Nordic Walking the World

So why ‘Nordic Walking The World’?

I was looking for a platform to share our ‘walks with poles’, consulted a few experts and prayed for a suitable name, and so here we are. Me at the start of an adventure, you hopefully intrigued enough to sign up to follow the ride.

OK let’s face it I shall never achieve the world, and it would be environmentally selfish to try! But maybe, just maybe, somewhere along this journey someone will stumble across this site who does Nordic Pole Walking in North America, or a kindly soul who is familiar with Nordic Walking in China or Japan, and they are of a mind to share their Nordic Walking experiences. Perhaps others who like trekking but have seen weirdos with ‘different poles’ (yep that’s me!), and want to ‘buy-in’ to read of the efficiencies and style of Nordic Walking and perhaps even, “well blow me down”, buy a pair of poles and learn to Nordic Walk.

I have a site with plenty of room to meander from ‘the way’. Each and every walk, Nordic Walk or otherwise, has distractions, unexpected ‘interesting’ things and noises and flavours that need to be investigated.

I don’t do Nordic Walking as a sport, I do it as a means of increasing the effectiveness of ‘adventures on foot’, and so rather than focus purely on ‘the route’ I revel in the extras, the way the light falls on a tree and silhouettes it against the rock wall behind, the flowers we encounter carpeting the high alpine meadows. The Bleu de Termignon cheese, produced in only three farms in the world, and the pint of Hattie Brown’s Moonlite ale sipped at  The Square & Compass while watching the sun chase shadows across the sea at the end of a hot sunny walk on the English coastline. 

I have hope that heaven awaits me at the end, but before then I don’t have a clue where on this earth God is taking me, so please read about the journeys, perhaps chuckle, get angry at me, or with me, learn from our experiences of places and kit and share glimpses of creation.

Now I guess there are several rasons why folk take up Nordic Walking; exercise, fitness, looks trendier (if done properly) than using trekking poles, to join a friend who already does, encroaching insanity even (or to stave it off).

Me, well along with my one and only Favourite Wife (FW), we met an amazing lady called Viv, who taught a number of healthy activities, including Nordic Walking. Now FW is easily set alight by anything that might conceivably be vaguely good for mind, body or soul, and perceived NW as being good for two out of three of those, especially as it smatters of diet, exercise and health. Me I’m just obedient to almost every whim – almost.

The early days of Nordic Walking

The burst of enthusiasm that ensued from lessons with Viv led to many enjoyable months of training, and a couple of years later, in 2009, we decided to celebrate our ‘joined-up’ ninetieth birthdays.

With a heart for that fabulous UK charity  The Trussel Trust, we helped organise and lead a fundraising event termed ‘The Nordic Ninety’, a ninety-kilometre walk from the source of the River Stour in Dorset, England, to where it enjoined the briny at Christchurch.

Following this were some empty years when enthusiasm for Nordic Walking was eclipsed by enthusiasm for heaven knows what, or perhaps we were just too busy encouraging our brood of females to be at least vaguely lady-like.

It was about a decade later that I signed up to an online course, a very ‘enthusiastic’ course run by a very ‘enthusiastic’ North American, on, yes you’ve guessed it, changing your life.

Well as it happens it did, which is why you’re reading these ramblings about rambles. It was all about setting habit targets and goal targets. One of my habit targets, put in place one cold January day from here in Wiltshire in the UK, was to walk two miles each working day, enthusiastically walking that is, no dawdling, no searching for signs of spring by the roadside, and by my birthday in early March upping it to three miles, four miles by early April.

My ‘habit target’ went ‘wrong’ on day two. I was on my way back, verily storming it down the road, when I spotted a lady donning walking boots, watched enthusiastically by an eager chocolate Labrador. Now having at that time a lab of the most superior colour, that shade of tone much beloved by the late Henry Ford – black, I was suitably scathing of her choice of mutt. Following her abject apologies for choice of colour, she told me she was just starting training to support her daughter who was going on a school trek to the Atlas Mountains.

It was that moment, that very moment, when perhaps akin to Toad’s ‘moment’ from the ‘Wind in The Willows’ when he saw a motor-car, that changed my life. My brain-cell, shared with Winnie-ther-Pooh on alternate days, duly assimilated the idea, mixed it, shaken not stirred, and realised that my daily exercises could become more than a habit, they could become a goal: walking in the Alps, high altitude.

Invitation to Favourite Wife to join me was accepted, and along came Easter. Instead of those ‘dreadfully-bad-for-you scrummy chocolate things that are egg-shaped’, it was a book ‘ Trekking in the Alps‘, edited by that wonderful writer of the mountains Kev Reynolds, and published by  Cicerone Books.

As much as I love chocolate this book has had a longer-lasting appeal. ‘Trekking in the Alps’ is a series of mini-guides to walks of various grades of difficulty. I elected to go for the easiest,  The Tour de Queyras, bought the full guide, also from  Cicerone books, ordered the maps, and the rest is history, except it’s not, God willing, most of it is to come.

“For our sake, and knowing just how much we can absorb at any given time, the majesty and might of God is often revealed in careful stages.” ( The Virgin Eye. Robin Daniels) to my mind encapsulates a walk in the Alps, and many other highlights of creation.