Walking to think

Find answers to your questions by following in Charles Darwin's footsteps

Down House – Charles Darwin’s home where he wrote On the Origin of Species

Hello walkers and writers 👋🏻

It’s been a minute since my last edition because I’ve been busy exploring and finding more walking and writing prompts to share with you.

I went on a weekend adventure to the Gower Peninsula with Walk Wild, walking 28 miles over 2 days with the loveliest people and taking in some epic coastal views. I joined CampWild for their first ever community campout at Pool Bridge Farm in Yorkshire where I made friends with a verrrryyyyy sassy jackdaw. And I facilitated a walking and writing workshop at Wellness in the Wild festival.

I also visited Down House – Charles Darwin’s home and the inspiration for our walking and writing theme in this edition.

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Walking

Charles Darwin probably doesn’t need an intro, but here’s a brief one just in case. He’s history’s most famous biologist and his ideas, studies and thinking transformed what we know about the natural world, and the diversity and origins of life on earth.

He was fascinated by nature from a young age, devouring books, exploring the fields and woodlands around his Shrewsbury home, and collecting seeds and insects. Walking was a huge part of his life – and thinking – from childhood until his death. As a child he was sent out every day before breakfast to walk along a path at the bottom of the garden.¹ Known as the Thinking Path, it was these daily walks that gave the young Darwin a chance for thought and reflection, gradually becoming a habit that he carried on throughout his life.

Charles Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood and in 1842 they moved to Down House in Kent to provide a home for their growing family. In 1846, Darwin rented a strip of land next to the grounds and planted it with hazel, alder, lime, hornbeam, birch and dogwood. He called it the Sandwalk Wood² – a name he took from the sandpit used to dress the d-shaped path that runs alongside a hedge before turning into the wood.

Head this way for Charles Darwin’s ‘thinking path’

Darwin walked the sandwalk daily while he thought about the natural world and developed his theory of evolution. He’d often circle it several times, keeping track of the number of circuits he made by piling up flints at the turn in the path and knocking one down each time he passed.³

Darwin’s son said he used these walks for his ‘hard thinking’ and I can only imagine the theories he came up with, or the questions he thought about, as he made his turns around the path. At around a quarter of a mile long, the sandwalk isn’t very long, and in his notes Darwin would sometimes document how many circuits he’d done in a particular day: ‘4 times sandwalk’.⁴ It makes me think of Sherlock Homes and his ‘3-pipe problem’.⁵

So as I walked in Darwin’s footsteps I imagined him reaching the turn, kicking away a stone, and coming up with the answers to a 3-, 4-, 5- or even 6-flint problem.

The start of Darwin’s sandwalk

The benefits of thinking on the move are now being backed by science – a fact I’m sure Darwin would welcome. One explanation is that when we walk we can enter a state of flow. This is also known as the transient hypofrontality theory⁶ – a term coined by Dr Arne Dietrich, a cognitive neuroscientist fascinated by creativity. In plainer English, this is the state of mind we can achieve when we engage in activities that need physical exertion but very little thought or concentration – like walking. When we’re in this state our thoughts can wander more freely.

The garden at Down House where Darwin studied plants, carried out his experiments and tested his theories

So my invitation this time is to create your own ‘thinking path’. Now, you don’t need a country house or heaps of land to do this. And you don’t need to build it or plant it with trees like Darwin did – although that’d be a cool thing to do if you have the space, time and skills. All you need is a place where you can walk regularly. And it doesn’t need to be circular – you can walk back and forth along a straight path.

So you might choose to walk up and down a short trail close to your home, walk circuits around your favourite local park, or stroll around your garden. And if you decide to walk in your garden you could set up a pile of stones at the start of your ‘path’ and kick one away each time you complete a circuit.

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Writing

Darwin was a prolific writer and throughout his life he filled his notebooks with observations and ideas. He used 15 field notebooks⁷ during his voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, filling them with everything that interested him, as well as his daily activities during the journey. The entries cover things like archeology, botany, geology and zoology; barometer and thermometer readings; anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics. They also include maps, drawings, financial records and shopping lists, as well as personal diary notes.

His Beagle notebooks were tiny – about the size of a postcard – and his entries are mere fragments. Snapshots of what he saw and experienced, made on the move, so he could record each thought and observation then return to them later to expand on them in more detail.

Solitude on board
enervating heat
comfort: hard to look forward
pleasures in prospect: do not wish for cold
night delicious
Sea calm sky not blue

So for your writing this time I invite you to get a small notebook – something that’ll fit in your pocket or in the palm of your hand – and take it on your ‘thinking walks’. Once you finish your walk, grab your notebook and scribble down your thoughts. This exercise isn’t about creating a polished piece of writing or following a prompt to see where it takes you. It’s about getting into the habit of capturing your ideas as they happen, so you’ll have a collection of writing prompts to use any time you need.

Happy walking – thinking! – and writing until next time,

Sarah

PS I love hearing your walking and writing stories. Do you have a favourite path or trail that you walk regularly? Or have you written something you’d like to share? Please share your experiences in the comments.

1. Darwin’s Childhood Garden, Shropshire Wildlife Trust.

2. Sandwalk from Darwin online.

3. On the Link Between Great Walking and Obsessive Thinking, by Jeremy deSilva, published in Literary Hub, 19 April 2021.

4. Sandwalk from Darwin Online.

5. Sherlock Holmes’ ‘three pipe problem’ in The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle.

6. Charles Darwin’s Daily Walks, by Damon Young PhD, published in Psychology Today, 12 January 2015.

7. Darwin’s Beagle field notebooks (1831–1836), published on Darwin online.