These days, I love a good yomp around the countryside. A coastal walk is the best, but country walks rock too. The problem is, Ben doesn't love them quite as much as me and Mr Humdrum. I was never a good walker when I was young. How I wish now that I'd done the Ten Tors, but I never saw the beauty in tackling rolling hills. I'd rather have been gothing in my bedroom or, earlier still, playing on the beach. So how to interest Ben?
To be fair to Ben, at the end of a walk, he will usually say he's enjoyed it, but he'll just moan during it. And when you holiday in Cornwall each year, there aren't that many parts of the countryside which better it, so he's not really going to appreciate it as much as I do.
Yesterday we walked around the Devil's Punchbowl. Our new hobby, geocaching, provided a hook. We 'cached beforehand (tick) and gave Ben the choice of where to 'cache on the way home. He just had to endure a walk in the middle, where there were NO caches!
I've discovered he's a stickler for sticking to the map. He hates the possibility of being 'lost' - ie, when we just don't know quite where we are going to end up. (I remember getting lost on the way to meet my parents in Poole for a week's holiday when he was 4. He cried his eyes out when I had to stop to ask someone the way!) So maybe next time, we ought to get him to look on the map beforehand so he can 'help' us find our way. (Although maybe from his ability to find some of the caches, we OUGHT to be getting him to mapread!) Maybe taking our old digital camera to record some of the sights along the way might help.
What did help was us all guessing how many steps we climbed up at the last part of our walk! One hundred and ten! Ben and I lost, Mr Humdrum was the closest at 105.