Why am I doing this?
I was sheltering in a bothy on the Great Glen Way in August 2017 when I decided that one day I would do a big walk. As the rain poured down and we were huddling together to avoid getting more soaked than necessary, David and I started to chat to the other walkers. Two were youngsters who'd been camping and were covered in midge bites from the previous night. The other was an older American man who talked passionately about the joy of walking the Appalachian Trail. Over 2000 miles of walking.
I know that we talk about lightbulb moments, and the idea is a cliche, but that's what it felt like. The Appalachian trail is too far away for me to do, for now at least, but I thought that I could do my own trail, in my own country. And that it could be as exciting for me as it was to the unnamed man about whom I still think a lot.
So ever since then I've been planning my adventure. My initial plan was to take a term's sabbatical from work, and then return to school. But I realised that my taste of freedom might mean I wouldn't want to return, so I delayed my departure until after I'd retired from teaching. It then became a way of marking the end of 35 years of teaching, with 25 years in the same school. I am continuing with all of my other jobs, as a choral director, animateur and director of large music festivals, but for four months I planned to step out of my life to walk from John O Groats to Lands End. I spent the autumn and spring terms after retiring planning my routes, my accommodation and undergoing increasingly long training walks. I was ready to go, and then three weeks before my starting date the global pandemic closed everything down, and my preparations came to nothing.
This was incredibly disappointing. I was aware that actually I was very lucky in that I had a house with a garden to spend lockdown in, and we haven't lost anyone to the illness. But notwithstanding that, it was a blow that it was snatched away from me at the last minute. However, as the dust settled, I decided that although I couldn't plan to undergo the trek in 2021, I could give myself a taste of long distance walking, and so planned to do the Coast to Coast path in July. This has given me a new focus in a very difficult year, and will also give me the chance to see how I manage the miles and the solitude before hopefully taking on the bigger challenge next year. There's also something satisfying about walking side to side before doing top to bottom.... And as with the big walk, I am going to be mainly doing this solo. With the excitement of that will undoubtedly come added challenges, on top of the physical exertion, of finding out how I cope with long periods on my own.
This blog is intended to be a record for me of the journey, both physically and mentally, and also a way of people keeping up with what I'm doing. In itself writing it will be a challenge, I've not written anything regularly for years, apart from musicals! Who knows, maybe one of those will emerge from the journey too?
I know that we talk about lightbulb moments, and the idea is a cliche, but that's what it felt like. The Appalachian trail is too far away for me to do, for now at least, but I thought that I could do my own trail, in my own country. And that it could be as exciting for me as it was to the unnamed man about whom I still think a lot.
So ever since then I've been planning my adventure. My initial plan was to take a term's sabbatical from work, and then return to school. But I realised that my taste of freedom might mean I wouldn't want to return, so I delayed my departure until after I'd retired from teaching. It then became a way of marking the end of 35 years of teaching, with 25 years in the same school. I am continuing with all of my other jobs, as a choral director, animateur and director of large music festivals, but for four months I planned to step out of my life to walk from John O Groats to Lands End. I spent the autumn and spring terms after retiring planning my routes, my accommodation and undergoing increasingly long training walks. I was ready to go, and then three weeks before my starting date the global pandemic closed everything down, and my preparations came to nothing.
This was incredibly disappointing. I was aware that actually I was very lucky in that I had a house with a garden to spend lockdown in, and we haven't lost anyone to the illness. But notwithstanding that, it was a blow that it was snatched away from me at the last minute. However, as the dust settled, I decided that although I couldn't plan to undergo the trek in 2021, I could give myself a taste of long distance walking, and so planned to do the Coast to Coast path in July. This has given me a new focus in a very difficult year, and will also give me the chance to see how I manage the miles and the solitude before hopefully taking on the bigger challenge next year. There's also something satisfying about walking side to side before doing top to bottom.... And as with the big walk, I am going to be mainly doing this solo. With the excitement of that will undoubtedly come added challenges, on top of the physical exertion, of finding out how I cope with long periods on my own.
This blog is intended to be a record for me of the journey, both physically and mentally, and also a way of people keeping up with what I'm doing. In itself writing it will be a challenge, I've not written anything regularly for years, apart from musicals! Who knows, maybe one of those will emerge from the journey too?
