Category: 60 Before 60

Time or Money

Would you rather hoard time or money?

I love this quote:

What I realized—not just about myself but about the world—is that time and money are commodities with an inverse relationship; to get one you need to spend the other. And I realized, for me, time is a more valuable commodity than money, so I’d rather hoard free time than extra money. Most travelers end up feeling the same way and its one reason why they find the return home so difficult, our society is built on the premise we should want more money so we can have more things, even if we don’t really have the free time to use those things.

—Brook Silva Braga

Morecambe Sands Walk

What to take for a walk across Morecambe Sands

I received a letter today from Willow Wood Hospice about the charity walk I’m taking part in across Morecambe Sands later this month. The letter warns me to take a towel and a change of clothes and old shoes or trainers, definitely not wellies, for the river crossing. It says I will definitely get wet. The walk across the bay will take about 3.5 hours and the coach will be waiting at the end ready to take us home.

I’m really looking forward to this and just hope it doesn’t get rained off like it did last year. A bit of rain isn’t a problem, but last year it rained so hard all weekend the river swelled so much it was too dangerous to cross and the walk had to be called off.

So, fingers crossed for a dry weekend at the end of the month.

Some thoughts on the GGW

What I’d do differently next time.

GGW signNow that I’ve had a few days to reflect on my walk here are some of my thoughts:

I’m glad I’ve walked a long distance path in one go and in the recommended amount of time as I feel like I’ve proved something to myself. I know I can do it, so now I can walk paths any way I like without feeling like I have something to prove.

At the start of my walk I met a group of young guys sitting under the start/finish sign in Fort William celebrating the end of their walk with a crate of beers. They’d walked it the other way round to me. When I asked them about it and how long they’d taken I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d said less than the usual amount of days. Instead they said, “Well most people take five or six days, but we took about two weeks”. They went on to say how much they’d enjoyed just walking however far they felt like and camping in nice places. As I did the walk I really appreciated what they meant by this and felt that their way was a great way to do it. I did feel like I was missing out on enjoying the wonderful places I was passing through because I was always aware that I had to keep walking to make that day’s target. I also felt like I spent far too much time looking at my feet and the ground and not enough at the wonderful views. So next time I do a one week walk, I’m going to allow 2 weeks. If I finish in one week, then I’ll have a week in hand to do something else. But I’ll know I have plenty of time to really enjoy my walk.

The path was much harder than I thought it was going to be. And I mean that literally. I don’t mean it was a more difficult walk, but that it was very, very hard underfoot. Chunks of it were on roads (mainly very minor roads, with only the odd car) and most of the rest of it was on paths and tracks that were not only hard but often stony as well. By the end of each day the soles of my feet were really sore. It took a lot of lying down before the throbbing started to wear off. By the end of the week I was resorting to painkillers. If I was to do the walk again I would seriously consider getting some air cushioned trainers and walking in those. The stones would still hurt through the soles, but the overall impact would be a lot less that it was with my heavy, rigid-soled walking boots. Even though it’s been a wet summer, the path was never particularly muddy, so trainers would have been fine.

All along the path there were items of discarded clothing hanging on fences and trees. Was someone walking ahead of me trying to lighten their load? Or do lots of people lose random items of clothing on the walk and other people come along behind and hang them up?

I need a lighter tent. My tent is quite light for it’s size. It’s small, but I can sit up in it and have room to spread my stuff out and cook. I bought this one because it is light enough to carry, but also it’s good for spending long rainy days in. I didn’t want to be stuck in a tent that I can only lie down in and can only cook if I go outside. However, to carry it for this distance I really could have done with something ultra light. I will seriously have to look at bivvy bags too.

Back home

I’m back home after just over a month away in which I completed two of my challenges. I’ve wild camped in the UK and walked a long distance path in one go.

My wild camping was quite soft really as in Shetland it’s so easy and most of the time I camped near piers where there are toilets and showers. But I did do nine straight nights. I also officially wild camped for a couple of nights on the Great Glen Way as I slept at locks where there are designated wild camping sites (can it be wild camping when it’s a designated site?) and I was able to buy a key enabling me to use the toilets and showers at the locks. I’ve done much wilder wild camping in other parts of the world (particularly Africa) so I know I’m capable of it, I just wanted to break my habit of always relying on campsites when I’m in this country.

As for my long distance walk, I walked the Great Glen Way over 6 days. Technically I finished on the 7th day as I stopped at the campsite in Inverness at the end of day 6. This is right on the route and there seemed no point walking into Inverness just to walk back out again, only to walk back in again the next day to get the train. The walk should have been 73 miles but I did just over 80 as one day there was a 2 mile diversion and I also walked out to both sea locks which aren’t included in the official trail. I carried all my gear for the first 4 days, but set up camp in Inverness and bussed back to the walk for the last couple of days when it was long and hilly. I could have done it with all my gear but would have needed more time. As with the wild camping, I have done longer walks than this and carried more gear in other countries, but wanted to do it here just to prove to myself that I’m still up to it.

