Departure day

This week has felt pretty crazed - and crazy... I've been kicking myself all week for not taking this week off to prepare...
But here we are, the 21st October (Coleridge's birthday) as ready as we'll ever be to depart to Kathmandu at 9.30 tonight.
The tube for my platy has black mould growing in it, which I only noticed this morning. Emergency dash to Sainsburys (on what must be their busiest day this year) for a bottle of Milton... The mould 's proving a little stubborn, so I might need to grab another waterbag (or tube) in Katmandu... so much for allowing YESTERDAY to deal with such minor hiccups...
We each have a list of mobile numbers - am hoping my trains/bus to Heathrow is less eventful than today has proved so far!
I'm full of sugar and not much else...
SOOOOOO excited...
One of my volunteers is obviously going through a bad patch right now, but when I told him I'd be away for ten days to do this trek, his face lit up, and he said, 'I went on a 3-day trek in the Himalayas - it was the best experience of my whole LIFE.'
A good note to close on.
So - til I get back...

fell walk

Karen said she'd 'do a fell' with me as part of my training - but neither of us fully believed it would happen...

but as you'll guess from these snaps, we tackled Catbells - and got to the top! (not the biggest of fells, but higher than anywhere I've been so far (about 1400 ft I think). Not counting Skiddaw of course (Blencathra and the start of Skiddaw behind us here - I could hardly believe I was on the highest ridge in July, saw Derwentwater from the other side...)

I managed to shoot a video clip of the fantastic view surrounding us - and then deleted it by accident in the car going home!

maybe more later - but maybe not till after Nepal...

temporal experiment

I want to try to take you with me on my journey...

From my dictaphone:

It’s the 9th of October.
Just going up Golden Cap. It’s very cloudy, the wind’s blowing the rainclouds across the hill… So far, I seem to have managed to stay in dry pockets.
There’s a kestrel hovering ahead of me, and the sun is picking out highlights on the sea’s surface…
This is the coolest I’ve walked this stretch, the colours are muted; grey cloud overhead and the sea quite choppy, with those sunlit patches. As yet, most things still look green, although I did see a couple of absolutely gorgeous trees, no idea what kind they are, not just changing colour but changing into a variety of colours… One particularly striking example as I went through West Coker…
Wonderful to get feedback from Lesley at the Fisherman’s on the enormous benefits the classes gave to the people who took part.
It’s quite eerie being up on the top of Golden Cap in the mist blowing in from the sea… you can see a lighter pocket over in the sky, presumably that’s where the sun is - and actually some of the shimmering water is shining through a break in the mist. Otherwise, the top, with its scrubby grass, bracken and gorse is quite disorientating – you can see why people get lost in mist so easily.
My brief today is to go as far as I can, yet take it as easy as I possibly can, try to ease off my [aching] knees from the stepper, ease my body into the realignment that Carla’s shiatsu did last night, and also check out ‘how much ground I’ve lost’ through all the changes over the last month. The last time I was down here [sic], I was still employed at CAAAD, and of course, now I’ve moved…

The silvering of the sun on the water looks like some kind of a mirage as it appears and disappears though the mist…














(from my dictaphone on the way back)

Walking the coast path is like walking on the edge of the world.
That [bank of] clouds… and then the sea – it’s just like colour washes, doesn’t look real… if you went into that, you’d enter a different reality – which of course you do!

I think that’s one of the reasons I find it so powerful to walk by the sea rather than woods or hills.
Interesting. My training for trekking in Nepal – the mountains! – underlined that the place I like best to walk is by the sea!

A cracking rosy light close to the horizon, particularly round by the headland. Everywhere else is grey, overcast… the bracken is beginning to change colour. It looks muted, faded, almost like the summer’s burnt out the landscape…

I passed a man with a rucksack on his back with a Cavalier King Charles spaniel in it, an old dog with blue, rheumy eyes, obviously got tired…

It feels like I haven’t taken in as much of the sea as usual. I’ve been too busy concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other in a slow, steady pace, trying really hard not to tire myself out and trying hard also not to put extra strain on my knees and hips, taking things gentle and steady…

That’s what will get me through Nepal.
Slow and steady.

I’ve emptied my platy for the first time. (Possibly ‘cos it wasn’t quite full! I have got my Sig bottle, too).
I’ve obviously downed a heck of a lot of water today, which is good, ‘cos I’ve been sweating like a pig underneath this waterproof – it’s breathable stuff, but even so, it gets hot and steamy.
In between getting very cold. A bit of exertion and you get overheated, then you slow down, or you come into the wind - and next thing, you’re freezing.
That’s going to be the biggest challenge when I’m in Nepal. To keep my temperature steady enough, so it’s been good to have the practice.

Near the top of Golden Cap, just stopped to let my temperature drop a little bit – I also wanted to note ; the journey today has been marked by pairs of magpies… a definite magpie thing going on since the beginning of this venture...

