Yes, we enjoy walking, and we know that it is a health-promoting activity, but can a regime of regular walking really help us lose weight?

The answer, of course, is ‘yes’! Our body fat is basically an energy store. It is there for times when we run short of food, and for when we need a lot of energy to carry out tasks.

What’s the problem?

In the western world, fortunately, we don’t tend to run out of food much these days but this has meant that the natural tendency to lay down fat when we eat to excess has become a big problem – literally! On average, people are getting bigger year by year and this is having major consequences for our health.

Starve the fat off?

The most obvious way to deal with this problem is to take in fewer calories i.e. you should eat and drink less. It is always easier to put weight on than it is to get it off again so any calorie reductions you can comfortably make will be the first line of attack.

It is recommended that you don’t reduce your daily intake by more than about 20% of what you need to maintain your weight. If you try and lose weight too quickly, your body goes into ‘starvation mode’. It literally doesn’t know when your next meal is coming along and doesn’t want you to die of hunger so it slows down your metabolism to try and protect the body’s energy supplies.

That is the last thing you want if you are trying to lose weight! A slower metabolism means fewer calories burned just staying alive. It also leaves you feeling sluggish, and less able to exercise, so that way of losing weight becomes harder. Bad news all round…

Force the fat off?

If you exercise vigorously for long periods of time, you are going to have to take in extra calories. Your body fat can’t be burned quickly enough to keep you going for hours at an intense level of activity. An 800 metre runner doesn’t eat or drink during a race, but a marathon runner has to.

If you are trying to lose weight, it can be difficult to calculate how many calories to take in to support that intense exercise regime, but still leave enough of a shortfall that you lose a significant amount of weight. Another thing – if you are very overweight, you are probably going to struggle to exercise that hard.

All in all, I think long, steady exercise is better for those who are obese and unfit. It puts less strain on your cardiovascular system, there isn’t that need to ‘fuel up’ to keep going, and it is easier on your joints. Does that sound like walking?

Ease the fat off – Walking for Weight Loss!

Slim through walking!

Here’s something to think about… Heat is a form of energy. If you are walking at an intensity sufficient to make you hot, then you are definitely burning fat. The hotter you get, the more energy you are burning! One thing though – please don’t wear a sweat suit, or let yourself overheat on a baking hot day. Dying of heatstroke isn’t what you are trying to achieve! Make sure that you drink enough water to stop yourself dehydrating, but don’t overdo it. A couple of US quarts on a long walk might be about right (2 litres or 3 UK pints).

The further you walk, the more calories you burn. How many? You’ll see many different figures mentioned, but it will be somewhere in the region of 500 calories an hour for a 200 pound person walking at 4 mph (a pretty brisk walk). It doesn’t sound a lot does it, considering that there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat? You’d have to walk for about 7 hours to burn 1 pound of fat.

But listen – you don’t have to do it all at once. Take the dog for a brisk 30 minute walk every morning and evening, that would do it.

Park the car 2 miles from work and walk in. If you live 2 miles from work, don’t touch the car, just walk in! Get another 8 miles in here and there during the week or at the weekend.

Use the stairs more often. Walk from the office to the park at lunchtimes to eat your sandwich. Join a hiking group and get a long walk in at the weekend, and just do what you can during the week. You can always find ways to get more walking in if you try. Tell me honestly – if I told you to find 7 hours a week to save your life, you’d do it, right? Okay, consider yourself told!

Take myself for example… I work from home, and my walking partner Lisa works half a mile away, but it’s up a steep 650 foot hill. A couple of times a week, I power-walk up that hill to meet her and we usually walk back by a different, scenic route. We try to get at least one longer walk in a week.

I supplement my walking with regular bike rides. As long as you are getting about an hour a day of fairly vigorous exercise, one way or another, averaged over the week, and don’t eat extra to fuel it, that should help you lose about a pound a week. It might be a bit more, or a bit less, but you will make steady progress and feel and look a lot better!

I have a friend who is overweight and unhealthy. He tells me that he “doesn’t have time to exercise”. He’s the same age as me but if he doesn’t change I’ll probably outlive him by 20 years. He has time to drink bottles of wine and watch TV, so he has does have time to exercise – it’s a decision not to. (M. – if you read this, take control mate – I’m worried about you! As I told you, it’s in your hands. Exercise can actually be fun you know!)

In conclusion…

Okay, if that has persuaded you to do more walking, how about treating yourself to some suitable footwear… Women’s hiking shoes (Click here)… Men’s Hiking Shoes (Click Here).

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Narrow boats on the Rochdale canal

Once across the road, it didn’t take long for the roar of traffic to recede into the background as we began to climb up the hill. Initially we are on a little lane up into the woods. It is part of the Mary Towneley Loop, a fantastic 47 mile circuit over the local hills for mountain bikers, equestrians and hikers.

