Get a sampler of the new book, Walking Brooklyn, on a Bay Ridge walk this Saturday with author and OTBKB guest blogger Adrienne Onofri.

I have not yet begun to walk.

This Saturday, July 21, at 11 a.m., I will be leading a walk in Bay Ridge that commences at the park beneath the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge named for naval hero John Paul Jones, famous for saying and shouting, probably “I have not yet begun to fight!”

He never made it to Brooklyn, as far as I know, but I guess a naval theme was appropriate for a park facing the entrance to New York Harbor and situated just a block from still-active Fort Hamilton.

The walk is one of several offered this weekend as part of Lighten Up Brooklyn, Borough President Marty Markowitz’s health and fitness initiative. (You gotta love the logo: a tape measure around a bloated Brooklyn Bridge.) Other walks during the weekend tour Coney Island, Hasidic Crown Heights, the Marine Park nature area and more. Go to brooklyn-usa.org for further information.

There’s no charge, and everyone—Brooklynite or otherwise—is invited to participate. For the Bay Ridge walk, we’ll start by going around John Paul Jones Park to see its various monuments (military and otherwise), then head down to the biking/walking path beside the bay. This is one of New York’s great places for a stroll. You’ve got views of that tremendous bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Manhattan’s skyscrapers, even the rides of Coney Island and you can smell the sea air!

When I was writing Walking Brooklyn last year, I had to sidestep some barriers on this path, but the restoration is now complete on the Bay Ridge portion, so walking there is even more of a pleasure.

After a fitness walk of about a mile and a half, we’ll cross over the Belt Parkway (don’t worry: a pedestrian bridge is provided) and go in and out some residential streets of Bay Ridge. Much of this part of the walk is waterfront, if not waterside. We’ll see mansions old and new and visit Brooklyn’s other botanic garden on our way to the photo-oppy 69th St. pier.

Please join us! You’ll even receive a flyer good for a discount on Walking Brooklyn at the Community Bookstore and other shops. To get to the walk’s starting point, take the R to 95th St. or, from Park Slope, the B63 bus on 5th Ave. Enter John Paul Jones Park on 4th Ave. at 101st St. or Shore Rd.