What’s the best way to keep in shape during the lockdown? That’s the First World problem I’ve been using to distract me during these strange, distressing times. My wife and teenage children are doing online workouts, but that looks far too tiring. Instead, I’m walking round Britain — in my back garden.
I got the idea from a walking trail called Walk the Planets, in Ruislip Woods, not far from where I live. It’s a round trip of about two miles, which doubles as a tour of the solar system. At a scale of five billion to one, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are barely a hundred yards apart (on the same scale the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, would be in San Francisco).
I’ve walked that route more times than I can count, and now I’m stuck at home it got me thinking: why not map out a similar walking trail around Britain, in my back garden? On a more modest scale (17,600 to one, if my maths is right), in a few minutes I can walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats and back again.
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