An attractive little stream flows down through the woods to the left of us. The remains of old mill buildings are dotted around the woods, slowly crumbling away and gradually being absorbed back into their environment. Mature trees are growing out of the stone work in several places.

Babbling brook, Jumble Hole Clough

There is a path up the western side of that valley which we must explore some time, but today we stuck to our usual path which eventually leaves the bridleway, and climbs though the woods on the eastern side.

It isn’t long before the path emerges back into the sunlight, and there are magnificent views across the two valleys which intersect below us at right-angles to each other. The old monument of Stoodley Pike stands proud on the distant hilltop. Lisa stopped to take a photograph of the view and I stopped to take a picture of her doing that! I wanted a picture of her in her walking sandals. With her, it is sandals for warm sunny walks, hiking boots for less pleasant conditions. I don’t like the risk of getting gravel in my footwear so I put up with shoes and sweaty feet in hot conditions.

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Women's walking sandals in action, Jumble Hole Clough

The path then takes us back into the woods as we continue to climb.

Woodland footpath, Jumble Hole Clough

The stone characteristic of this area is known as Millstone Grit and we passed some impressive outcrops of it on our walk through the woods.

Millstone Grit, Jumble Hole Clough

Eventually, the path comes to a step up onto a big slab of stone and I was a bit too nonchalant as I approached it, given that there is quite a big drop to the left hand side of the path just there. My foot was too close to the edge of the path and a big clump of soil broke away and almost toppled me off the side of the hill – yikes!

Once again, the path emerges into a clearing and it is one of our favourite spots. The views are great from up there and it is a really peaceful spot. We usually stop and have a drink and something to eat, just chilling out and resting our legs a while. It is hard to believe that it is only a mile from a busy road because you can neither see it, nor hear the traffic on it. Lovely!

Eventually it was time to be on the move again. The path does continue on ahead, but we turn back up to the right towards a couple of cottages. Here’s a photograph Lisa took last year from this spot, just before we crest the hill and the cottages come into view…

Blue sky, Jumble Hole Clough

As we passed the cottages, next to the path we found a little table upon which there was home-made blackberry jam for sale, only £1 a jar so we bought one of those. I’ve yet to have a taste of it, but Lisa assures me that it is very tasty!

The next mile or so is an easy level walk, passing farms and cottages, and with great views across the valley. Here’s a picture of the tiny hamlet of Horsehold, situated on the hillside above Hebden Bridge…

Horsehold from Lower Rawtonstall

Soon, we descended a bridleway to Rawtonstall Bank at the foot of ‘Mytholm Steeps’, a 25% ‘wall’ of a road leading up to the village of Blackshaw Head above us. Fortunately, we were walking down the hill! There are woodland footpath options for this part of the walk, but we were in a hurry to get back and took the quick route – straight down the road to the A646, and then back along the canal towpath to get us away from the noise and fumes of the traffic.

It was another lovely Yorkshire walk. I’ll be reporting on other walks round here over coming months, so even if you don’t want to buy any walking shoes off me, please call back from time to time.

If you do want to buy some women’s hiking shoes, be my guest and click that link! (Or men’s hiking shoes, if that’s what you are looking for.)

• Get out and enjoy your local countryside.
• Treat yourself to some new women’s hiking boots, of course!

The weather forecast wasn’t great, but it looked like we would have a few hours to get a decent walk in before the heavy rain started again.

We caught the number 500 Keighley bus over the hill. The bus did most of the climbing for us, leaving us with a walk that was largely flat or downhill. It gave us an opportunity to walk less familiar paths. We do the local walks all the time so it was nice to get over 5 miles from town and then just walk back.

The bus dropped us off about 1/4 mile down the far side of the hill where ‘the conduit’ passes along the hillside. It is a water course with a good access path alongside it which takes us to Stairs Lane, part of the Haworth Old Road (an old pack horse trail).

You remember Haworth don’t you? It was home to the literary Brontë family, and setting for Emily Brontë’s famous novel Wuthering Heights. Haworth is only 8 miles from Hebden Bridge, with a 1,500 ft hill and the village of Oxenhope in between.

The clouds had closed back in while we were on the bus and it looked like it was going to start raining so I stopped halfway along the conduit to don my rain coat. Looking down the hillside towards Oxenhope, the village was almost obscured by a gloomy mist. And then the rain started…

Oxenhope from the conduit

Fortunately, it was just a brief downpour, and it had fizzled out by the time we got to Stairs Lane.

Stairs Lane, above Oxenhope

I was enjoying the walk, but I was also conscious of the fact that I am trying to build a little online hiking shoes business, so I asked Lisa to pose for me as we walked up Stairs Lane towards the highest point of our walk.

Hiking Boots, modelled by Lisa

Ooh look, she’s wearing women’s hiking boots!