So right now, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Last night at Web Design

My web design course has finished.

Last night was the last night of my web design course. I don’t think I’ve done as well on the intermediate course as I did on the beginner’s, but I do have the beginnings of a web site. I really need time to concentrate and play around with it, but time is something I have very little of. I won’t do any more on it over the summer, but hopefully in the autumn I can start getting back into it and get a bit further on my way to having my own website.

Coast

Some interesting facts about the Caledonian Canal which I’ll be walking along next month.

Last night I watched an episode of the BBC programme Coast on iplayer. I’d downloaded this one particularly because part of the programme followed the Caledonian Canal and Great Glen Way. The aerial shots were great as I was able to see the paths that I’ll be walking along in a few weeks time. Although I didn’t really learn anything new, it did remind me of a few facts:

  • The Canal was built by hand and was as much a job creation scheme for dispossesed Highlanders as it was to be of benefit to shipping.
  • It went way over budget.
  • By the time it was built ships had got bigger and couldn’t fit along it. So it turned out to be a bit of a white elephant.
  • Loch Ness is deep enough to hold 3 times the world’s population. (Though I don’t know if this was worked out based on the current population or if this is an out of date fact).

I’m sure there was more, but I don’t remember.

The one I’ve aleady done

A day spent gathering wild food and learning new recipes.

When I started this blog I had one task on my list that I’ve already ticked off. I did wonder whether to keep it on or if I should free up the space for a different task. But as I’d actually put together my list about a year before I started to blog I didn’t really want to change it. So it stayed.

I’ve been a vegetarian since I was eighteen. It was actually at my 18th birthday meal that I last ate meat  (it was turkey, one of the few meats I actually liked). I tried to be a vegetarian before that, but it was always difficult when my mum was in charge of cooking and she wanted me to eat meat. I never really liked it and used to feed it to the dog under the table when she wasn’t looking. When I was 14 the dog died. I tried to feed my meat to the cat instead, but she ate too slow and couldn’t eat that much. So I became a part-time veggie, forcing meat down at home so that I would be allowed to leave the table, but rarely eating it outside of home.

About a week after my birthday meal I realised that I’d not eaten meat at all since that meal. If I could do it for a week, I could do it forever. I wasn’t eating so much at home any more and not long afterwards I moved out. I didn’t tell my mum, I just let her figure it out over time.

I always enjoyed cooking and my new life as an official veggie gave me lots of reasons to research and try out new recipes. Veggies weren’t much catered for in restaurants then, and there certainly wasn’t the choice of veggie products in the supermarkets that there are now, so it was much more challenging. Through my reading and research I came across the Vegetarian Society and found out that it’s based in Altrincham (not very far away) and has a cookery school. Although the courses aren’t particularly expensive, they were always well out of my affordability range. So it became one of those things that I kept saying I’d do one day but never getting round to. Last summer I’d been a vegetarian for 25 years and as I’m living back in Manchester and just down the road from the Vegetarian Society I thought that this would be a good year to finally do a course with them.

I chose the ‘Food for Free’ course because it also involved walking and learning about plants. The course took place on a Sunday and started off in the Vegetarian Society lounge where the dozen participants were served coffee before being introduced to Patrick Harding, wild food expert and our tutor for the day. After a talk and a slide show we were on to the practical side of the course where we headed out into the countryside looking for food. We didn’t walk very far, though it took a couple of hours because we kept stopping to pick wild flowers and leaves and listen to Patrick talk about them. Once back at base we were served a big, late afternoon, buffet lunch using all the ingredients we’d picked. So that we wouldn’t have to wait around too long for lunch we were actually served with food made from ingredients that had been collected earlier than our walk, but they were the same things.

Although we didn’t get to cook the food ourselves, which is something that I would have liked to have done, we did get to eat plenty of it and were given the recipes to take home. If we’d cooked ourselves it would have been an evening meal by the time it was ready, so I can understand why we didn’t get to participate in the actual cooking.

I really enjoyed the course and it was definitely worth waiting 25 years for. Now I’m tempted to do another one.

The Cordon Verte cookery school can be found here.

Muckle Flugga

My obsession with Muckle Flugga.

I’ve just been catching up on Alastair Humphreys’ blog and see he cycled the length of Shetland recently and finished up by camping at Hermaness on the north coast of Unst. Unst is the most northerly island in Britain (not counting 2 lumps of rock, one of which is Muckle Flugga).

