I love aimless walks in the park, but some of my favorite walks involve trips to local restaurants or ice cream shops. It's about a 20 minute walk from my house to somewhere with decent food - just enough time to build up an appetite, but far enough that I sometimes (OK, often) get lazy and ask a friend to drive me home.

Walk Score is site that determines "the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc." According to Walk Score, our house has a rank of 52: "Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car." That sounds about right.

Walk Score, however, does admit that their model isn't perfect. They don't take walking paths into account or safety of the streets. Clearly, you need to try to walk places to know for sure how walkable a place is, but Walk Score is a good starting point.

What's your score? Do you agree with it? Do you take advantage of food you can walk to?

It seems early to start thinking about Thanksgiving, but as the holiday season approaches, the weeks begin to roll by remarkably fast. While some look forward to the holiday as a way to spend time with family and enjoy good food, others just think about it as a setback for their diet plans. Because of the family aspect, it is hard to turn down such good food (especially if you have a grandmother whose only goal in life seems to be to get you to eat another slice of pie), so it never hurts to get a head start on burning off some of those calories. Plus, if you get in some of the extra walking before hand, you won't feel so bad about sitting around and watching football for several hours the next day.

When you're planning your Thanksgiving indulgences, take a look at the Thanksgiving calorie calculator, which will ballpark the amount of energy you'll take in and tell you how much far you'll need to walk to burn it off. Useful, right? Once you see the numbers, you'll know why we're suggesting you get a head start!

[Thanks, Punisher2K!]

At first, a project called Taste of the New York Subway System doesn't sound that appetizing. The concept, however, is a good one: a stop-by-stop guide to restaurants within 200 meters of NYC subway stations. Just pick a line, the "G" for instance, and you get all the restaurants near each stop on that line. Restaurants are linked to their respective Yahoo! Local pages. Those of you with a daily subway routine probably know what's in your neighborhood, but I could see this being quite useful if you had to travel out of your way for some reason and wanted to know what your eating options were.

We manage to pack an awful lot into this little island you know (that's the UK by the way). Ok so a swathe is taken up with housing 60 million people and providing roads they can all drive on but that still leaves some of the most beautiful and diverse countryside in the world.

 

National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty abound - I live in one the Chiltern Hills that sweep round the north west corner of London half way to Oxford. All these areas are superb locations for walkers and photographers. And drinkers of course! More excellent pubs than you can shake a stick at.

The Telegraph has published an article on cosy pubs for walkers and recommends the roaring fires in Dartmoor, Sussex, Kent, South Wales, Cumbria and elsewhere. No recommendations for the Chilterns though. Shame. In Hampshire though there is a Food and Drink Trail leading to pubs and farm shops.