>>>Right now my wife is getting over a broken shoulder but she can't go for a walk round the local park because of the number of badly trained "he's not usually like that " dogs that are being taken for a walk by their clueless owners.
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>Fair enough. Stay away from walkways beside water or she'll meet charming cyclists who treat the footpath as their own speed circuit. My relative dying of cancer had to stop his seaside walks after road maggots almost collected him a number of times because he couldn't leap aside as they seemed to expect.

I agree with you about that. I cycle on towpaths sometimes and keep it slow and even get off if there's a lot of pedestrians but there are some cyclists who seem to treat it as a place to do time trials. We exactly the same experience in France walking by the Canal du Midi where a constant stream of cyclists coming up behind us at speed made it very unpleasant..