(That’s a terribly unsubtle hint that I have a page promoting the sale of hiking boots and you can go there if you’d like to buy some. I promise I’ll only put two or three such links per post folks! A chap has to earn a living, doesn’t he? ).

We had just started down the Old Road back towards Hebden Bridge when we came across something very strange, which wasn’t there when we did that walk a few months ago. It was a newly built section of dry stone wall, topped by turf. It didn’t appear to serve any purpose, given that the rest of the original wall is in a poor state of repair and is now redundant, having been replaced by a wire fence. We stopped to examine this wall and took some photos of it.

Dry stone walling practice?

1. It is there to serve as a reminder of what the original wall looked like. That seems unlikely, given that this area has hundreds of miles of such walling so we don’t need reminding!
2. It is some sort of artistic statement. That’s a possibility given that we have a large artistic community in Hebden Bridge. I’m not sure what the message is supposed to be in that case, but at least it had us talking about it!
3. Somebody was practising or teaching dry stone walling. Maybe… but why the turf on top?

Let’s face it – I’m baffled! On with walk…

The broken stone trail soon finishes and merges with a steep country lane which we had to walk down. There are lovely views in all directions. Old stone farm buildings, dry stone walls, rolling hills, and of course…

Sheep in West Yorkshire fields

… lots of sheep happily munching away at the grass!

In the earlier part of the summer we were heading towards semi-drought conditions here. The reservoir water levels were dropping week by week and the authorities had started imposing restrictions on water use. Of course, since then we have had rain practically every day! As a result, everything is suddenly really verdant – wet = green!

The lane took us down into a dip where we turned right up the bridleway taking us up the western flank of Crimsworth Dean, an attractive valley leading down towards the local beauty spot of Hardcastle Crags.

Conditions were getting boggy towards the top.

Crimsworth Dean bridleway

That had me slightly concerned because we were rapidly approaching what is affectionately known by local mountain bikers as (er) ‘The House of S**t’! It’s an old stone barn which a farmer uses to shelter his cows in bad weather. Now there is a bit of a dip outside in which water tends to gather during rainy weather. Lots of cows plus soil plus water = very muddy, crappy conditions indeed! I’ve been up there when there was absolutely no way round it – not nice at all…

Today wasn’t quite so bad. Yes, it was smelly and yes it was not something you want to walk through, but a couple of logs had been laid down the side of the mess so we had something clean to walk along, being very careful not to slip off!

Safely past the obnoxious obstacle, we stood a while to admire the lovely view which had unfolded before us. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Crimsworth Dean – in ‘widescreen’! (Click on the picture to see it full size.)

Crimsworth Dean

It had been our intention to continue along the bridleway all the way down to the entrance to Hardcastle Crags, but I spotted a walker heading diagonally down into the bottom of the valley and Lisa told me that she knew where the path went. It would make a nice change to go somewhere different so she led me down the path and back towards town. It’s amazing how different it seemed just 50 yards down the hillside. The perspective changed, the hidden became visible, and the visible, hidden. I’ll definitely add that to my list of favourite local walks.

Passing through fields of bracken, we remembered to watch out for deer ticks – you should too, folks! A lot of people don’t know that there are deer in that valley but there are. They are very wary of contact with humans so I’ve only managed to see them twice in 25 years of walking and cycling in that area, but they are in there somewhere, and they quite possibly carry ticks. You don’t want to risk catching Lyme Disease off one, so either keep your skin covered or check it carefully after you get clear of any bracken that you pass through.

We descended into the woods and crossed Crimsworth Dean Beck on a little stone bridge. I’m disappointed, but my pictures didn’t turn out from that part of the walk. The camera exposure time was so long in the gloomy conditions that the pictures came out all blurred. It’s a shame because it is very pretty down there.

At long last, we emerged into open fields which soon took us down to Midgehole, at the entrance to Hardcastle Crags.

Nearly home

There are various ways to get back into town from there, but we took the quickest way – along Midgehole Road, and then the Keighley Road.

Lisa had to work later on, but we had time to spare so we stopped off at Innovation, our favourite cafe in the town centre. We had a coffee each and shared a toasted currant teacake as we sat and talked about our walk.

I checked my mapping software when I got home and calculated that with all the to-ing and fro-ing we did, we ended up covering 6.2 miles in total. It was a satisfying distance – enough to feel that we’d got a good walk in, without being exhausting.

(But it’s just the kind of thing that women need walking boots for!)

We came down the hill via Heptonstall Quarry which is on the opposite side of the hill, with spectacular views down the valley.

I had intended to take my camera to take some photos to include here but I forgot so I’m posting a couple from walks earlier in the summer.

Calder Valley facing West

Calder Valley facing East

I thought I’d make a quick post just to get this started.