These days I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, because I never stick to them. Also, this would be a practice deployed by someone far more organised than I. Also, it’s kind of an Insta-Social Media thing in which I don’t want to participate…you won’t find me on Tic-Toc either!

But, I do want to have a crack at saying I am going to do something, which will tie in to this blog and the barren cyber-wasteland which is my You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIjfYNZKJ8pKXwsrqLg5Z2g/videos (ooohhh doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?).

The incentive

A number of years ago I purchased this book (it’s to the left hand side of this text), with the intention of browsing it and utilising a good walk or two. It then stayed on the shelf for a number of years and was only ever brought out for reference’s sake. Then, this year I thought ‘y’know what? I’ll take it with me on one of the walks it features, the somewhat ill-fated ‘Three Reservoirs Walk’ which I 3/4 completed on January second. Note: this is why the book now looks far more worn / battered / stiff than it has for the previous years as we got a real drenching on that walk. Undeterred I am now using the book as my initiator for a series of walks which I aim to derive from this fine publication.

I have to say I find reading the book tough-going as the font is on the small side and the book itself doesn’t promote a comfortable reading position. The author tends to start all of the Rivington-base walks from a car park across the road from Rivington Secondary School – well I’m used to the lane which leads up to ‘Rivvy Barn’ so I guess this will call for some adaptation from the published routes, which in itself is no big issue. I’ll set up a sort of tick list to refer to and for people to observe my progress. It goes without saying that I will not go from the book’s Walk number one to walk number thirty in linear order, I’m not wired like that!