Time to let your feet do the walking

IT can be a term of encouragement, or abuse, being told to stand up on your own two feet — but it is good advice for life. For a healthy one, especially.

Our evolutionary path as homo sapiens has seen us evolve as upright, sentient beings with big brains, opposable thumbs and feet that aren’t great for grasping, but which are entirely fit for purpose; that is, for running, jumping, hopping, kicking, standing. And custom-made for walking.

Fears have been expressed for generations about our baby fingers withering away, on an evolutionary decline from lack of use and purpose, apparently — although proper touch typing on currently all-pervasive keyboards might well give them a last-gasp reprieve if we don’t give them the two-fingered typist’s salute.

Our increasingly sedentary lifestyle and impinging virtual realities also threaten our other extremities. As long as we’ve electronic gadgets and gizmos to engage with, we’ll probably need a few fingers, linked to a brain. But, our legs could yet wither away if we’re slung back on our behinds all day, staring at screens (the irony isn’t entirely lost as this rambling column gets penned.) As a nation, people, species, we’re getting fattier, lazier, more immobile. Obesity is seeing bed-ridden adults being craned out of houses for surgery, or for burial, and news reports are increasingly coming in of screen-bound gamers dropping (or just sliding) dead as their dexterous fingers twitch no more, after days of brain activity, and body immobility.

We need to get a better balanced life, and standing up for it is a start. Standing, stretching, and walking. We appear to learn to walk around 12 months of age, and forget to do it again around 24 years of age (cheaper car insurance, perhaps?)

There’s a simple solution to a better quality, more rounded life, and it’s called walking: merely swinging one leg in front of the other in a sort of inverted pendulum drive, with our bodies vaulting over the limbs in any manner of styles.

We can go strolling in any manner of footwear, from the roll-sole MBTs to Birkenstocks, and from stilettoes to runners, and at any pace we like, from the window-shopping, absent-minded amble to the full-on power stride, arms windmilling. When we do it with our eyes open, and our brains engaged, it becomes quite a full-blown sensory experience. Whether we choose to keep ears open to birdsong, or to traffic and snatches of other people’s chat, or to tune in to RTE Player, is a matter of taste and timing.

The next few days and weeks look like adding a lot of walking options to our daily lives. National Heritage Week, which started on Saturday and continues to next Sunday (yep, a nine-day week) has a fairly tempting array of 1,300 events, things to do, places to see, and walks to wander on nationwide (do take time to let your fingers do the preliminary walking on www.heritageweek.ie, it’s jam-packed with something for every interest).

Book-ended by two weekends, there are events daily, which is great for families in the last throes of summer school holidays looking for something a little bit different to do.

It includes random, challenging activities to the truly arcane, and from bat-hunting walks in Killaloe Co Clare on Thursday (and something similarly batty in Lismore, Co Waterford, next weekend with an echo-locator,) through to a moth field-hunt in Kilmallock on Saturday.

The week’s events are co-ordinated under headings like forests and woodlands, coastal and marine, walled towns and wildlife, sport and history, and gigs to engage the under 12s.

Many include walks, trips, and tours. Dublin, Cork, other cities and towns have medieval or historical walking tours lined up, and Cork city on Sunday, August 27, also has a special series of walks and talks, see www.corkheritageopenday.ie

The day includes a ramble, visiting some of the city’s best examples of 20th century architecture with writer Tom Spalding who published a guide with some surprising inclusions and omissions last year.

Apart from those, 38 city buildings will open their doors the same day, from Blackrock Castle to the Masonic Lodge’s historic hall in Tuckey Street. See how many buildings you can fit in on foot in the day.

Straight after that, for those down south, comes Cork Walking Month in September, a month of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Just coming into its second year and gaining stride, there are 40 organised walks to get things moving and the indolent off their couches (see www.corkwalkingmonth.ie).

It involves sports bodies/organisations, walking groups, the HSE, and UCC’s Mardyke Arena has thrown in its climbing wall for some gripping action.

And, as delightful as National Heritage Week’s nine-day ‘week’, the month-long September walk-fest doesn’t end until October 2’s National Trails Day, with a trail-walking workshop in Farran Woods. Boot up.