cold, wet and happy

100k in ten days

2011-11-26T01:16:00.000-08:00

I'm part way through a little personal challenge, to walk 100k in ten days. Its not a big thing and I won't have much of a problem doing it but so far it has been a wonderful opportunity to focus, to walk 10 kilometres every day after work, whether I want to or not, come darkness, rain or shine. It is becoming a meditation.

I am trying to have the best quality walk that I can have, focusing on posture, breathing, mindfulness of my body. Focusing on how it feels when my feet hit the ground is it hard hard or soft, exploring how it feels to change the focus, if I think if my feet caressing the ground does it feel different from how I normally walk, if I focus on the ground caressing my feet, does that feel different?

I have been playing with posture, learning tai chi principles of centre, balance, softness and harmony. My feet no longer strike the ground when I walk, they touch down lightly. I'm wearing boots less and less, doing lots of walking in old fashioned black daps, just like I used to run in and do PE in at sschool.

Its very interesting. So much to learn, so much to focus on

Going Barefoot

2011-11-05T03:25:00.000-07:00

Once again things have come together to make me think about some stuff in a new way. Firstly I hit my 55th brithday and started to feel that it was downhill to 60 from here! Okay that passed in a couple of hours but the feeling that I was the author of my own destiny persisted, and I started to focus more intently on my health. I am dealing with my heart problem well and have good days and bad, exercise has started to cause me heart problems but hopefully with more of it my body will adapt.

I have been thinking about my relationship with walking. I have had some walks this summer in the region of 30 - 40 miles. I can walk non-stop from dawn til dusk. And then I can go and do it again the next day. Walking has not been physically challenging me enough. It has taken me a few years to get to this point, but here I am and have been wondering 'what next?' I have walked all the possible walks in my area, explored the rural, coastal, urban and suburban trails, routes and footpaths, in all seasons. Then I found myself driving to places where I hadn't walked and I walked in dozens of places within a 40 minute drive. But this started to really irk me because I don't want to have to drive, don't want to pollute, don't want to sit in traffic. It was all becoming a bit too predictable and irritating. Travelling by car in order to walk a new path was making no sense to me. I really have a thing about travelling. I detest the selfish cult of mindless travelling for entertainment because of the damage it does to environment and communities. I don't like being treated like cattle, breathing fuel polluted air and being just another cash cow to be milked. It is bad enough being milked to feed the rich as I am now, I have nothing left to spare for fuel.

Think global, work local, go barefoot, do the least harm.

Hence my allotment, my focus on good food grown locally, lack of airmiles, vegetarianism, organic food, supporting small local traders and economies and so on. Anyway, I have been thinking about running again. In fact I have been going running again, three evenings a week after work. An old running injury has made a reappearance. A foot problem which I found out is made worse by the enormous amount of padding in running shoes.

I have replaced my old running shoes with minimal trail gloves, thin, superlight shoes that let me land gently on the earth and run with much less effort and pain. And so my barefoot principles as practised in my work and described in my book 'the barefoot helper' have come round full circle into my running. I am not quite running barefoot yet, it is November! But I have plans... Last year I went walking barefoot in deep snow. It was a blast. Maybe running in it this year!

My walking and backpacking has been getting more and more minimal over the years, my pack, clothes, sleeping system all reducing in size and weight. I can now carry everything I need for a day's walk and an overnight camp using a superlight 25ltr daysack. So superlight running comes naturally to me. Less impact on me and the earth. A greater sense of freedom and a wonderful feeling of lightness, being connected to the environment through my feet, my skin, my breath.

My running fitness is very low, I have to learn to run again having not done it for so long. The demands on my body are far more than walking. Not just my feet, legs and hips, but my breathing, my heart. After many years I am adapted to walking but my running stamina, speed and distance have put me right back at the beginning! I'm a novice again, using muscles that I haven't used, needing more oxygen than I am used to needing. I'm aching, puffing and panting, on the other hand my resting heartrate has fallen in the last three months from 65 to 53bpm! So my fitness is definitely increasing, but I'm still very much a novice.

I am learning Chi-Running, a practice and philosophy of running based on the principles of Tai Chi, moving with lightness, going the greatest distance using the least energy and the least fuel doing the least harm to self and environment.

I get excited thinking about it! Starting something from the beginning. I have dreams of marathons and something that at the moment I am calling 'trailpacking' running and backpacking. A new world has opened up to me.

It is going to be a great old age!

