Here we all are, once again stuck at home most of the time. What do we need most? Perhaps it is to remember what it's like to walk freely in the outdoors, to feel fresh air on our skins where the wind and the rain it raineth daily.
Though we cannot take a long days walk legally, or literally, perhaps someone else could do so for us. The BBC is running a series of half an hour slow TV' programmes called Winter Walks ,where a presenter takes you out on a seven mile country walk. I've only watched three so far, with the Rev Richard Coles walking from Sutton Bank to Rivaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, Baroness Warsi from Kettlewell to Coniston Bridge and Selena Scott from Thorpe to Applewick in Wharfedale. They were all in there own way brilliant snap shots of an experience. Full of those small incidental delights, such as Richard Coles becoming self conscious about not eating his flapjack in a church he was about to visit.
Others in the series are with Simon Armitage and Lemn Sissay, all walking somewhere to somewhere in Yorkshire or Cumbria. In the process you feel like you are getting to know them better as people. Despite being a Tory, I discovered I've got a lot of time for Warsi's genuine friendliness, warmth and good humour.
It is touching, informative and utterly life enhancing viewing. If you've been feeling downhearted and a little too weary to drum up enthusiasm for home based activities during these first weeks of lockdown, give yourself a tea break, a plate of your favourite biscuits, light a fire and put on any one of these six walks. They will not fail to lift your spirits.
No comments:
Post a Comment