The BBC ran an article about how fewer people were walking without any particular purpose. They walk to keep fit or lose weight, but not for the purpose of thinking.

“There is something about the pace of walking and the pace of thinking that goes together. Walking requires a certain amount of attention but it leaves great parts of the time open to thinking. I do believe once you get the blood flowing through the brain it does start working more creatively,” says Geoff Nicholson, author of The Lost Art of Walking. “Your senses are sharpened. As a writer, I also use it as a form of problem solving. I’m far more likely to find a solution by going for a walk than sitting at my desk and ‘thinking’.”

We have collectively created a situation where most people are so frantically busy that they barely have time to think at all. Some politicians have given it up entirely. My wife and I walk regularly to the gym, but thinking is inhibited by noise and the need to keep an eye out for self-important drivers texting about damn all. So we are reduced to planning distant vacations, when we walk through an empty countryside, stopping to draw scenic spots. That is the only time I think. And I run a blog.