Last autumn I sold my car. It wasn’t a grand statement. The clutch was going, the repair quote was more than the car was worth, and the office was only a little over three kilometres away. I told myself I would walk until I found something better. A year later, I still haven’t looked.

The first month was the hardest

For the first few weeks, the walk felt like time stolen from somewhere else. Forty minutes each way is more than an hour a day, and I spent most of it doing arithmetic about what else I could have done with that hour. I arrived at work slightly damp and slightly resentful, and I left in the evening dreading the walk home.

Then the weather turned, and something odd happened. On the cold, clear mornings, the walk became the only part of the day when nobody needed anything from me. No messages, no meetings, no decisions. Just one foot in front of the other, and the same streets slowly changing with the season.

You notice the small things

When you drive the same route every day, it blurs. When you walk it, it sharpens. I learned which bakery puts its bread out at quarter past seven, and which house has a cat that waits on the windowsill for the postman. I watched a corner shop close, sit empty for three months, and reopen as a bicycle repair shop. I noticed that the old church clock runs four minutes fast, and that nobody seems to mind.

None of this is important. But it made the neighbourhood feel like a place I lived in, rather than a place I drove through.

Thinking happens at walking pace

The biggest surprise was how much thinking I did. Problems that had stalled at my desk would quietly untangle themselves somewhere between the canal bridge and the post office. I started keeping a small notebook in my coat pocket, and most of the ideas I was proud of this year were first written down standing on a pavement.

I don’t think there’s anything magical about it. Walking is just occupied enough to stop you fidgeting, and empty enough to let your mind wander. A desk, a screen and a notification are none of those things.

What I would tell someone starting

Buy good shoes before you buy anything else. Keep an umbrella at work and another at home, because you will always be in the wrong place when it rains. Don’t try to make the walk productive by filling it with calls; let it be the one part of the day that isn’t. And give it a full season before you decide whether it’s for you.

I still don’t have a car. Some days I miss it. Most days, I’m glad of the walk.