Looking forward by looking back. Thanks 2019.

A highlight of the year - our family holiday to the Isle of Skye. This was at Loch Coruisk 

Each New Year is an opportunity to consider whether you made the most of the one before, whether you used your time wisely, your opportunities to the full. 

I'll be honest, 2019 was good, but it could have been better. If I had used my time better, and stuck to my priorities without being distracted by less important calls on my time and attention, I'd have fitted in more quality time with my family (which should always be my number 1 priority), and more time enjoying and learning about the great outdoors. 

I shared some goals this time last year (see those here) for some noteworthy trips and challenges. Not all of them worked out, but I managed many of them, and added quite a lot more. The biggest omission was probably not being able to walk the route of Hadrian's Wall, a long held goal - in the end I just couldn't take off the time it would have required at the time of year I had intended to walk it. But its been there for 2000 years, I doubt it's going anywhere anytime soon. There will be another chance. 

Some of the 'adventures' have already featured in the blog, others haven't ... yet. There is another goal for this year, to make more of this blog. The posts may well be shorter to enable them to be more frequent but I can live with that. 

There was the trip to Wales with my brothers in February - that was a lot of fun and a rare opportunity to get time with my siblings. There was the family reunion to southern Scotland in April with my mothers side of the family, then the trip to the Isle of Skye with just our little family in early May. Good thing Scotland never gets old, in fact it seems to get better and better with every visit. There were family visits to the beach, a short trip over to Wales with one of my brothers for a last Hurrah before he went to live abroad for two years as a volunteer missionary for our Church. There were family days out in the Peak District in Autumn colours, and on winter days to see water falls. 

And in looking back on all that I think, 'Yea, we did alright'. But in looking back to what happened in between those adventures, large and small, the lost days because we got up late, or had jobs to do which I could have done the night before if I had foregone the telly. Or the evenings when I could have done something to earn a bit of extra pocket money to pay for a slightly more interesting adventure than I ended up doing... I think you can see the pattern. 

As such, I am not going to make specific 'resolutions', rather my goal for the year is to make better use of my time. Less TV, less social media, less lounging around, less late nights not really staying up for anything except to just stay up. More reading real books, more writing blogs or articles or books (I have a long list I'd like to write), more time facilitating adventures. 

And I use facilitating instead of planning because 'planning adventures' way too frequently turns into scrolling through Instagram looking at the latest fad for "influencers" and "content creators" to head to the same exotic place and take very similar photos of very similar places. And actually, that's not what I want. I want my own adventures, not someone else's left overs. 

By facilitating I mean more than dreaming or wishing, I mean really planning. Studying maps, setting routes, identifying potential wild camping sites, understanding travel requirements, finding the buses / trains / planes I will need to get there, understanding the likely cost of the travel, taking that into account in my adventure budget, understanding what time of year will be best based on what I want to see / peak season higher prices / weather conditions and so on, considering what equipment I will need based on where, when and what I will be doing - not just the latest cool must have gadget, but the items I will actually need to undertake the trip (which I am very grateful to say for me is a relatively short list these days, unless something has worn out or broken, or I am really pushing my comfort zone!), adding those needs into my adventure budget, then planning how I will save or make the money needed to hit that budget in time to achieve the goal, then making the money stretch by buying second hand or last season (because who cares if the colour palette doesn't match the latest catalogue), honestly assessing my fitness or capability levels and determining whether practice / training or formal instruction is required to get me physically ready for the endeavour, then setting a training plan to get me ready, following that plan, tweaking the route, checking the kit, practice packing it all in to make sure it fits, some demo journeys to see if I actually need everything I packed ... oh, and then actually going on the trip I suppose. 

Phew, that sounds like enough to keep me busy. 

So, goodbye 2019, thanks for the fun times, and thanks for the reminder than I can accomplish way more when I put my mind to it than we did together - my fault, not yours. 

