This is me (this is not me, this is a couple of gentlemen doing cartwheels down a hill) I am here.

Where IS that? Well, I walk Doozer to daycare whenever he goes. I need the exercise, and I love to walk, and we can talk and sing as we go. There are two routes to and from Doozer’s new daycare. Actually, that’s clearly not true, there are as many routes as there are combinations of roads, and if I fancied walking up to 20 miles out of my way on the way there – which sometimes I do – there could be millions. Maybe not millions. I’m not good at maths.

Anyway, to get pointlessly technical – to get to or from our new co-operative daycare, I can either take route a) go down 14th and along South Van Ness, which is extremely flat and just two straight lines, so good for speed-walking, or route b) take Sanchez and then take 21st or 22nd Street, which is about the same distance, but involves one massive, very steep hill. Or I can wiggle my way across the middle, crossing roads whenever the light is in our favour, and finding the shortest route.

This morning, we took the wiggle route there, which is 3km and takes about 25 minutes with the pram. And on the way back, because when I turn on to 21st street, the hill is there at the end saying “Come to me, Anna. All the way up. You know you want to.”, I cannot do anything but charge straight up it. This is not from the top, this is on the way down, from the top of Dolores Park, which has a singluarly lovely view over the city (and a very nice playground for toddlers).

It is one of the things that is helping me settle back in to living here, walking. I love hiking in this city – and it is hiking, not because of the way that Americans tend to use the word for anything from a stroll around a meadow to a yomp up a mountain – but because you have to make choices about what difficultly level, grade of hill and distance you want, and … basically I can bang on at length about urban hiking, specifically in this city, but I will save you that for now. Maybe in fitness club. But this is where I am, or where I was earlier today when I remembered I’d promised to uborkise it at some point. And I am happy.