In the Beginning

My husband liked my first article – he was surprised at the humour (he’s the funny one) and said maybe I should write about why mindfell walker in the first place. So I’ll tell you why.

A week after being made redundant, I was starting to feel like the purpose in my life was beginning to seep away. A bit like when a dementor starts sucking away at Harry Potter – which by the way my husband and daughter have made me watch over the past few weeks (we’re on number 5) and I’m so annoyed that I’m actually enjoying it – ARGH! I’m still refusing to read the books though. Anyways, I decided that I would go out for a walk and instead of just pottering up the local footpath behind our house I would go up a fell. Naturally I chose Latrigg. It’s relatively close, I’ve been up there countless times so I know where I’m going and it offers amazing views without having to climb that far. Off I went, donning my Christmas novelty hat (cos I’m fun) and parked up at Keswick.

Those who have walked up Latrigg (most people living in and around Cockermouth and Keswick) will know the first part is a slog. It’s quite steep and muddy. I did start to wonder why I made the effort but once you get out of the forrest it’s a much more sedate walk. During the walk I started to just look around and really appreciate what was in front of me. I do prescribe to being more mindful and try to meditate as often as possible so I was putting it into practice in an outdoor setting. The result was brilliant – walking on my own (seeing only one other person on the way up) and taking my time without any distractions was refreshing.

Getting to the top I stopped for a few minutes and ate my chocolate bar, marvelled at the view including the work going on for the new water pipe – you can hardly miss the massive blue pipes lying around here but the scale of the engineering work is itself quite beautiful. After taking the obligatory photos and because the wind was howling at the top, I headed back down. One guy walking passed commented on my Christmas hat (positively!) and I also saw a roe deer in the forrest. We both looked at each other for a few seconds and just as I was about to start taking my phone out, it darted off into the trees but it left a big smile on my face.

Even though Latrigg is not one of the hardest walks in the lake district, I still stomped down with a great sense of achievement. I realised that being outdoors was something I wanted to do more of and I wanted to really push myself in to walking on my own and trying out new things – whether that’s exploring footpaths in my local area or walking up a fell I haven’t been up before, I wanted to do it and really take it in and enjoy the physicality of it, the joy of exploring something new and the sense of purpose I was starting to feel again.

So hopefully you can expect more writing on what I’ve been getting up to in the outdoors. Whether that’s fell walking, pottering on footpaths or working at the allotment. You’ll also probably find I get distracted during writing – sorry!

As a final thought, as I sit here listening to the racket going on in my back garden, if anyone has any suggestions on how I can feed garden birds without my bird table becoming an arena for starling UFC matches, please let me know.

Ciao for now x