Now then, 2020 - lets see what we can manage when we put our minds to it!

See you out there,

Richard     

A Belated Happy New Year; and sharing some plans!

Happy New Year to anyone reading this. I hope you enjoyed whatever break you were able to have, and are looking forward to the year ahead.

Hoping that 2018 brings many more mornings like this i.e. out of doors enjoying them!

Along with just about everyone else a New Year triggers for me a flurry of goal setting, plan making and commitment (some stronger than others). I mentioned on social media the other day that some of my plans for the year required me to be somewhat fitter than I currently am, and I thought I'd flesh out those plans a bit for anyone who is interested (recognising that that may be no-one at all). This is for two reasons 1) because it is by far and away the most exciting thing I have to write about at the minute and 2) if I write them down now it will add to my motivation later in the year when I am trying to follow through with those plans. As such plans always seem, at some point, to prove inconvenient, difficult or hard, any extra motivation would be welcome.

I'll come to that in a minute. I also mentioned that I wanted to try and post content, particularly images, which are more representative of EVERYTHING I get up (which is relevant to the 'wild guy' narrative anyway). Don't get me wrong, all the images I post are mine, but I am often guilty of only posting the ones which I think are good in their own right and as such the story that they tell is often a little disjointed. I'd like that story to become a bit more complete, and that may involve posting some images which seem of a lower standard but tell the story better. It still isn't going to be my personal life, photo's of the office and such like, but it may be ones which on the face of it seem ... worse, but I'll try and explain the story they tell as I go.

My plans for the year then. Basically my plans centre on the desire to make 2018 the year, hopefully the first of many, where I stop saying 'that would be cool / great / brilliant' and start saying 'that WAS amazing / incredible / unforgettable!' and so on. In other words I want it to be the year I start doing rather than dreaming. Many of the plans for the year are the culmination of years, in a few cases decades, of dreaming of adventures. I won't set out detailed plans now because I'll be writing about them all individually both at the planning stages and at the fun bit (although I find the planning fun too if I'm honest).

Therefore in an approximate chronological order (which is subject to change!), in 2018 I will:
- Climb Snowdon

The Ystwyth in Mid-Wales. All being well at some
point this year this view will include me, mid-river!

- Visit the Outer Hebrides; specifically fly into the only commercial airport in the world where the runway is on a beach - Barra - the southern most island in the Outer Hebrides island chain. (Flying this route was my dream job when I was a teenager. This trip is a birthday present for a 'milestone' birthday this year - thank you to my beautiful wife and my parents-in-law for making this possible)
- Visit the Isle of Skye for a family holiday
- Hopefully climb Ben Nevis again on the way to Skye.
- Walk / Swim / Raft from 'source to sea' down the River Ystwyth in Mid-Wales.
- Do the UK Three Peaks with my brothers

That will do to be going along with, there are a few others which have bigger question marks hanging over them at the minute, mostly just down to available spare time, so I won't add them yet but hopefully there may be a few extras to add to this list before years end.

The fitness concern is largely centered on the Three Peaks attempt. I don't just want to complete it, I want to complete it well and if not easily then at least without serious discomfort. It's for this reason that I will be trying to make the most of working in the Peak District and actually going out for a walk, usually up a steep hill, before work or during lunch breaks and so forth. To provide one more level of motivation I signed up to a few 'challenges issued by UK outdoor magazines;
- the #walk1000miles 2018 challenge (Country Walking Magazine), and
- the #everestanywhere challenge (Trail Magazine).

Both should be eminently do-able provided I pull my finger out and actually start making better use of my time... what this essentially amounts to is me learning not to sleep as much! I'll leave this there for now - if all this comes off there will be some stories to tell, pictures to share and hopefully maybe even a little inspiration to give. Not that I expect anyone to be inspired by my efforts, but rather I hope that you may be inspired by the places I visit and the enjoyment I hope to derive from the journeys to get there!

Richard