COME FOR A WALK WITH ME?

Yes, it’s still hot, but gradually, gradually it’s cooling down, so I managed two decent walks this week, and I’d like to invite you to join me in your imagination. We used a lovely new route that takes me down a steep hill where I can then cross at traffic lights, which is one of life’s nicest luxuries for me. They’ve just been installed, and when you’ve crossed the road you go down an old path between older gates and there you are in the middle of the park. You cross the road that would also take you down to a very nice cake shop, and there are the ducks and ducklings and swans and moor hens and chicks. We stop to feed them and chat to other regular walkers, and then walk round under the trees and come out by the sheltered area where the egrets and cormorants hang out. A short walk takes you past the model boat lake, where I pause to talk to the skilled sailors and admire the latest alterations and hand-built ships. I particularly like the warships, and I suspect we’ve got more of them than the navy has, but there again, theirs are bigger!

There are blackberries on the brambles now, and the traffic doesn’t come through this part of the park any more, so I can safely eat a few of them as I go under the keyhole bridge that takes me onto Harbourside. And, oh, the view! You can see Brownsea Island and the Purbeck Hills and the marina at Turks Bay. You can see the history in the signs marking out the Parkstone Bay Nature Reserve because this area wasn’t always the posh Sandbanks where the millionaires come and go.

Then you can sit on one of the benches that separate the cycle path from the footpath and look out to sea or behind you at the wildflower meadows where the swallows swoop and soar like the world’s best aerobatic display. Sometimes, they fly past at head height, which is amazing. Out on the sea you can see Mergansers, which look like punk geese. There are also seagulls, who are hunting and have learned to crack open the shells of their prey by dropping them down on the cycle path from twenty feet or so up. Don’t worry, they don’t often hit the cyclists, but when they run over them the shells come open very nicely, so man and bird can work together even if the man doesn’t realise he’s doing it.

This one was taken by my amazing art student daughter.

They’ve finished the sluice works now, so the ugly temporary bridge is gone, replaced by a set of railings that are perfect to lean on while we decide if you really have to go home and get back to work. If so, then you can go back through more meadows or a little wood. If, like me, you’re very easily tempted away from the path of righteousness, you can carry on your walk round the harbour and go past the old Powder House where ships had to leave their stocks of gunpowder before they moored up at the Quay. You can walk up to what I call Starling Point and the prosaic call ‘the bit by Harbourside Two Car Park and sit and watch the starlings. If you bring mealworms with you, then you’ll meet new friends who’ll come and sit on the bench beside you and feed from your hand. Or you can simply sit and watch the boats

You can walk on to the old swimming pool, which you can mainly see at Low Tide and then on past Mia’s Horse Box cafe, past the lifeboat museum and onto the Quay. If you totally run out of steam, then you can catch the bus that pootles round Poole and go back almost the whole way home, but I can’t remember the last time I did that. For one thing, it’s good for me physically because of my stupid joints, and, just as importantly, when I do this I find me again. The me I ought to be. The much nicer person who can enjoy each minute rather than rushing to the next job and the next and never really appreciate anything.

And all that is a long-winded way of saying that it has been a lovely couple of days and that despite those two-hour walks I’ve done more than I did when I was at home all day. I’m also reading about soft and slow living and realising that this is where I’ve been heading the whole time. So as I type this, there’s smooth jazz by Stella Cole playing, and I am ridiculously content with my small life and the bigger world of my imagination.

So, maybe this week, try seeing what you don’t have to do, and enjoy this weather because it surely can’t last much longer. Have fun whatever you do, please, and ignore the politicians as much as possible. They’re not real. Not like swans and seagulls and the birds who know how to live in the now.