Straight after work today I checked out on a map how far away “Hamilton Gardens” were from my hotel. I’ve wanted to go there for years but I’ve thought they would be closed by the time I got there and I’m only ever in Hamilton for work during the week. So today I figured I could at least walk there and see what I could see, surely I would be able to look over a fence or something and it would be a nice walk there and back.

Google Maps told me it was about 30 minutes walk away – absolutely perfect. Once there I discovered it didn’t have a fence… I could walk through the gardens for as long as I wanted to, so I did. It was beautiful and they have an area called Fantasy Gardens with themed areas from various countries such as Italy, China, India and JAPAN!!! As I turned a corner and stepped into the Japanese Garden it was just like being back in Japan – it was fantastic, I loved it. I spent quite a while there before heading back to the hotel hoping it wouldn’t get dark before I got back.

I did manage to get back just as it turned dark thank goodness but I was really pushing it towards the end. I decided to return via the enticingly named “Riverside Walk to the city”. Very near the end of the riverside walk it did start getting a bit dark and with all the trees around and park like surroundings I was suddenly aware that this would be the perfect place to get mugged and my legs were so tired from all the walking I’ve done over the last two days I just didn’t think I’d be able to run very fast to escape a would-be attacker. Luckily I only encountered friendly people walking dogs and a couple of lady joggers.

Turns out (according to my iPhone) I walked 7.59 kilometres and the whole walk took 1 hour and 38 minutes. I walked an average speed of 13:02 minutes per kilometre and burnt off 519 calories – excellent. You can check it out here: “RunKeeper”