Making lockdown a walk in the park
Ben Olins says that he does not understand people “who walk the same route over and over” (The joy of steps: 20 ways to give purpose to your daily walk, 18 January). One aspect of repeated walks in my local park for 10 months is that I swap a cheery “good morning” with about a dozen other regulars who I don’t know. It’s a small ritual but it’s uplifting in lockdown times.
Michael Cunningham
Wolverhampton
• For urban walkers, I can strongly recommend the “local explorer bingo challenge” produced by the Council for British Archaeology’s 2020 festival, although I still need to find some horse-mounting steps before I can shout “House”.
Ruth Eversley
Paulton, Somerset
• Chris Packham (The weather’s dismal but it shouldn’t stop us enjoying our local wildlife this lockdown, 18 January) extols the benefits of winter – yet he says that snowdrops “are only days away”. Here in the south-west of Scotland we’ve had them since before Christmas!
Helen Keating
Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire
• In the best Monty Python spirit of competition, I have to conclude that Owen Wells’s experience of ice on the inside of windows was nothing (Letters, 14 January). In January 1963, I woke up at 5.30am for my paper round and found that the usual ice inside the window was trumped (if one may use this word) by ice on top of the goldfish tank in my bedroom.
Gordon Bernard
Loose, Kent
• Regarding vaccinations in Salisbury Cathedral, the organist needs to get hold of the sheet music for Wilco’s A Shot in the Arm (Letters, 18 January).
Phil Thomas
Thingwall, Merseyside
