This is a blog about walking. Walking anywhere for any reason. Do you like to walk? What’s your favourite Calgary walk? Do you walk for transport? Do your kids join you and walk? Or walk on their own?
Share your walks, your thoughts on walking, and tell everyone why walking is so enjoyable!
You can email me at lorib @ fitfrog.ca or send me a tweet from the link below. I’ll share your stories on this blog and through Twitter!
I took CTV viewers on a tour of Calgary’s Tasty Cafe Walksabouts this week. For those of you motivated by good coffee, food and spending time with friends, check this out. All of these cafes (and many more) are in my book Calgary’s Best Walks. The social side of walking is pretty darn important (and fun!).
I featured some wonderful home and garden walks in my CTV segment on August 24. There are many more colourful neighbourhoods to explore in Calgary, but I cannot fit in everything in 3 minutes! The Silversprings Botanical Gardens are spectacular and if you want a longer walk when you visit them, they back onto Bowmont Park. Check out my book, Calgary’s Best Walks, and follow the Bowmont Park West route and drop into Waterfall Valley after a visit to the gardens.
The Silver Springs Botanical Gardens are simply spectacular. I found out about them as I researched my CTV Homes and Gardens Walks segment, that airs tomorrow, Aug. 24, 2016. Be sure to check out their website and Facebook pages to learn more about guided garden walks and about the gardens themselves.
Upcoming FREE guided garden walk:
Saturday, August 27, 2016 at 1:30-3 pm
Meeting in the main parking lot at 1:15 to begin the tour at 1:30. Location details
www.facebook.com/Silverspringsbotanicalgardens
www.botanicalgardensofsilversprings.ca
Walking along the Bow and the Elbow Rivers, connecting communities and climbing to viewpoints, makes for some wonderful urban walking. In my CTV segment I also feature Fish Creek and the Douglasdale escarpment, The Reservoir single track pathways that dip and climb and take you away from the bustle of the city and some neighbourhood river walks with character! The routes are all in my book, Calgary’s Best Walks so grab a copy and let your self-propelled urban exploration begin!
If you are looking for some surprise on your urban walkabouts, then look no further than these quirky neighbourhoods. Not knowing what you might find around the next corner makes for a fun walk. I featured Sunnyside and Kensington, The Beltine and Connaught and Ramsay/ Inglewood in this CTV segment. All these routes are in my book Calgary’s Best Walks. But remember to deviate from my suggested route to find more surprises!
I headed out of the city to the Rocky Mountains in my latest CTV segment. Fantastic Wildflower Hikes near Calgary. Check it out here!
CTV SEGMENT Rocky Mountain Wildflower Hikes
Here are the four wildflower hikes that I featured. Meadows of colour, some with snow on top!
Sulpher Springs/ Riverview Loop: Elbow Valley, Kananaskis
Grass Pass: Highwood, Kananaskis (20 minutes west of Longview)
Cox Hill: Sibbald Flats, Kananaskis
Stanley Glacier: Kootenay National Park
Once again, get the Gem Trek maps (see my previous blog post)
I highlighted my favourite STAIRWAY walks in Calgary yesterday on CTV Morning! So many great places to sweat! And all of them, and many more, in my book, Calgary’s Best Walks…of course.
Douglas Fir Trail, Edworthy Park, is one of the Stairway Walks that I featured
All walks are great for kids of course, but there are some urban walkabouts that are clear favourites. Bring on the ice cream stops, watermarks, massive hills to roll down, single track trails along escarpments, waterfalls and for the teenagers in the group, a burger stop in Kensington!
Watch my Kid Favorite CTV segment!
If you are looking for some motivation to put foot to pavement, pathway or wilderness route, then watch my CTV Morning Segment on Starting Your Walking Habit! So much to see while on foot in Calgary and beyond in Southern Alberta.
Watch my segment on CTV Calgary Morning
Join me at 10 am on May 8 for Mothers Day Jane’s Walk!
Celebrate 10 years of Jane’s Walks!
The Walk: Elbow River Communities-hidden stairways, natural area trails, bridges, viewpoints, a mix of funky and grandiose neighbourhoods and cafe’s
Meeting Place: Stanley park official Parking lot at 42 Ave. just west of 1 A St., SW
Led By Lori Beattie
May 8, 2016, 10:00 AM, 1.5 Hours
All Jane’s Walks are free. Want to know more? Read below…
Jane’s Walks are free, locally organized walking tours, in which people get together to explore, talk about and celebrate their neighbourhoods. Where more traditional tours are a bit like walking lectures, a Jane’s Walk is more of a walking conversation. Leaders share their knowledge, but also encourage discussion and participation among the walkers.
A Jane’s Walk can focus on almost any aspect of a neighbourhood, and on almost any topic you can think of.Walks can be serious or funny, informative or exploratory; they can look at the history of a place, or at what’s happening there right now. Anyone can lead a walk — because everyone is an expert on the place where they live!
Some examples: A walk in Colchester, England was led by two brothers, aged 6 and 4, who showed walkers around their favourite park and shared interesting historical facts about the local castle. In Ljubljana, Slovenia, a city councillor came on a walk to discuss the history and potential future of the area around a stalled construction site. In the heart of Toronto, Canada, a Queer Newcomer Youth walk was led by a group of young people who had all arrived in the city recently, but had found a welcoming community there. In Calcutta, India, a group set out to explore the wetlands at the city’s edge.
