OK, here’s something I did yesterday and it resulted in such a GREAT day I thought I’d share the idea and see if you, too, might like to try it.
Here’s the challenge –
Travel no more than 30 minutes from where you live to somewhere you have never been before, walk around, explore, take some photos, or make some notes, then come home and reflect on it.
You can travel any way you like – walking, cycling, driving a car, public transport. Doesn’t matter if you live in a city, a town or in the country. The key to this is to explore somewhere NEW.
Here’s my personal story from yesterday. I was born and brought up in Stirling, went off to study and work as a doctor in other places for about half my life, then came back to live in Stirling again. So I’ve lived in this town for about half my life. Yesterday we decided to take a trip and do something we’d never done before. April first turned out to be the first day of the season for the ferry boat to cross the Lake of Menteith to Inchmahome Island and that was somewhere we’d never been. The Lake of Menteith is a 3o minute car drive from my house so off we went. Here’s some of what we saw –
The Lake of Menteith –
The ferry –
The priory –
Men fishing –
We also witnessed the spectacle of swans taking off, flying and landing, and seeing (and hearing!) some nesting Canada Geese (having totally by chance watched Fly Away Home yesterday on TV – strange universe we live in….how do those things happen?)
How many times yesterday did I say “How come we’ve lived in Stirling half our lives and we’ve never been HERE before?” ? Lost count.
So, here’s the idea. Find somewhere within the half hour radius of where you live, somewhere you’ve never been before, and go explore. If you like, come back here and tell me about it – create a flickr set, write a post on your blog, tweet about it, or post it on your Facebook page.
Why?
Because Life is brand new every day, and if you deliberately set out to explore this new day, you’ll experience the thrill of that directly.
See what it does for you to see life as wanting to surprise you, to share novelty with you, to fully engage you in this present moment. See how it feels to share what you experience.
Heroes Not Zombies 
Thank you so much for sharing these pictures! There’s nothing like those ruins around here (I’m reminded of the adage that “Europeans think 100 miles is a long way and Americans think 100 years is a long time”), but I might just take you up on this challenge; there are a lot of things in our circle that we’ve never taken the time to properly investigate. Just the other day, in fact, Punkin’ Pie was making a “summer to-do list,” and one of the items was to “explore our town like a tourist.” Good plan, that!
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Wow. Those are some really beautiful photos. I love the picture of the priory. I think your idea has a lot of merits too. I love the idea of exploring new places. Especially places that is so close to you that you tend to overlook them. I think I’m going to take up the challenge and write about it in my blog. Really inspiring idea.