All in Travel
A tow path walk, locks a plenty under heavy, leaden Wiltshire skies. Threatening rain, of course, but never quite delivering. Shared pleasantries with ramblers, elderly with dogs, and wise cracks with lock volunteers, younger, with validating logos and stories of herons.
It was a challenge to hear much above the general hubbub, the incessant din, that suddenly appeared when the group stepped out of their training room and onto the sun-baked terrace.
The clouds partly covered the late summer sunset a few weeks back on my last visit, but I could still see the rain on the horizon.
Sometimes you get to visit a place for the first time and you find that, well, it’s not quite what you were hoping to find. A victim of travel guide hype, so to speak.
Such a powerful statement. And such a sad reflection of our modern society that we not only have to remind people of this but also defend and justify the need to say it.
We paused frequently for photographs but I fear that none will do justice to the fields of swaying wild flowers backed by moody hills and heavy clouds that we experienced.
How can a place that looks and feels so peaceful have such a wretched past?
And that’s about as close as I can get to accurately describing how I feel most of the time these days. They seem to fluctuate, my emotions that is, in this energy sapping world of social denial and peer judgment that we have all been inhabiting for far too long.
I’m sure many of us feel this way at times. Some of us more often than others, of course. Many of us blessed with a sense of personal awareness will know that what others think of us is irrelevant to keeping our own happiness at a healthy level. But we also know that there are times when such a view is just plain wrong.
The sun shone, we drove to the sea and were actually allowed to behave like normal people for a while. It wasn’t warm but seriously, this is England, who cares?
Because, and here is the thing, when you want the words and feelings to flow, from your head, through your fingers and into reality, well, that’s exactly when everything just decides to stop.
You know how it is, when you wake up and nervously pull back the curtains, knowing that you have something rather special arranged for today and that you really, really want the weather to be kind to you?
It’s the real, “I want to do this and achieve something” kind of effort, that makes things happen, that’s what I’m talking about here..
And suddenly, it was all over.
The final stage of our walk along the Sussex coast, the first significant walking challenge that we have ever set ourselves. And achieved.
Because whilst this stage may not have quite been the best, it was also not quite the last. But on both counts it was pretty close and that’s good enough for me right now.
But we picked things up again in a way that could very well be described as simple. A little like one of our earlier stages, we decided to do a short walk to make it easier to get back on track.
A strange title for a walk along the coast, I can hear you thinking. And yes, you would be right.
The good news was that we felt fine.
Maybe we are becoming proper walkers after all.
