I’m Carolyn, a fifty-something unfit prom walker. I started walking during the 2021 lockdown as part of a challenge that was meant to cover six weeks and raise funds for the mental health work done by the team at West End Impact. The challenge finished, the fundraising finished, but I carried on. Having started about 10 days before the challenge to see if I thought I could complete it, I am now at the time of writing this approaching a full year of walking outside every single day. In fact, when you are reading this I’ve probably passed that anniversary.

I discovered that this is a form of physical activity that I enjoy. Probably the only one. It is peaceful, (mainly), it is meditative, I’m surrounded by beauty, I can think or not think, I can zone out and walk, I can plod through rain and darkness, I can stop and take photographs, I can find something new to enjoy in a familiar place. I started raising money for mental health workers, but this practice has helped my own mental health in so many ways.

I’m not fit. I don’t hike mountains or run. I walk reasonably flat places, on and off pavements, footpaths, beaches, towpaths, and the like. The vast majority of my walking is around a mile, occasionally under that, and when I have the time over it. When I’ve been ill then I’ve walked around the block. Once when I had to isolate I walked up and down my garden until my watch told me I’d done a reasonable amount, I can’t recall now but I think it was at least 20 repeats. The prom has been one of the places I’ve walked the most. I’ll drive the car to wherever I can park and walk half a mile or a mile and then turn round and walk back. Over the year I’ve walked every section from Heysham where I live right up to the end, the turn for where VVV used to be many times.

I’ve never actually walked the full length in one go though. I’ve intended to but it just hasn’t happened. It will be doing this year though because I’ve decided that starting in March, as I come to my year of walking, I am going to attempt to walk the prom from end to end twenty times to raise funds for West End Impact. I am aiming for twenty times because WEI are celebrating their twentieth birthday in 2022. (Why couldn’t it be their tenth?) It will be a challenge for me, not just because it is longer than my usual walks, which I will be keeping up, but because I am intending on doing it so many times.