YOU might think it is only for kids, but my wife and I are now officially hooked on Beat the Street.

If you haven’t heard, Beat the Street is a free-to-enter game in which participants run, walk or cycle around the Borough of Swindon to find 175 beat boxes strapped to lampposts. You register each visit by touching the beat box with a smart card and we have set ourselves the challenge of visiting every one on our bikes.

It is run by Sport England and an organisation called Intelligent Health, in partnership with Swindon Borough Council. I know we are all quick to criticise the council when they foul things up, but credit where it’s due, this time, for a great initiative. The main benefits are so obvious that you don’t need me to tell you what they are, but it’s only when you take part that you realise the others.

For a start, you actually have to get out on your bike to understand just how blessed Swindon is to have such a tremendous network of cycle-paths and Beat the Street is an incentive to start discovering it.

It makes exercise fun for kids of all ages and getting the younger ones hooked on outdoor activities is something they will still be benefitting from decades from now. So it’s great news that at least 26,000 local people have already joined in and inspiring for those of us from an older generation to see it become a true family activity.

When we were kids, we longed for something like Beat the Street to capture our imaginations, but if it had existed, our parents would have expected us to amuse ourselves with it, rather than joining in with us.

The nature of society these days means it wouldn’t do to let young children loose without supervision, thus putting the burden on parents to make an effort. And they are. Wherever Beat the Street has taken us, we have met fathers cycling with one or two of their children, or mothers leading three or four toddlers around on foot, or grandparents clutching maps while trying to keep up with an excited grandchild. It’s all proof that good parenting (and grandparenting) is alive and well in Swindon.

Beat the Street’s success also disproves the myth that children like to spend all their time playing computer games or with their heads buried in mobile phones. That’s a simplistic and unnecessarily negative view when the reality is, given the chance, kids are every bit as curious and excited by simple pleasures as they always have been.

We should know because even we are not too old to get excited about Beat the Street.

At the time of going to press we’ve ticked off more than 50 and have got more fun than perhaps grown-ups should out of planning routes and hunting down the beat boxes.

Because locations on the official maps are sometimes approximate, there is some searching to be done.

Call us big kids if you like, but that’s our favourite bit.

It’s a shame that a handful of people have been driving to beat boxes, thus missing the point completely. In the end, it’s up to them if they choose to be losers, but teaching their kids to be cheats is simply unforgivable.

Otherwise the only downside to Beat the Street is it isn’t a permanent fixture on Swindon’s streets, being due to end on October 24 - and we will miss it. After all, when the nights draw in, old married couples like us are glad of any new way to keep ourselves active and amused.