I've just started reading A Year of Living Danishly, an account of a woman's move to Denmark and her attempt to discover what makes it the happiest country in the world to live. Already she has identified an appetite for pastries and a healthy work-life balance as most significant with most Danes leaving work promptly in mid afternoon and not thinking about it again until the next morning, preferring to concentrate their time and energies on family, friends and leisure activities.

Recently my family contact has been reduced to text messaging, my friends have forgotten what I look like and my only leisure activity is a self medicating glass of red at the end of yet another 16 hour day.

Working from home with the Skyware office overlooking the garden and a laptop on the kitchen table means it's hard to switch off. A quick check of emails while the kettle boils, a last look at a chapter before bed, I've even found myself downstairs at 4 am because I've woken up and remembered something I'd forgotten to do. 

Thankfully it's not always like this. The intense pressure over the last few weeks has been because we've a new book, Heart of the Pennine Way, due out on April 24th, the 50th Anniversary of the start of the Pennine Way AND the annual Ride2stride Walking Festival starts 4 days later.

The book is at the printers now and the festival programme is out in the world so there's not much more I can do now, except try to remember how to relax and maybe eat more pastries.