Lily and Pat

Lily Johnstone and Pat Ironside have been walking with the Health All Round project in Edinburgh for almost two years now. Lily heard about the group through a friend and encouraged Pat to join too.

“We enjoy walking with the group because we get to meet new people and get to explore Edinburgh.  Many people in the group have lived in the area for a long time so there is always some local history to learn about.

We usually meet at the Health All Round offices and Angela, our walk leader, tells us about the route and where we’ll finish the walk – we try to finish somewhere were we can have a cuppa and a chat. We have made many new friends in the group and it is great to be able to meet up each week and catch up on everybody’s news.

We make sure we fit in some walking on our weekends away, we had fun exploring Aberdeen in the summer and really enjoyed our Tinsel and Turkey week in Blackpool in November – although we had to time our walks along the promenade to avoid the high-tide!!

We have also taken part in other activities organised by Health All Round, including keep fit classes, and we are now learning how to tap-dance!!

We were invited to speak at the Paths to Health National Networking Event in Glasgow in September 2006. We had not done anything like that before and were quite nervous beforehand but everybody said we did well and we really enjoyed our day. We also did a radio interview about why we think it is important to stay active. And now our story is on the website!!”