Walk your way- You don't need to quantify connectedness to feel good.

How jogging became 'Plogging' and walking became 'Plalking' and all the shenanigans in between.

In the spirit of changing my ‘musts’ and ‘shoulds’ self-talk to ‘wants’ and ‘would likes’ and trying to fit walks into the fabric of my life, I asked the boys and their cousin if they ‘would like’ to come for a walk with me. Well, we can all guess the resounding response to that as they stared at the screen in front of them (controlling the scarily realistic men as they run around a football pitch). So, I changed tack- I ‘would really like it’ if you’d come out for a walk with me today, which resulted in a ‘Nah thanks’. Then I did what any self-respecting parent would do when face with such disinterest from growing and ever hungry teenage boys, I bribed them with food. A meal deal to be precise. And to modify a verse from the famous song by a Scottish duo…

"They would walk five hundred miles And They would walk five hundred more Just to be the boys who walks a thousand miles To eat meal-deals and more!"

Anyway, with a meal-deal purchased along with a Cadbury’s cream egg for good measure (we need to keep our energy levels up, right?), we headed to Draycote Water to walk the 4.8 mile circular loop around the reservoir. The first part of the walk went something like this… ‘Are we nearly there, yet?’... Sorry, wrong mode of transport. It actually went like this; running along low walls whilst trying not to be blown off by the wind (we did!), me chasing them up hills to try to catch them before they got to the top (I didn’t!), and jogging to the end of the walled section (No chance!). With energy levels depleted, we stopped for a lunch break, watching the trout anglers in their boats on the water and the geese pecking at the lunch leftovers blown from our laps.

It was a much slower second half to the walk, the boys walked along the water’s edge and I stuck to the path lost in my own thoughts… when a muntjac deer scurried out from the trees. I have never seen deer here before and it really made my day. The deer said hello to a couple of rabbits and they all hopped back to the undergrowth to a party that I wasn’t invited to. As we continued on’ the boys spotted a dead bird (no- you can’t pick it up!); saw a fish in the weir section (no you can’t try and catch it with your back pack!); and the next thing I know, my youngest was standing on a boulder in the water (you’ve got a long way to walk with wet feet- cue slight annoyance and much gesticulating to signal him to get out). However, it transpires he wasn’t in the water just because I’d told him not to, he was fishing out deflated helium birthday balloons as he was worried the geese would swallow them. So, whilst my proud mamma moment was slightly tinged with feeling bad for yelling at him to get out of the water, it was fully reinstated moments later when the boys decided to scour the shores and collect all the rubbish. We filled two rucksacks with over twenty plastic bottles, almost as many cans, crisp packets, plastic bags, washing line and a discarded coat. They would have carried on all afternoon if we didn’t have to get back to the car before the parking ticket ran out.

As we were putting all the rubbish in the bin, my youngest said that collecting the waste had made him feel useful and my eldest added that it felt like they were doing a little bit for the planet, like they had made a difference today (the absolute definition of win-win!). It made me think about how we all might feel better if we engage in meaningful tasks and how those tasks ground us in the present moment. We weren’t focused on the wider outcome of saving the planet, just the part that was within our control- picking up the plastic around us. In that moment, I felt connected… connected to nature, connected to my boys. We talked about how other people across the country, the world even, could be doing the same things and I felt connected to a community. You can't quantify that feeling of connectedness. Those feelings can't be measured by a society that values external, material measurements of success and therefore it could be deemed less somehow. But there and then, somewhat unexpectedly, we all felt great. And when a lovely lady came up to us and said ‘I love what you are doing and as a lover of the landscape, Thank you!”-the boys’ smiles said it all!

As we walked the last stretch of the reservoir, I told the boys about an article I had read at the beginning of the week about a student, Vivek Gurav, in Bristol who picks up rubbish whilst jogging who had started a 30 day ‘Plogging’ challenge. (https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2022/february/vivek-gurav-plogging-campaign.html) Meriam-Webster describes Plogging is a term invented by Erik Ahlström referring to the act of picking up trash and litter while jogging. It is a portmanteau of the Swedish term plocka upp, which means "to pick up," and jogging. The boys loved this idea we have decided that whenever we go out walking, (now forever known as ‘Plalking’) we will take reusable bags with us and collect rubbish as we go… starting with the empty meal-deal wrappers, obviously!

Please let me know if you are a keen ‘Plogger’ or possible a ‘Plalker’ convert. I’d love to hear your experiences and you can message me or write in the comments below.