A little flavour of what's in store...

Thursday, November 04, 2010

A quick walk into town...


Two or three times a month, I have occasion to visit the town centre for banking and shopping purposes.

I work in Derby on Pride Park, so it's a 20 min walk (at a fast pace) which gives me 20 mins to get done what I planned and 20 mins to walk back to the office.

Unless it's raining, the walk is quite pleasant - through the back of the industrial park, over the railway station walkway and down a leafy pedestrian / cycle lane involving an underpass into the main shopping mall.

Taking the bus is impractical as I'd have to wait to long for the bus to arrive and then it's got to weave through traffic lights to get to it's stop.

I could take the car but to be honest that's no quicker and this is what really set me thinking.

I'm not a green person by any means. I forget to take my own shopping bags when visiting supermarkets, I run a 2litre petrol car (which is surprisingly frugal) and I run lots of energy consuming gadgets. I recycle most glass, cardboard and tin (only the odd one finds its way into the normal refuse), but I don't consider these anything more remarkable then the actions of any normal person whose presented with the means to recycle from his doorstep.

I digress - back to the lunchtime walk into town.

I could take the car and if it was really urgent and raining, then I might well do that but to be honest, and I'm sure many of you will agree with me, it's a bit of a pain taking the car.

Firstly, you get stuck in all the other traffic doing the same thing, making an early school run or just driving through to another destination.

When you've negotiated the queues, you've then got to find some where to park. Remember, in the back of your mind you'll be thinking "I could have walked it by now". When you've finally driven around the block 3 times to park in your 'unknown of' secret parking spot (because it's not really that secret and everybody else also knows it), you've burnt a gallon of fuel and wasted precious minutes.

It's not exactly a hare and tortoise situation but I bet if you weighed up carefully (and truthfully) then it would probably take you about the same amount of time to walk as it does to drive, queue and park.

I appreciate I'm lucky - I don't work so far out that walking isn't an option. Truth be told, I've often thought about taking a bike in the boot of the car or practising on one of the kids fold up scooters before trying it out to speed up the journey.

No, I am lucky.

Of course, walking also has other benefits. I get a little exercise (walking at a brisk pace is required to not run over my allotted time) and there are more than a few tasty pie and pasty shops on the route so if I need a little sustenance, then provender is at hand.

Which really leaves just one question. Why aren't you walking into town?

photo credit: tela chhe

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