
These walks were recorded through word and image during the first Lockdown after Covid 19 had been declared a pandemic. It was a totally unexpected situation that, with all its supposed restrictions, inadvertently offered up a spontaneously refreshing perspective on life. For a few months, routine stripped away, I found myself plunged into a local adventure, exploring new areas of my seaside town and old ones with new eyes. I discovered that, like a race horse, I had been blinkered from what lay like shining jewels all around me, just a stone’s throw from home. I posted my walks on Facebook, not a platform I have ever been entirely comfortable with, but one which during this period became a place where I could connect and share with friends, as well as strangers, from around the world.
I hope you enjoy browsing through my ruminations accompanied by a selection of the many photos I snapped along the way.

Day 1 April 4
I shall be posting photos celebrating my daily walk – generally along the seafront and around my gorgeous mini Regents Park. I live a stone’s

Day 2 April 5
My walk today through the park; the water lilies bursting onto the surface of the mini-lake. Monet would have a field day- or should that

Day 3 April 6
As I walked back a different route today I came across this book lying on a low brick wall outside someone’s house. How perfect is

Day 4 April 7
Today I passed a group of modern houses on my new hilly walk and saw this child’s drawing stuck onto a window. I am not

Day 5 April 8
Suddenly this pub looks inviting: good food, a glass of wine, the hum of chat and laughter in the background… The Bo Peep – not

Day 6 April 9
Today it is 16 degrees and the sea is as unrumpled as a sleeping baby. Normally there would be the ice-cream man on his bicycle,

Day 7 April 10
I went for my walk with a sense of anticipation at what wonders I might come across today, Good Friday. The sun is still shining,

Day 8 April 11
I can’t believe I’ve been posting my walk images for a week! This is the eighth day, which sounds somewhat prophetic! Perhaps it is the

Day 9 April 12
This is a day (Easter Sunday) when hope rises, where the focus, perhaps, is on the myriad good things about life. As we currently have

Day 10 April 13
Two images rather mirroring each other on this chilly day. Not only are we in lockdown but few people are out and about. The contrast

Day 11 April 14
It was a food shopping walk today – into Hastings along the seafront, down Bottle Alley and past the pier. Much has changed since I

Day 12 April 15
Being lazy. An essential part of a day should have this moment of laziness in it. Being lazy has a bad press. But now in

Day 13 April 16
Perhaps we all want to own what we see. It’s mine and I want it to stay the way I like it! This picture reveals

Day 14 April 17
I was on my second trip to Hastings this week to my favourite haunt, Trinity Wholefoods, to stock up on essentials like organic wine… Oh

Day 15 April 18
Up Maze Hill, left at upper Pevensey Rd into the genteel, timeless area that goes down to Archery Rd where the old Hastings College and

Day 16 April 19
Nothing but a sea of cherry blossom and a sea of multi-shaded water! How fortunate am I to have this at my disposal. When I

Day 17 April 20
What an interesting day! I checked my email this morning and there was a note from a cousin I have not heard of for years.

Day 18 April 21
A quiet day after the discoveries of yesterday. I often dash like a bat out of hell into my little park quite early in the

Day 19 April 22
Dogs, dogs and more dogs! I love this aspect of my walks. In fact I positively look forward to it. There have been quite a

Day 20 April 23
This building looks strangely ominous rising out of the trees like a sentinel. It reminds me of the monolith that makes random appearances in Stanley

Day 21 April 24
Have you noticed how many men are out with their small children? Well I’ve noticed a few. This most delightful father and young daughter were

Day 22 April 25
I took a different turning at a certain point in my walk today, remembering a cut I used to take off Albany Rd that led

Day 23 April 26
Today I thought I’d carry on my walk further down the alley looking for the allotments I remembered. Well I had no luck. I’m pretty

Day 24 April 27
I walked past St John’s Curch Hall in Brittany Rd today, enroute to the quirky hardware/plant shop. It is the day that for nearly 10