A little stroll in the woods

2011-07-21T05:11:00.000-07:00

July 07 2011

My brother Steve came over from New Zealand and I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years. We went for a bit of a stroll. It was raining and he had never seen my local hills, the Brecon Beacons so we decided to walk around the forests, but stay off the hills, we had had a late night as you can imagine. So we stopped to buy breakfast from a nice man in a trailer, and some sandwiches for later.

Anyway, we parked in the car park that looks out over Pontsticil reservoir, put on our waterproof coats and hats. Steve put on his shades because it was very bright even though it was raining and Steve doesn’t want to get wrinkles from screwing up his eyes. If he was going to walk around looking cool in shades then I was too. There might be girls. We wandered up the road, then across the dam and through the woods and along the river which was gushing fiercely on account of the torrential rain. But it was very peaceful if a bit muddy in the woods. Then we hit the road at the other end of the woods and, there was a ‘we-have-walked-in-some-woods-now-and-by-a-river, what-shall-we-do-next’, kind of feeling going on.

So, instead of going back into the woods on the other side of the road bridge I thought I would just show him the mountains, so up the road we went, until Fan Y Big loomed into view. We looked at each other for a moment and one of us, I can’t remember who said the words: ‘shall we?’ Now there was no way either of us was going to say ‘no I feel a bit tired’ or ‘my leg hurts’. So up we went, onto Fan Y Big. And we wandered about a bit and watched some squaddies chasing each other wearing ridiculously large packs and pretending to read their maps but really playing follow the leader. And we looked across the col at Cribyn and by that time we were committed so down we went and up again onto Cribyn, then down and up onto Pen Y Fan, then down and up onto Corn Du. It was quiet up there, deserted. Below me, about three arms length away was an enormous Red Kite riding the thermal that was blasting up the hillside.

We walked along the ridge along Graig Fan Ddu all the way to the Trig point then down Bwlch Gwyn off the path and through the marshes to the shake holes. Shake holes are geographical features where limestone in the ground has been eaten away by rainfall, leaving the surrounding ground solid. They often go down to underground streams. They can be tiny little holes or enormous collapsed caves. Often you cannot see them, full of water, hiding in tussocks of grass or mud, overgrown.

I fell down one. I am 6 foot two and I didn’t touch the bottom. God knows how deep it was. I got extremely wet. If there is falling to do anywhere it will be me that does it. Sea kayaking a few weeks back I was the only one to take a swim, I took four swims in all. I have been very lucky, I have never fallen down a hole in the ground before and this one was full of water. So the way I see it is at 54 I fell down my first hole, that means I will be 108 before it happens again. I can live with those odds.

Then a wander back down back to the car park. Our little stroll in the woods had taken six hours and we had covered 42k! The moral is, when you go out for a little stroll, be prepared for a big one!

Mark Hamer has added you as a friend on Endomondo...

2011-07-08T02:13:00.001-07:00

Hey there,

Mark Hamer wants to add you as a friend at www.endomondo.com.

Endomondo is a free website and sports tracking mobile app that makes sports more fun, more social and more motivating.

To accept his friend request on Endomondo, click the link below or copy and paste it into your web browser:

http://api.mobile.endomondo.com/invitation/email/hamer.group.coldandwet%2540blogger.com/id/7b60xxKgTgm81V1RPq2DTA

Have fun!

seagulls, foxes and Far Breton

2011-05-29T23:57:00.000-07:00

I was woken up at 7am this morning by seagulls attacking a fox outside my window. A totally committed wide and deep screaming - the seagulls are nesting on my roof. Talking of seagulls walking into town yesterday to buy books I saw a black backed gull flying alone, cruising along the middle of the river, flying low, about a metre above the water and every few metres it was flying up slightly with its beak open and snatching insects out of the air! I have never seen a seagull behave like that before. A total rebel!

So I went into the kitchen to make Far Breton. My favourite breakfast ever. Far Breton is a traditional Breton pie, a dense sweet baked custard with prunes. If you have ever been to brittany and stayed in a hotel you will have had it for breakfast.

It is a damp Bank Holiday Monday ripe with potential, outside there is a dozen fat wood pigeons pecking at the grass. Everybody is asleep, the oven is on and I am happy.

I am happier still now that I have looked at my emails and seen there there are two new orders. As well as working full time, running an allotment, hillwalking etc, I run a small business selling ginseng, check it out here: http:// shop.ginsenguk.co.uk.