I found myself there last summer – I actually should have been in Iran, but that’s a whole other story – and fulfilled (kind of) an ambition by seeing Muckle Flugga. I’ve always been fascinated with it ever since I first heard the name on the shipping forecast. It’s basically a rock with a now un-manned lighthouse on it. But it’s a far away rock with a funny sounding name and those are two things that always appeal to me. I liked it so much when I finally saw it that I ended up seeing it three times.

The first was when I walked along the Hermaness cliffs which are fascinating enough in themselves because of their huge gannet colony and puffins. Then I went on a boat trip around Muckle Flugga and got a close up view of it. On my last day in Unst I climbed up Saxa Vord which has a military radar station sat on its top.

I felt very intrepid as I ignored signs warning me of snow and ice. I felt very adventurous as I next ignored signs warning me that I would be arrested under the official secrets act if I went any further. I felt very heroic as I ignored signs at the top that warned me I would be irradiated if I got any closer. (I’d actually been told by locals that it was fine to ignore the signs and everyone does). I’d gone up partly because I wanted to have the experience of ignoring all those signs and partly because it has great views of Muckle Flugga. At the top I ran into the guard who goes up once a day to check on the place. He didn’t arrest me, just told me where to go to get the best views and advised me not to get too close to the radar bits that really do have radiation in them.

So I’ve seen plenty of Muckle Flugga and that should have been that ambition fulfilled. But at the hostel I met a few kayakers, two of whom had actually paddled out to the rock, landed and climbed up to the lighthouse. This is not allowed but, as I found with Saxa Vord, no-one seems to bother with things like ‘not being allowed’ in Unst. I was jealous and so decided that I have to learn to kayak so I can also land on Muckle Flugga. The sea is pretty rough so it’s not just a case of learning the basics and going for it – I also have to get good at it. But this is why I have learning to canoe/kayak on my list of things to do.

I’m going to go back to Shetland this summer after I have walked the Great Glen Way. I’ll go back to Unst and gaze at Muckle Flugga from afar again. As I’ve done nothing about learning to kayak this year that will be the most I can do. But one year I will definitely paddle to it, climb the steps and touch those lighthouse walls.

Waxed!

I get my legs waxed.

Last night was my waxing appointment at the local college salon. I was called upstairs to the huge treatment room straight away and directed to a bed with a curtain round it. The whole place seemed quite manic with people dashing about everywhere. My therapist/waxist/student asked me some questions about such things as if I’m a diabetic or have a pacemaker. Then I had to remove my trousers and get on the bed with a towel stretched across my upper legs. I was ready to be waxed.

First, my legs were wiped down with a cool antiseptic liquid. Then talcum powder was rubbed over them. After that it was time for the wax. Evil smelling, pink goo was smeared over my legs and then ripped off with a piece of thin fabric. It hurt, but not nearly as much as I expected it to. Once the fronts were done I had to turn over so the backs could be done. This was a bit more painful, but still completely bearable. At this point the tutor had come in and joined in as she thought it was taking too long. She was a lot quicker than the student and so maybe this was why it hurt a bit more. My student waxer was really gentle. But soon it was over and I was slathered with an after-wax liquid and advised not to shower, swim or use body lotions for 48 hours.

As I’ve now been waxed I could tick this one off my list. But I think I’ll keep it in the ‘in progress’ category until I’ve been brave enough to have full leg, bikini line and underarm waxing done. As the college closes for the summer next week, it won’t be until at least September before I can do this.

Morecambe Sands Walk

Fingers crossed, I’ll soon be walking across Morecambe sands.

Walking across the sands of Morecambe Bay is something I’ve had in mind for years. The sands shift with the tides and become lethal, sucking unwary walkers down to their deaths. The most well known case of course being the Chinese cockle pickers a few years ago. Because of the nature of the sands no-one should attempt the walk without a guide. Luckily, such a guide exists. Cedric Robinson is the official ‘Queen’s Guide’ and has held the role for over 40 years. He usually only leads walks at the weekend now and only over the summer season. All the walks are also charity walks so it’s not possible to just turn up and join one.
I decided I really wanted to do this walk last year as I’d found out it was probably going to be Cedric’s last year in the job. Although no doubt there will be a new guide to follow him when he does finally retire, it won’t be quite the same. As luck would have it my local hospice (Willow Wood) was organising a charity walk of the sands for the first time. So I signed up and was all set to go. The weekend of the walk, it rained. It rained a lot. It was still raining a lot when I turned up for the coach on Sunday morning. The organisers did a last check with Cedric before we set off and he said he’d have to cancel the walk. Because of the huge amount of rain, the river we would have to wade across was dangerously high and fast flowing and unpassable. As this was one of the last walks of the season it wasn’t possible to re-arrange another for that year. But we were promised that we would be able to reschedule for this year and Cedric would still lead the walk.
Well, my new sponsorship form has arrived and the walk is set for mid September. Surely it can’t be cancelled a second time? It’s got to happen this time.