12 June 2019

Now What?


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. 
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. 
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.

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