The benefits of a walk

Ever seen a white-flowering Jacaranda tree?

There’s one in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens (Location C). It’s at the end of a line of colour that starts with a blazing red Illawarra Flame Tree, followed by a huge Jacaranda of the purple-flowering variety and in its lee a spreading Michelia with creamy white blossoms as large as dinner plates. Completing the colourful mosaic is this unusual Jacaranda.

These gardens are a sensory delight any time of year but you won’t be able to see all this from a car, you need to get out and walk.

Apart from the wonderful scenery to be found everywhere (the world is full of it) there are a myriad of other benefits to this under-appreciated form of exercise. I know, because before taking up walking I was unhealthy.

Leading a sedentary lifestyle, I had high blood pressure (165/95) and my liver was fatty with an alarmingly high enzyme reading indicating a potential serious health problem. Since taking up walking these conditions have reversed themselves.

What’s more, I’m told, on good authority, that one of the best exercises for arterial health and preventing blocked arteries (that lead to heart attacks) is walking.

Nowadays, I use walking as my preferred means of transport. All those occasions where I would routinely get in the car – hairdressers, shopping, whatever, are now done on foot. I have embraced ‘local’. I walk between forty and fifty kilometres a week – far less than the weekly kilometres I did in the car to accomplish the same tasks.

As a writer, I write, in my head, while I walk. Walking is a sure-fire cure for writers’ block – it clears my head – allowing the daydreaming that triggers the creative process.

I especially enjoy the mandatory pit-stop(s) en route – sometimes for coffee at Portobello Caffe or a late afternoon espresso martini at Busby’s or even lunch at the café above the Boy Charlton Pool.

Often joining me on my walk are Kookaburras, Cockatoos and Rainbow Lorikeets. It beats using an exercise machine in a sweaty gym any day.