The Lockdown Walks 2020

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?”

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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