There was no hiding from the smart watch. It kept throwing up spikey orange lines, stress levels peaking each time I entered the game of chance that is city cycling. I love cycling but it’s rarely relaxing.
We need to reduce our carbon emissions from transport. Cycling campaigners work tirelessly to explain the democratic benefits to everyone that comes from devoting space to bikes. The case is inarguable, despite masses of arguments. But in this life or death (see: stressed) battle, the voice of the pedestrian can be the quietest. Our most famous work of art is a walk through Dublin but Shank’s Mare can often seem too, well, pedestrian.
Fighting a now-shelved HSE plan to put more car-parking space in the former Cork Street Fever Hospital last year I got my hands on a mobility management plan for the Coombe Hospital lodged as part of the planning process. It’s a snapshot of shifting transport patterns. A decade ago 84 per cent of staff drove private cars to the city centre hospital. In the 2019 survey the figure had dropped to 57 per cent. The biggest shift had been on to public transport. But the next biggest leap was into walking. One in 10 of the staff surveyed said they walked to work.
Walking is easier than jumping on a bike for the first time since you were a kid. It is NLR (No Lycra Required), and the more you do the more you can do. Given safe footpaths (and rural Ireland has a mountain to climb on this front) adults can cover an average of six kilometres an hour, compared to the 9.6 kph crawl of the Dublin driver in peak time traffic.
Creativity
Homeless activist Alice Leahy is an advocate for walking. It keeps her connected to her city and its moods. Writers from Dickens to David Sedaris are examples of epic daily walks fuelling creativity. Podcasts and audio books exist to make it all flow.
So I walked a route I would normally cycle, down the hill at Grangegorman, with the sounds of birds and wheels and voices in the most traffic-free part of the city centre. Two wheels good, two legs feeling better. More bikes on the roads improve conditions for walkers.
So this summer spend it better by making time to walk a route you typically dash. Things will be noticed: the smells of dinners, coffee, other people as they pass, those stunner wildflowers that grow from cracks in walls. Maybe buy a jaunty hat from margaretoconnor.ie/shop.
A summer of Bloomsday every day could knit walking into your routine. So by the time the seasons shift it might be part of what you do and commuting becomes a walk in the park.
