ADI Roche indefatigable anti nuclear campaigner and founder of the Chernobyl Children project has sung, cried, worried and found peace on her morning walk for the past eight years. She travels the same route always, from her home in Cork city out to Rathcooney graveyard, a six mile round trip which she does in a spanking hour and 13 minutes.
"It's my sanity walk, and health is the last thing - it's social, spiritual, mental and finally for the body, though if I don't walk I feel lumpy."
"I walk early in the morning usually at about 7 a.m. to get the scents of the day. This morning I smelt the dew, saw the honeysuckle in profusion. It's important to keep in touch with nature, it's not just something I philosophise about, it is my touchstone.
"Walking is `me' time. I suppose people expect me to be on top of things, to be able, and that's difficult. Things do go wrong. Sometimes when I'm really angry with someone who has broken a promise to us, I write their name on the sole of each shoe before I start, then literally walk out those negative feelings.
"On the way out I might be thinking, figuring, working something out, but when I reach the graveyard it's a turning point psychologically as well as literally, and sometimes I do a dance or shout, an acknowledgement that life is good. Yeah, if anyone saw me they would think I was crazy.
"Coming home I notice things, dogs, houses, people. You might have seen a woman pregnant last winter and now there's the pram outside the door. Again, there's that feeling of renewal, the cycle of change. I've cried my eyes out on this route too, particularly when Evgeniya, the little girl to whom I've dedicated my book, died in hospital in Cork. For Sean and myself it was like losing our own flesh and blood.
"In winter I wear tracksuit bottoms and layers and look like a dog's dinner. In summer I wear bathing togs and shorts or T shirt. I wear our project T shirt so that anyone seeing me might think of us and send us some money!"