Walking for pleasure is the most favourite leisure pastime in The UK by a large extent. According to information from the United Kingdom government 16% of folks do it every week, compared with 11% who pay a visit to the health club. Perhaps living and being in the countryside is linked with success and the “upper classes” who, based on accounts in literature, would possess large country houses. Prosperous Victorian business men acquired a country estate to show off their success and enhanced social standing. Possibly the claustrophobia induced by living in the most heavily populated large place in Europe drives Britons to search for open spaces at the weekends. It was indeed in the Victorian era that recreational walking first became popular given that it was a cheap way for factory workers to escape from the satanic mills and it became associated with a healthy almost puritanical life style.
Why is it then that hiking remains so well-liked?
The delights of walking have long stimulated poets and novelists. Some have talked of the sense of liberty that is derived from leaving the town behind; and of the wonderful variety of landscapes and inspiring views that the UK rural landscape can deliver us. In the “Song of the Open Road”, Walt Whitman penned
“Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.”
Rambling appears to set the mind free for contemplation. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” The Welsh author Lloyd Jones, who was stimulated to write his first story by a 1,000-mile walk all around his homeland, announced that “The moving landscape provides an absorbing diversion which frees the mind and gives us a fresh viewpoint, and we’re most at ease with the world when we walk because everything is happening at a manageable pace.”
A number of politicians really like the ability to reflect on the important issues of state as they meander. William Gladstone, the Victorian prime minister and moralist, was an keen daily walker, opening a route up Mount Snowdon at the age of 83. While mixed up in the europe’s financial problems in 2011, Angela Merkel, the German prime minister, decided to pass her summertime vacation walking in the south Tyrol (even so the trip did not produce any quick solutions to the problem)
Who can doubt that the English Composer Vaughan Williams was inspired by the British outdoors when he composed perhaps his most popular piece “The Lark Ascending”. Vaughan Williams, as were a number of other English composers, was famous for his common countryside walks not only to discover folk songs but also to be inspired by the rolling English Countryside.
Perhaps we should leave the very last words to John Muir, the Scottish-born American naturalist.
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like falling leaves.”
“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown:
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