Today in honour of Juneathon, the daily exercise challenge, I sacrificed my Saturday morning lie in to go to BodyCombat class at the gym. It was great fun if you enjoy doing donkey kicks and air punching.
Then I went for a walk to get my 12,000 steps completed early and ended up in The Greenway, a secret walk on an old railway bridge through the New England Quarter in Brighton.
This area didn’t even exist up until a few years ago when developers started building flats on it. Now it’s incredibly built up and urban, so it’s lovely to be able to turn a corner and pretend you’re in the countryside.
It’s quite hidden away, so you could easily walk the streets below and not know it exists. The walk runs above New England Street and Pigeon Poop Bridge (if you know the area you’ll know where I mean) with views over to Preston Circus.
It’s only a very small walk – 5 minutes maximum – but there’s a surprising amount to see. There are railings made of sculptures of giant garden tools; many wild flowers and plants and sculptured seating areas.
I especially like the sculpture of a flattened locomotive, which throws shadows on to the road below, leading to reports of a ghost train in the area.
I also had a substantially less interesting trip to Staples, plus several trips round the kitchen making cupcakes, so all in all today’s walking total is around 19,000 steps, or 8 miles.