The Story of the Mile - a photo on Flickriver

            Or - an accidental discovery.

There is a certain satisfaction in discovering through experience the underlying reality of something we take for granted. I mean, we all know what a mile is right - 1760 yards. Well, actually no, it wasn’t that at all, that calculation must have come later, the mile stood alone prior to that.

On my long walks with my guide dog, and later with just my white stick, to pass the time I used to count my paces - sad I know, but I can’t see the scenery, so it kept me awake. I used to count 100 paces on just one foot, on each finger and thumb, and when I had done all digits - 1000 paces, I would transfer a coin to another pocket. As time went on, on certain walks , if there was a marker nearby like a large tree, a road or whatever. - something I could pick up,  I would mark the 1000 paces or sometimes 500. One day I went in the car with my wife to see how far a particular walk was and as we drove I asked the distance at the markers I had accumulated, and to my surprise, they coincided almost exactly with 1 mile, or half mile intervals! The fact is - and you can verify this, 1000 strides on one foot is one mile, it is very accurate, to within 20 or 30 paces for me.  I am of average height and stride. One hand half a mile, two hands a full mile.

This must be how the distance of one mile came into being, people in times of yore, needed to know how long a journey would take and therefore a standard was set by which anyone could gauge their progress. All you needed was 10 fingers and some stones in a pocket.

As a small boy I can remember seeing very old stone roadside markers - milestones,  ’40 miles to London’ or 50 miles to London’ or which ever town, they must be all gone now.  Somebody - with a pocket full of stones - must have paced those markers,  100 paces x 10 fingers x 10 stones = 10 miles. He would then leave some sort of marker by the wayside, and later along comes the horse and cart with the large stone markers and drops them off at each marked point.  

The measurement of a yard has nothing to do with a mile.  The name tells us that, it was obviously a measurement for small pieces of land and fields a *yard*. One day somebody said I wonder how many yardsticks make one of those mile things? They had someone - probably several people walk the mile, then lay down a yard stick at the starting point and discovered you had to flip it 1759 times to reach the mile.

So a mile is not a measurement of yards and feet, it is a measurement of hands and feet, and that photograph above, of all the cow parsley lining the road was taken precisely 3500 paces (on one foot) from my front door, or exactly, three and a half miles……

Taken on: May 23, 2023

Tags:

Nature

Landscape

Cow Parsley

Sony RX100 vii

Carmarthenshire

Brecon Beacons National Park

Wales « less

Sets appears in: • Sony RX100 vii • Landscapes, Treees etc

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Camera: Sony DSC-RX100M7, f/8.0, 1/200 sec, 9mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Sony DSC-RX100M7
Lens:	Sony 24-200mm F2.8-4.5
Aperture:	f/8.0
Exposure Time:	0.005 sec (1/200)
Focal Length:	9mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Contrast:	High
Saturation:	High
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Luminar Neo Extension
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