I sat down to write a post about walking, but actually it's about more than walking. In fact I expect it's about all the things that I always write about, getting outside, noticing what you see, then thinking about and remembering what you see. Noticing what you see in nature obviously (although a bit of dog spotting is jolly good too if you are into that sort of thing). The main point here though is remembering what you notice; sharing it with a friend, writing it down in your diary, or maybe using a fancy modern technique!
Firstly, I don't know how I first came across the Go Jauntly app but I am very glad I did. It's a walking app like no other. No need to track your steps or out perform your friends, but plenty of opportunities to share your favourite walk with others. However it offers much more than that. Are you bored with your standard lockdown walk? Do you have 10 minutes to spare and don't know where to go? Go Jauntly will create you a green circular route from your doorstep, from 10 minutes up to 10 kilometres. What's more, you don't need to be a map reading genius - many of the walks are navigated using words and pictures so you can literally see where you are meant to be going. If you have a favourite walk, you can upload it yourself (if you want to share it with others) and let people know the best things about it, that it's dog or child friendly, that it's accessible to people on wheels, that there's a good cafe nearby. However while this is all good, it's not the best bit. They've worked with the University of Derby nature connectedness experts to build Nature Notes a function within the app that reminds you to notice nature - from your window or when you are out and about. Read more about how they hope the app will be used to facilitate green health prescriptions, and the research to back it up. The only bad news is that this function is only currently available on Apple. The good news is that it will be coming to Android really soon. Watch this space for more information.
If you like storing things digitally, the Natural History Museum are trialing a Digital Nature Journal, encouraging you to store photos or words about what you see in nature. They're looking for people to experiment with using it, so why not give it a go?
Back to analogue though; you can't beat the technique that we learned from Scottish Badgers at our Wild Wellbeing event a couple of weeks ago. Every day, write down one thing you notice in nature on a slip of paper and put it in a jar, and at the end of the week you'll have a 7 line poem about nature. I'd go one step further. Why not make every day a different colour and as there are 7 colours in the rainbow you'll have a RAINBOW poem at the end of the week. What could be better?
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