Here's my social work website address: www.another-way.co.uk

At sea with the seals!

2011-05-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

I have just spent a fantastic weekend Kayaking round the Pembrokeshire coast with some very cool people. The weather was foul, driving rain, gale force winds and some very big waves but the guides found us some shelter and we saw seals and spider crabs and had a great time rock hopping and getting wet.

The Pembrokeshire coast is stunning, my favourite place in the world, I have walked great chunks of it but never been able to see it from below. I lived in Pembrokeshire for a while and visit often. It is simply the most beautiful place I know and I get drawn back there time and time again. I have walked that stunning coastpath and bivvied wild in the gorse and on the beaches, cosied up in the corner of a farmers field in my little single skin shelter, scrambled on the crags and swam in the sea. But mostly I have wandered alone on those clifftops for weeks, looking down at inaccessible beaches, seals, caves and rocks.

Well I got a great view of this wild wild place and having been thrown out of my kayak a couple of times I managed to see it from a seals eye view.

'I have got that 'my adventure is over, what shall I do next' feeling...

I think I need to go and learn how to eskimo roll, it is no fun draining a big heavy sea kayak when you are aching from paddling across the wind.

Back here in Cardiff now and the rain is driving and I am aching and looking back on a very intense weekend. Back to work tomorrow!

Unreal.

Some recycled old post with snow

2011-05-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

13 January

Workload sometimes mean that I have an office based day and on those days I can walk to work as I don't need my car to go driving all around the city to visit clients. Those walking days are very special to me. Here is what it looked like on my walk to work today:

January
A Long Walk

I have been thinking of doing a long distance walk, backpacking, wild camping. I am planning a ten day expedition, maybe walking the Pembrokeshire coast path from end to end. Or doing a cross country from west coast to east coast.

The idea is a bit scary, not the walking bit or the camping bit, those are things I deeply value, but the idea of doing it on my own. I know that when I have camped on my own in the past I have started to get lonely very quickly. I am not used to sleeping alone and although I do love to spend time alone regularly, I need lots of space and silence, I have always sought the company of others at night. So this is a challenge for me. I have always been able to walk reasonable distance and when I was younger could walk maybe 20 - 25 miles on a good day. Today a good walk for me is about 10 to 12 miles. I am older, have a heart condition and I'm a little overweight. But getting slimmer and learning to deal with my condition. That is the basis for the walk really.

When I got ill I thought my life was over, my masculinity gone, my future collapsed like a telescope. But I am coming to terms with it, I still feel very ill sometimes but I am learning how to live with it. After spending two years getting back to something like a normal life it is time to take the next step, to do things that I want to do, things that challenge me or scare me. I can't ride a motorcycle any more because when I have an AF attack I cannot concentrate and that is fatal on a motorcycle. But I do like risk and I like to be physical. Hence the walk. So I have started working on my fitness. On Boxing day there was still thick ice and snow on the ground, and I walked about eight miles. Yesterday I filled my rucksack with weights and walked ten miles. Today my legs and my feet hurt, in a good way. So later on today, after the traditional post-Christmas breakfast of bubble and squeak, I will put on my pack and take to the trails.

Worries about the Long Walk

This long walk project is really messing with my head. I wonder if I will really do it. I have done a lot of walking and a lot of camping, on my own and with others. Yet for some reason this scares me. I'm not 100% sure why. I keep examining my reasons for doing it, in the past I would have just done it but now I keep questioning myself.

I don't think I am afraid of getting ill. I have to go to work while I am ill and do a complex and sensitive job so I know that I can walk. I will need new kit and this is causing some resistance because, lets face it, stuff is expensive. A lightweight tent for instance is about £300! I need a new sleeping bag too, a reasonable down backpacking bag starts at about £100. So I have a bit of resistance about that. I am a social worker so money is tight. I have an overdraft, credit card debts, a daughter about to start Uni and a wife who would love to go on holiday. We have not had a holiday in years. I feel selfish about spending that amount of money on myself, to do something alone.

I am guessing that maybe most of my fear comes from being alone. Ten nights is a long time, I have not spent that much time sleeping alone since I was about seventeen. The last time I spent that amount of time sleeping alone out of doors was when I was homeless when I was sixteen. I think that is where my fear lies. There is nothing more beautiful than waking up on a mountain with the sunrise, and watching the clouds lift while the kettle boils. No feeling more wonderful to me than just being outside and watching the sun go down, feeling the fresh air on my face as I drift off to sleep. It is beautiful and ever so lonely. Warming and cold. Comforting and so so sad. I seem to have used the word 'alone' rather a lot. Like I say it is messing with my head.