Day 25 April 28
After most of the previous day without water due to a faulty pipe in the main resevoir, I woke up this morning to sputtering taps

Day 26 April 29
Well then, today has been amazing! So much love and good wishes pouring my way from friends I haven’t seen for many years, to new

Day 27 April 30
It is chilly and gusty but the sun is out. Through the park the spring blossoms are looking a little battered but the light is

Day 28 May 1
I live with a direct, in your face view of the sea. It’s a moody old thing. Whenever I glance out of the window it

Day 29 May 2
A man in the park with two daughters: “Come on we’ve got to look for some hemlock”, he said. “Are you wanting to poison someone?”

Day 30 May 3
It’s been a quiet day today. I felt it in the air, as though everyone were taking stock. Maybe we are all tired of the

Day 31 May 4
Music in May. The first lines of Ivor Novello’s song kept popping into my head after passing the May tree in the gardens of the

Day 32 May 5
Now is the best time of today. It’s calm out there after sniping winds earlier. I had, by the standard of these times, a busy

Day 33 May 6
I often pass the first house I lived in here. 45 Gensing Rd. It was a mess inside but it was quaint and exciting to

Day 34 May 7
There is something about the sea. Love it, hate it, indifferent to it, like breath is to our body, the sea is to earth: sea

Day 35 May 9
Nine lives. As I was walking a cat darted out and ran across the road with the bizarre illusion of centipede legs that running cats

Day 36 May 11
Sometimes just being at home provides all the experiences that going for a walk does. Equally, I’d say. Yesterday seems to be in the long

Day 37 May 12
Walking whilst talking to a friend. We were discussing how there is no “normal.” It’s just habitude. We had got used to thinking in terms

Day 38 May13
The clouds were scowling today like a temperamental adolescent kicking his heels against the light for waking him up too early. May is always like

Day 39 May 15
I haven’t walked up Kings Road for quite a while. I don’t mean the Chelsea one of course: Kings Road, St Leonard’s on Sea. It

Day 40 May17
Have you noticed how everything grows through even the tiniest of cracks? Life will fill itself into any space. Grass pushes up through pavements, lichen

Day 41 May 19
My days always seemed to start with one intention and end with something entirely different – a diversion from what my habitual yet fallible mind

Day 42 May 21
An interesting day viewed with different eyes. Not so much the wonder of Nature but wondering at human nature. I observe the self-encapsulated couples and

Day 43 May 23
What an invigorating walk yesterday afternoon! I was preoccupied at first by the sad news that Hastings Borough Council is embarking on a weed-killing fest

Day 44 May25
I rather pride myself on my ability to walk at a gallop up hill. I do this partly for exercise and partly because I’m keen

Day 45 May 27
After a visit to the quirky independent hardware store up London Rd, home to a thousand types of nails and all manner of other oddments,

Day 46 May 29
Did I ever think I’d get to a point in life when I would just simply be happy for no particular reason? I used to

Day 47 May 30
There’s a kind of surreal quality to living by the sea today. From my window I watch people wander along the prom: couples, groups, family

Day 48 June 1
Yesterday I went for an early evening walk. It wasn’t things to look at but smells that captured my senses, the evening air drawing them

Day 49 June 3
There’s something easy about chatting to strangers. You feel close to them in a way that you don’t always in longer term relationships. There is

Day 50 June 5
What a sky today! I couldn’t stop gawping at it as I walked along the seafront. These clouds are less like cotton wool and more

Day 51 June 7
I am off to visit my elderly friend near Summerfield Woods who enjoys a good old natter from the kitchen door. On the passageway leading

Day 52 June 12
I feel like I have been in a space ship on a mission to a distant galaxy. Now the crew are nearing earth’s atmosphere and

Day 53 June 17
A strange juxtaposition of light is often present on the sea and in the sky these days: panoply of ever-changing patterns. It reflects how it