Saturday 14th June - the Cotswold Way

 As part of my drive to stay active, I'm walking along the Cotswold Way, a trail that starts in Chipping Campden and finishes in Bath.

I'm doing ok - meeting my target of having at least 2000 steps on my wrist band step counter every day. The garmin app (I keep calling it a fit bit, in the same way we refer to  hoover instead of a vacuum cleaner) translates 2000 steps as a mile. That is, of course, nonsense.

 For a start I have short legs so it would take me many more than 2000 steps to travel that distance. And furthermore the technology cannot tell the difference between playing Scott Joplin or other energetic piano pieces; just watch that Left Hand go!

I also 'get steps' for chopping vegetables (I'm left-handed) and winding wool. 

I used to worry that this was cheating, but, hang on, who makes the rules round here? Me, that's who! So I decided to just go with the total on my wrist thingy and call it an 'activity measuring device'.

So how does 'walking the Cotswold Way' come into things? 

I am motivated to ratchett up to 2000 and more a day - here's a chart of the last week's efforts;

by doing a virtual walk;

I enter my daily distance travelled activity count to the app, and then use the 'yellow man' on the map to see what the scenery looks like. It's a bit boring where I am now, but here's the top of Cleeve Hill from a few days ago. I could never manage to slog up to see this glorious view nowadays, but thanks to doing the virtual trail I can enjoy it all the same.

The pictures are all courtesy of someone  - maybe from Google? - who must have walked the whole trail wearing a camera on his back, a bit like the ones on the google map bars. He's caught his shadow in the picture;

Music

I started learning this once; it was too big and too fast for me. It's a wise man or woman who knows their limitations. 

You can buy pianos with 3/4 size keyboards. I've never tried one, but would love to if I ever got the chance. Most of the technical issues I had were caused my having small hands that just reach an octave - 8 notes. Most men can stretch across 10 notes, and women concert pianists manage 9 if not 10.

(The other technical issues I had were probably due to commitment and practise!)