This year for Lent (and then some) I am taking something up – rather than cutting something out. My life doesn’t include enough exercise, the dog needs to get out, and I need to do something easy, inexpensive and possible to undertake anywhere. So I have set myself the challenge of walking for an hour every day. At home it will be a dog walk, but when I’m away it might be a walk anywhere – from office to office, across town, around a park, in the hotel gym.

Today’s walk was along the canal – still frozen over from the low temperatures last night. It took so much hard work to wash the dog yesterday that I couldn’t face a walk in the woods and the challenge of getting him clean again!