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Discussion Forum - The Bothy - De Quincey on 'pedestrian exercise'


Author: Iain Connell
Posted: Sun 21st Sep 2014, 23:35
Joined: 2010
Local Group: East Lancashire
Reading Bill Laws's potted history of walkers and walking "Byways, Boots & Blisters" (History Press 2008) I was struck by an 1822 quote from Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), opium addict and walker:

"[I] am never thoroughly in health unless when having pedestrian exercise to the extent of fifteen miles at the most, eight to ten miles at the least".

While we might regard a fifteen-mile maximum as a little laggardly, this seems an apt summation of what we do - might it appear on the website's home page, or LDWA publicity material ?

(Laws's book mentions the Ramblers but not the LDWA - odd considering that many of the walkers featured in it - the Wordsworths & Coleridge, for example - would have regarded a fifteen-mile walk as a mere stroll.)

Iain.

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