The sky is really amazing. It’s really difficult to describe it, it’s like there’s a cloud ceiling – a false ceiling, and over in the distance, it stops, and the light shows through… no, that’s not quite right… there’s this ragged rim of light right round the horizon really… even over between those hills you can see it. Utterly phenomenal…
I’m trying to capture it on camera, but it’s just not sensitive enough to pick that up… you’d have to be a painter, I think… it doesn’t seem to show up at all, unfortunately. Nice to think our eyes are more sensitive than a digital camera [except they’re not].

I'm not the dancer with the red shoes...

...and neither is Crysse... if you want to know where that little in-joke comes from, Crysse references the dancer with the red shoes in one of her beautiful performance pieces... which is on her website, under poetry http://www.crysse.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/poetry/

if you get the chance, check out one of her performances! (email crysse@cryssemorrison.co.uk if you want to go on her mailing list)
Crysse liked this photo better than the one I put in my last post, so I wanted to put it up.
After all, the reason I'm at this point in my life is in huge part due to her creative fire and encouragement, plus an incredible creative fund-raising programme to get the trek fund up and trekking...

writers on fibreglass trees...

I meant to post this photo with the previous lot, but as always, trying to squeeze blog writing (or any writing, anyTHING, come to that) in between other activities is usually hurried and incomplete...

Crysse and I have so few photos of us both. This feels fairly typical, posing on the blue fibreglass tree at Longleat - that sense that we're kids playing in this big old world. The photo is courtesy of Peter (all the more appreciated because he doesn't take shots for himself, doesn't own a camera as he find it interferes with his writing process!)

I understand that. It works for me in different ways; first the expense of f***ed up films when I was always so short of cash, then my partner was 'the photographer' and I was the writer (although he took forays into 'my territory' - ha!, now there's a metaphor...). Then it just became a matter of priorities...

The first day I walked with the camera, I barely wrote. And I have used imagery as an alternative way of representing my blog journey here, having been so short on time to write, time to reflect... poetic time, attuned to my own cycles and rhythms. Making the time to train for this trek yet holding down a job in Bristol throughout feels nothing short of miraculous, SO much stepped-up working, walking. I've also slotted in freelance work and WEA work... I have frequently been a little crazed and crazy...

On Thursday night, I had the opportunity and inclination (not usually any energy left!) to indulge in the rhythms of music, and language, and looking back over my journal for the last few months and forward again to the trek and beyond. I played with an acrostic so I'd be able to show the kids at Somervale if they needed a demonstration, and wrote a poem about being Atholl's mum... I've spent most of his life fighting to be me rather than 'Atholl's mum'...

I had a wonderful evening - and most of the night... I've so missed writing in the evening; most of the time I either don't dare (in case I end up on a roll and don't sleep) or I just can't do another thing except veg in front of the telly.

I got to Somervale having had three hours sleep (albeit late, rotten weather and appalling map reading taking me via Midsomer Norton's Sainsbury's car park), and I had a great time. Cruising on adrenalin, maybe I fired the kids' creative energy - they produced some wonderful poetry. Their teacher intended writing a review of the week's workshops for the local paper, so I gave her some info on the trek - I won't be doing my press releases now, no time... I can do a follow-up instead - after trying to sell those travel pieces!

A question posed by a year 9 poet; what does love look like?

Love looks like a journal, patchworking a life into a work of art.

the trees, they are a-changing...

These are the first trees I've seen with such fantastic colour - most are still green, even though it's the 8th of October and the wind and rain has claimed many leaves already.

The woods and hedgerows have an abundance of berries...

Mike has loaned me his stepper for the last couple of weeks, ably demonstrated here by young Ath (not quite so young, his 19th birthday this week, a real poignancy for me after that terrible night when I didn't think he'd see much beyond 18, let alone 19...)
The stepper is a real godsend; the change in the weather combined with the nasty cold I went down with have meant my fitness isn't as I'd have liked at this stage... I even had to have a day off sick last week (which REALLY freaked me - the idea of feeling as grotty in Nepal was horrifying; much though I fancy a ride in a helicopter, I don't think I'd appreciate it if it was a necessity!)
I seem to be picking up pretty well after being crook, though I only managed a couple of walks last week. I'm not so keen on walking in the dark, which makes it tough to keep the exercise up on working days now, though I could stick to areas with streetlights... It's not the same though.

Today's walk over on Longleat Estate with Crysse and Peter was fabulous. Great to catch up with them, and hear all about their break in Crete (which you can read about on http://www.crysse.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/) but mostly just lovely to have companionship while walking.
I've been reading Julia Cameron's 'Walking in the World' again, feels very apt right now...
Must go - I have a shiatsu at 6pm, and it's five to six...