Have the Debate of the Age people got it all wrong? Is the country not going to be overwhelmed with pensioners in the years to come, as the pundits have been predicting? The forecast is of twice as many over-65s in the next 30 years.

Long-time T&A reader Dorothy C Dennison is like Victor Meldrew - she doesn't believe it! She thinks the up-coming generation of would-be pensioners are too soft to survive.

"I'm in my seventies now and started working when I was 14 years old and later during the war did my duty working on munitions," she says. "Even when I was widowed and retired, I did over six years of voluntary work two half-days per week."

Keeping busy and active is what keeps people young. There are plenty of living examples of the truth of that. But Mrs Dennison thinks today's younger adults don't appreciate it enough.

"Most just step out of their front door and into their waiting car and forget what their legs were made for," she says. "For the children growing up today, even a walk to the bus stop is a rarity. Lack of exercise will be the slaughter of the future pensioners. Remember - walking is good for you."

I don't need reminding, Mrs Dennison. Nor do a lot of people who are middle-aged today. They make up the bulk of the fellow walkers my wife and I come across when we're out and about. They look fit and at ease with themselves, and stand a much better chance of enjoying a long and active retirement than their couch-potato counterparts. They have role models to look to - ramblers who are still plodding along the footpaths well into their eighties and, in a few rare cases, even beyond that.

Today's younger adults could do worse than start to leave their cars at home and walk on errands within reasonable distance, and start doing the occasional country walk as well. Striding up and down hills and climbing over stiles is wonderful exercise. And my wife asks me to point out that it's also remarkably good for keeping cellulite at bay.

So why bother to fork out a fortune for exercise classes and the use of gym equipment to counter the damage done by spending too much time sitting in a car? Get out there and walk - to keep your legs in trim and prove Dorothy Dennison's pessimistic prophecy to be wrong.

l I don't like to dwell too much on differences between the generations, but...It was just 35 years ago today that my wife and I were married.

After the reception we boarded a service bus for Scarborough at Chester Street bus station and spent a self-catering honeymoon there at the chilly tail-end of one of the coldest winters in living memory. And then we came home to a one-bedroomed flat.

It was an inauspicious start, like many another in those days. But we're still here, we're still reasonably sane, and we're still the best of friends.

How many of today's young marrieds, honeymooning in luxury in the Dominican Republic or the Bahamas and with a "four-bedroomed luxury detached dwelling" to come home to, will still be together in three-and-a-half decades - and how many will have been defeated by expectations which were just too high?

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