It’s nine in the morning and I’ve got the all house lights
on. In June! The glowering sky and blustery rain are doing nothing to lift my
mood but I can’t blame this melancholy entirely on the weather.
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| Five years of walking holidays |
It’s been two
weeks since we got back from Scotland. Two weeks since we finished walking the
Cape Wrath Trail, itself the culmination of a 5 year project to walk the length
of mainland Britain. Five years when we talked and planned and walked and planned and
walked some more. When every holiday was built around the next stage of the
trail and every conversation started with ‘when we get back from...’ or ‘after
we’ve walked to...’ Five years of revising our kit lists to lighten the load as our knees
got older and the paths got rougher and five Christmases of dry sacs and liner socks. In short it’s been my life.
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| The end is nigh. The track to the Cape Wrath lighthouse. |
And now it’s over and I don’t know
what to do with myself. I feel like I did when I first retired. The sudden lack
of structure, the long days that stretch out endlessly, the numerous things
that I could do and the zero motivation to do any of them. I know I’m not
alone. My friend Carol suffers from post walk blues and makes sure she always
has a wish list of trails to tackle. Maybe that’s the answer. Another challenge
to concentrate the mind. I fell in love with Orkney recently so maybe island
bagging, or the Hebridean Way or... Watch this space.
