I took walking further than my local park for granted. Now the only way to escape is a stroll down memory lane

I miss the variety of walks, says Jenny Eclair. Even the boring ones like changing platforms on a busy commute

I miss seeing the world outside my London borough (AFP/Getty)

I have never been much of a walker and, despite having reached the grand old age of 60, I am yet to cave in to the regulation gilet and set of Nordic walking poles.

Walking has never been my exercise of choice, I prefer mat-based classes such as yoga or pilates. In fact, there was a time in my thirties when I practiced what I can only describe as a form of highly competitive “show-off” yoga, which was all about the headstands and the “one-handed spinning crow”. By comparison, walking always seemed a bit … well, pedestrian.

But needs must and although I still roll gently around a mat now and again, during a pandemic, we must walk. We must walk every day – but only locally – and God, I’m bored of walking locally.  

Pre-corona, there were green spaces close to my home that I’d barely ventured into during 40 years of living in the same postcode. The first lockdown changed all that and I fell deeply in love with Peckham Rye Park with its glorious rose garden, applauded the fabulous April hydrangea display in the American Garden in Dulwich Park and watched a man carve a whale and two squirrels over several summer months into a fallen tree trunk in nearby Ruskin Park.

How lucky we were to have these wonderful outdoor spaces on our doorstep. Ten months later, in the muddy month of January, I’m still grateful for my local parks, but I’m bored rigid of them. The novelty of saying “hello” to the carved whale and squirrels wore off months ago and all the roses are dead in the Peckham Rye Garden. As for Dulwich, some days I can’t face the sheer number of joggers puffing by and we resort instead to pounding the pavements and doing a circuit of the residential streets that lie within a half-mile radius of our own front door.

And no, I’m not tempted by a move to the countryside, because the same restrictions would apply there. I’d get equally sick of the local greenery.

In a couple of months time when spring is doing her stuff, I’ll feel more cheerful about my regular constitutionals, but for now, it’s the same old trees and the same old kids’ playgrounds and the same old rubbish that a***holes are leaving behind, only litter is worse in pandemic times because the sight of so many discarded masks is acutely depressing.

What I miss most is the variety of my olden day walks, even the boring ones: like the desperate trot from platform one on Clapham Junction station to platform 17 when Network Rail suddenly decided to freak out hundreds of commuters. And I really miss those short walks from a dressing room to the wings of a theatre. Weirdly these are the walks I have dreamed about most during lockdown, when I’m fast asleep but I can hear the pre-show music and the audience settling in their seats.

I think about places I have been fortunate to stroll through in the past: Venice, obviously, the Lake District on a crisp autumn day, weaving through Covent Garden and popping into a shop on Long Acre to actually try something on. I think about walks that are significant in my life, the meander to and from school with my mates scouting for boys, the warm evening walks during the Melbourne Comedy Festival from my apartment in the city to the venue just a few blocks away. The years of walking around Edinburgh, crossing the cobbles of the Pleasance Courtyard with a pint of lager in my hand.  

Then there are the memorable holiday walks, nothing too strenuous, but still different and exciting: that ankle deep trudge in glittering white snow around Oslo’s brilliant sculpture park, contrasting with a hot sticky walk around a cactus and succulent garden in Morocco, a couple of years later.  

Of course I took it all for granted, all those beach walks both at home and abroad, those ice-cream-eating strolls of a hot evening and that freezing 40th birthday walk down fifth avenue in a raging blizzard.

I’m furious now that I’ve never been to Japan or Russia, I always thought that at some time in my life I would get to walk through cherry blossom petals and stride across Red Square in Russia filling my phone with photos of the candy cane St Basil’s Cathedral. Basically I miss seeing the world outside my London borough.

Social media friends are suggesting virtual walks via YouTube and, yes, the entire world is available via a screen. You can go anywhere, see anything, there are live webcams that walk you along the Great Wall of China, hikes around the Canadian lakes and virtual tours of every city across the globe. It’s better than nothing, you can see everything, but you can’t smell it or touch it and, most importantly, you can’t feel it. Oh yes and, another thing, it’s rubbish for your step count.