Almost 12 years on and Talking Walking podcasts are now once again available on the Apple Podcast platform, besporting a slightly adapted livery (by Alban Low, adapted from the original design by Ian Martin). For little or no reason, Apple chose to drop Talking Walking podcasts after our first 26 episodes so it’s rather timely that exactly 100 episodes later we finally have persuaded them that Talking Walking should be once again featured on their platform.

Perfect timing to announce the latest episode (our 126th) with app maker Hana Sutch who having been frustrated by not being able to quickly find places to take her young toddler to get close to nature, applied her design skills to create the app Go Jauntly.

Over the intervening years since Talking Walking was last on Apple, podcasts have become hugely popular and very much more sophisticated than our simple efforts to record an informal conversation with someone on a walk. We’ve stuck to the same formula throughout the 15 years we’ve been producing them.

Owing to unforeseen circumstances or remoteness of my interviewees some of the episodes have been recorded either over the Internet or in indoor settings, one such episode was with Australian Planner and Urban Designer, Bill Chandler, who sadly passed away this month.

We met Bill at the Walk21 conference in Melbourne while also visiting my friend Leon Yates, who himself succumbed to an interview as he had recently completed writing a Pedestrian Strategy for the City of Melbourne.

We were in the throes of running a Romantic Ribbons walkshop for conference delegates and Bill happily donned a washing machine cardboard box and became a mobile flip chart for our walkshop, while unbeknownst to us, that very evening Bill was to be honoured by the Australian Planning Institute with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The interview we made with Bill however was when he was visiting London, and we had had quite an adventure, visiting the Spa Fields adventure play spaces that included a brush with the law!

Although the times we met Bill Chandler were brief, we always had a lot of fun. He was a really wise and generous man, sharing his knowledge and encouraging us to continue to improve the environment for those of us who walk and play.

Featured image from 2006 in Melbourne – wearing our Romantic Ribbons caps, Bill Chandler, Leon Yates and Andrew Stuck

All about walking blog posting is unpredictable – if it’s raining biblical downpours then a blog post is more likely to appear, in most other weather conditions we are out walking and not blogging on a keyboard…..