The walking cure: when an injury forced me to slow down, I learned that we can only amble our way to wisdom

‘Now that I can’t run, I’m experiencing my neighbourhood in a way that would elude me if I only saw it from a car or through GPS navigation.’ Photograph: volkerpreusser/Alamy

I can’t run right now – or what, for me, passes for running. I must walk, and I hate it. A tear in my right calf muscle has exposed me as a walking cliche of middle-class, middle-aged life: I overcompensate for a desk-bound existence through bursts of physical exercise, but now with painful results.

This 43-year-old body isn’t what she used to be.