Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Well you find me at a place called Bickley Mill and I'm about halfway along an eight mile walk and I've stopped for lunch.
I've just had a cup of tea and a sandwich and I am walking slowly in stages along the River X.
So today I started at Thorveton and I'll be ending at Tiverton and most of the route so far has been along very quiet country lanes with wonderful views across the Devon countryside.
It's a very rural landscape,
A farmed landscape with hedgerows and green fields and of course the River X running not too far away and we've stopped here for lunch.
I say we,
Myself and my sister and we've sheltered underneath an overhang so we could keep dry because of course it is raining again and had our lunch and it's been really lovely.
And as we were walking here I really got present to the importance of the slow pace of walking and what happens when I slow down.
We were walking along and I saw in the hedgerows some primroses coming through and I paused to take my camera to take a photograph of these primroses and I suddenly heard a voice say,
Oh you're not picking my primroses are you?
And I turned around and smiled and saw this old man,
I subsequently realised he was in his late 80s and I said no no I'm just taking a photograph and we had a chat and we were talking to him about the walk we were on and he was telling us which direction to go in and then he told us that he used to be a farmer,
That he was 88,
He'd lived in this house for 50 years and then he said he was building an aeroplane and we talked about him and his life and he'd been a pig farmer and he'd run an aviation company and now he was building an aeroplane and he was hoping to fly that aeroplane at some point.
And I just realised that this conversation,
This connection with this man would not have happened had we not been walking.
It's just delicious what happens when we slow down those connections that we make.
And it got me thinking about how we rush through life and can rush through life.
Now on this walk I don't think we've come across many people at all,
Most people are in cars so when you see somebody you often just stop to smile and say hello and sometimes you even get a longer conversation.
But in my everyday life I think about when I go down to my local community and town I see dozens and dozens and tens of dozens of people,
Hundreds of people walking through the town and even though I see so many human beings I never have the time to slow down and talk to them.
Everybody is busy,
Everyone's doing something and I think that's one of the things I'm realising about the joy of walking.
You can give yourself time just to go out for a walk rather than a walk that is taking you from A to B in the fastest time possible.
When you go out for a walk like that,
When you go out for a walk and you're just wanting to enjoy the journey,
Then you meet up with people along the way.
You can stop,
You can connect,
You can listen and listening to somebody in their life is such a precious gift.
So today it's about slowing down and the joy of walking and my encouragement to you is can you go for a walk in your life,
A regular walk where you're not rushing to get fit and you're not rushing to get to the destination,
But you're taking a walk and you're noticing what you see along the way and you're noticing the people along the way.
And take time to smile,
Even a smile,
Catch somebody's eye and connect like that is really special and there'll be people that will love to talk as well.
So give yourself time,
Go walking,
Connect with people and really enjoy what it is like to build relationships with people and the natural world and to see what it is like when you manage to take things at a slower pace.
