For fit and healthy later years you need just two things. A Senior Walking Fitness program and a healthy diet.

Walking is quite easy, just start slowly and for a few days walk round the block. Then, when you have managed to pass McDonald's without stopping a few times, go a little further. Try ten minutes brisk walking, turn round and walk briskly back. Celebrate, you have walked a mile. A whole mile! I told you it was easy. Do this every day and fitness will come quite soon, but not if you go home and have a beer and a pizza afterward.

You may think walking for walking sake is boring. Not so. Look around, city dwellers can check the changing shop windows - but keep on past, wandering round shops is not walking. Cities have parks and parks have trees, birds and flowers. Check them out, buy a book. What tree is that? What bird? Keep notes, date of the first crocus, the first barn swallow and, harder to do, the last barn swallow. In the country your possibilities are endless, from ticking off five historic churches in a day to circumnavigating a lake or for beginners a pond. There is something to see everywhere, any time always.

What to wear. If you are doing country walking you will need the right clothes. In hot weather it is easy; jeans, hat, tee-shirt and sunscreen. Cooler weather needs better clothes. Good boots are essential, hot or cold. But in more temperate climates a rainproof anorak is a must. Not shower proof. A shower proof anorak is fine for ten minutes and misery after that. Nine minute showers are not guaranteed. A hat keeps the head warm and you can pull your anorak hood over it when it rains, or put it in your pocket, so make that a folding hat. Take gloves and a rucksack for your drink and snack. Not a big rucksack, you are not heading for base camp in the Himalayas, nor are you marching across Helmut Province. Keep rucksack and contents light. So there you are, the outdoors beckons.

But are you motivated to walk every day? Try it out and see, but maybe a committed friend will walk with you to keep you both going. Or, if all else fails, follow the sound advice of Gordon Gecko ’If you want a friend get a dog’.

So now you need a healthy diet. Seniors in the Mediterranean countries are not obese. They eat fruit, fish, lean meat, olive oil and, would you believe, a glass of wine to go with it. They live long and healthy lives eating a Mediterranean diet. Now we find that their diet could well give protection against skin cancer. The incidence of melanoma in Australia is 50 per 100,000 people, in Scandinavia 22 per 100,000, in Mediterranean countries 3 in 100,000. There may be other factors involved and research is continuing, but it is one more reason to consider the healthy and enjoyable Mediterranean diet.

Try this and soon you will not be breathlessly trailing behind everybody else but happily scampering over the hill.