When the weather is sunny and dry, there's nothing nicer than walking round London rather than diving into the depths of the dark, crowded and crushed tube or taking out a second mortgage for a cab to get irate at the snail's pace of the traffic.
However, to avoid backstrain you don't want to have to carry an A-Z with you and not all of us are hooked up with nifty sat-nav enabled mobiles.
So imagine my delight when a fellow Londoner introduced me to a nifty little site called walkit.com.
You type in your starting location (by postcode or street name) and your destination (and the system helpfully prompts you with different starting points along the relevant road) and then it calculates - depending on whether you choose direct or main road routes - the time it will take to walk it at a fast, medium or slow pace and also - get this - how many calories you will burn in the process.
I tried it out yesterday. I had to get (quickly) from a meeting in Carter Lane (near St Pauls) to another on the corner of Hatton Garden. Now, my gut reaction was to jump on St Pauls tube to Chancery Lane as, like many Londoners, I often don't "join up" the street level locations.
It told me it would take just nine minutes to walk at a fast pace and provided me with a very clear map. So I set off - stopwatch in hand.
And guess what? I made it in exactly nine minutes and learned how Ludgate Circus joined with Shoe Lane and Fetter Lane and delivered me out to Holborn Circus. Brilliant! Of course, I know all these locations but it was good to have the obvious route pointed out with such clarity.
My next walk will be more challenging...
