August

adj. inspiring reverence and admiration.

Well, I don’t know about that but I am setting myself a challenge for the month that will at least be worth something, I hope.  I’m going to walk.  Not the prodigious distances that earned Sir Ian his knighthood, the cause of constant merriment in the Sky commentary box (his knighthood, not the charitable fundraising for which it was awarded) nor the kind of mileage touted by a certain Scottish due back in the late 80s.

Instead, I’m setting myself the challenge of walking 500km in the calendar month.  That’s about the distance from my flat in Canonbury to the Scottish border.  Of course, I won’t be walking to the Scottish border, that would be foolhardy, no the 500km will be mostly spent walking around London, to and from work, getting out to explore London’s parks, museums and other attractions and just seeing how much of the city (literally) you can cover in a month without having to try too hard and becoming the subject of a BBC 4 documentary featuring Ben Fogle.

It also seems more than pertinent coming, as I do, off the back of an American roadtrip – this can be my own form of carbon offsetting, and one that strikes me as being a far more enjoyable way of getting on with daily life than any form of carbon trading.