What A Feeling!

Kate Sidley discovers that a women-only walking weekend makes for a wonderfully energising getaway

- Kate Sidley

Something happens to women at about 35. They very often become obsessed with walking. Look around the suburbs and you’ll see packs of them stomping the pavements, yakking their heads off. When I say them, I mean us. Because my friends and I have become inveterate wanderers of paths and pavements, beaches and mountains, hills and parks.

Somehow, going for a walk has come to replace after-work drinks or meeting for coffee. I have a Sunday walking date with one friend, taking a leisurely loop up the Westcliff Steps and around the neighbourhood, ending up at a Melville coffee shop where we solve whatever issues remain after our walking-talking session. On Thursdays, another friend and I steam through the suburbs and across a golf course in an undertaking we smugly call “10 000 steps before breakfast”. At this speed and over this distance, we’re rapidly burning kilojoules (over 1 680kJ per hour, apparently), and doing a good deed for our hearts and bones, too.

After a long day in front of a screen, even a dog walk at the local park is a welcome change of pace and a chance to get the blood pumping, to let the eyes rest on a far horizon instead of a small screen. The thunderclouds over Emmarentia Dam might not quite match False Bay at sunset, but they are magnificent in their own way, and the happy dogs in their seemingly infinite variety of breeds never fail to amuse. The day’s worries are blown away by the fresh air, and the transition from working day to evening is gently ushered in.