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It might be a walk in the park but it could save your life
The latest Swindon walking trail is a joint effort involving Wiltshire and Swindon Sport, Swindon Borough Council and using funding from the GWR Customer and Community Improvement Fund. Over the course of a mile, people can take in a wealth of sights and history between Swindon's railway station and GWR Park. With countless studies saying walking improves not only physical health but mental wellbeing, anything that encourages more of us to get out and about can only be a good thing.
By Barrie Hudson
Just about all of us know that exercise is a Good Thing.
Unfortunately, as with so many other Good Things, such as moving the recently-opened packet of custard creams or family-sized bag of crispy salt’n’vinegar sticks to the kitchen instead of keeping it next to us on the sofa - exercise can be a Bit of a Faff.
No matter how good our intentions, no matter how inspired we might be by watching physically fit people doing physically fit things on the television, no matter how terrified we might be after reading the latest clickbait about whether that occasional ache means a hooded figure carrying a scythe is at this very moment preparing to apply the tip of a skeletal finger to our doorbell, all too often we just can’t face the Faff.
That’s not the case with everybody, of course, and it’s probably just as well because otherwise the NHS would collapse like a termite-infested shed and average life expectancy would plummet like a paper aeroplane in a sudden vacuum.
As far as plenty of people are concerned, there is no Faff at all in activities such as getting involved with a local sports club, joining a gym, joining an exercise class, taking up running and so on. There are even lots of people who do not find it a Faff to purchase not only an exercise bike or treadmill but also access to an online personal trainer who will jolly them along in real time, a bit like a school PE teacher but in the comfort of their own home.
And good luck to each and every one of those people.
Walking, however, is not a Faff. It is open to anybody and everybody capable of propelling themselves, whether on foot or by some other means involving physical exertion, however great or slight. We do not tend to think of simply doing that as making any great positive difference to our physical and mental health, but just about every scrap of research suggests we should.
Some years ago, for example, Public Health England published a document exploring the health benefits of even moderate exercise among otherwise inactive people.