten times as deadly.
twic 6y ago
In some circles, such walks are viewed as an axiomatically good thing. You're expected to go on them, and to do so enthusiastically. You could decline, or do so under protest, but that would be seen as deviant. I think the author is attacking the normalisation of such trudging, rather than the trudging itself.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  >In some circles, such walks are viewed as an axiomatically good thing. You're expected to go on them, and to do so enthusiastically. You could decline, or do so under protest, but that would be seen as deviant. You just described my entire family. The advantage of being surrounded by folks like this is I get to exercise (as in "keep it in shape") my built-in aversion to peer pressure daily.
- nickkell 6y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted. I would have hoped that the introverted savants here would have more sympathy for being forced to take part in social activities
  - babygoat 6y ago
    I’ve never heard of anyone being forced to take a leisure walk.
- babygoat 6y ago
  Normalization implies that there’s something abnormal about going outside for some light exercise, fresh air, and a change of scenery. I enjoy those things but it’s not hard to abstain from other normal activities that I don’t.

pitspotter 6y ago

Clearly you are a golfer.

nickkell 6y ago

I agree about the humour, I even found it quite British! Maybe the author is being assimilated without their knowledge, and will soon become fond of aimless walks. The people in the comments here seem to think this innocuous article is a personal attack on them or their hobby, or that people aren't allowed to have a good moan if they feel like it (moaning being another great pasttime of the British).

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

It's not the aimlessness. Real British walks are rarely aimless. They're often mapped and planned. It's more the fact that apart from three weeks a year, British weather is relentlessly miserable. So a "walk" - always in the country, because no one walks in cities - means shivering joylessly around an obstacle course of mud, rain, fog, marshy ground, drizzle, sleet, and snow. For reasons I have never understood, this is considered a fun thing to do.

downut 6y ago
From "The Birth of The Modern" by Paul Johnson: "So people walked, women as well as men. When Keats went on his tour of Scotland in 1818, he went by public coach as far as Lancashire and on foot thereafter. Worsworth, his sister Dorothy, and Coleridge began a similar Scottish tour together on foot, Coleridge branching off by himself at Stirling and continuing for nearly 300 miles until there was nothing left of his shoes. Dorothy Wordsworth, with a friend or relative, regularly walked from Penrith across the Pennines and moors to visit the Hutchinsons near Halifax. Hazlitt would walk from London to his writing base at Winterslow in Wiltshire. His first wife Sarah, while waiting for her Scottish divorce in Edinburgh, walked a total of over 200 miles to vist places of interest. Painters were great walkers, too, like the 'Ancients',who walked from London to see their friend Samuel Palmer on the Kentish coast at Shoreham, or Michael Angelo Rooker, who spent his summers 'pedestrian excursions, 18 miles a day.' So were musicians: The young Richard Wagner, despite his short legs, walked from Dresden to Leipzig and back. Saving money was one motive, seeing nature another, exercise a third. When the painter John Hoppner stayed with the nautical Duke of Clarence at Petersham, he was taken off every day after dinner for 'a walk of 10 or 12 miles." No mention of the weather. I have more than once on reflecting on this passage wondered at the quality of their shoes. [edited some egregious typos]
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  Whenever I hear stories of the 19th-century great English walks, I can only assume that that was a much more tolerant era where people could stop and sleep in the open air, or successfully ask random local people for a night's shelter. Today, England is so hostile to travelers who aren’t able to stop at formal accommodation every night, that bicycle tourers have to be very stealthy when free camping (as compared to Scotland, where free camping is still allowed).

fartcannon 6y ago

The worst is when the walk has achieved its natural climax and mercifully you're on your way back home, and someone suddenly suggests a new route to explore some unknown space adding unknowable length to the death march. Even worse is camping. Once youve trudged to a treeless brown spot in the middle of the woods, set up a tent you're left with nothing to do. So what do you do? You walk.