I think that I need to go and sit on the side of a mountain on my own for a while, with a quiet mind while it all just sorts itself out.

Meditation

I have been asked to write a review of a book on Social Work and Mindfulness for a Social work Journal. I suppose I was asked because my book 'Barefoot' is on that particular subject. An interesting exercise it has sparked off a whole train of memories for me. Some years ago I was a practising Zen Buddhist and my thoughts about mindfulness have sprung out of that practice. I did practice for over 20 years, sitting and meditating. I stopped meditation as a regular sitting practice about five years ago when I found that I didn't need to do it any more. I was outside my office, looking at the estate down the hill and experienced the same joyous connectedness that I did when meditating. And from that point I stopped sitting in meditation. Recently however I realise that I have become disconnected again and need to get back into practice. I am becoming dissatisfied and grumpy with life. So I resolve to get back into active practice.

Oyster Mushrooms, Woodpeckers and Velvet Shanks

2011-05-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

I finished work early today so I went home, got changed and went foraging in the woods. Autumn is the traditional time for collecting mushrooms but in the winter there are two lovely edible varieties that survive, if you look hard enough. I found a fantastic crop of Oyster Mushrooms growing on a dying beech tree I collected some and left plenty. I'll have some for breakfast tomorrow and the rest I have sliced and hung up to dry. In the shop this big basket would have cost a mint. I also found some Velvet Shanks, sweet brown and tiny mushrooms which grow on just about any old tree stump. They are now in my freezer, I was accompanied by a woodpecker while I was out but couldn't see it anywhere.

I am collecting stuff for my long walk and have decided that as I will not be staying on campsites but sleeping down wherever I am when it gets dark, I will not take a tent, I'll be using an ex-army bivvy bag and a tarp. This fits in nicely with the philosophy I am adopting for the trip, which is: walk until I need to sleep, sleep and then walk again. Lowest impact, lowest visibility and moving on as soon as I have brewed and eaten in the morning.

wood sorrell and wild garlic

2011-05-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

I have just been up this mountain in the Beacons and on the way back I nibbled on Wood Sorrell found growing in that pine forest. They used to make it into pies when there was no fruit around. Three heart shaped leaves joined in the middle.

Wood Sorrel

Very different to wild sorrel with its much larger arrow shaped leaves but tasting very similar. The battery on my phone went flat so there is no picture of the wild sorrel I found in Pembrokeshire.

I have been walking a lot, foraging for wild garlic, sorrel and pennywort, and getting fitter. Below is a picture of wild garlic that I collect from nearby and have been using in soups and omelettes. There is a little left in my freezer but the allotment veggies are coming along nicely now and foraging will be more or less over until the autumn when I hope to go looking for mushrooms.

Wild Garlic (ramsons)

Walking

2011-05-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

Walking
The big walk is begun!

I took a week off work and walked thirty miles of the Pembrokeshire coast path in two days, then I had to return home so I walked the Brecon Beacons Horseshoe. Four peaks one after another. It took me nearly all day to complete, other walkers will do this in about four hours. I am slower now, older, my heart and lungs have problems. I am sometimes laboured, slow but still moving. Both journeys with full 20lb pack.

I like to walk alone mostly. I may want to rest in the forest, just to be there, while if I had a companion they might want to make it to the top of the hill, eager to reach a personal goal. Or I may want to stride on ahead to enjoy the effects of hard physical work on my body, leaving my companion strolling behind ... and then a feeling of selfishness makes me stop and wait, and so my stride, my rhythm, my pace becomes lost and confused.

A walk is always a spiritual, intellectual and emotional journey as well as a physical one. I have noticed that often my walk will start with anger. Anger at the junk that people just leave lying around in the wilderness, bottles, cans, the remains of fires. Anger at the signs of the selfishness and idiocy of my species. But it fades; the anger soon fades, especially as I get further away and my bubble expands. Oh I don’t set myself above them, I am one of them thoughtlessly taking the easy way, brutish and dim in my own ways, and as I remember this I promise to make some personal change and then I forgive myself and then, soon I forgive everybody else.

I pass through that barrier of breathlessness and the quick ache that comes when my body realises that I am not just popping out to buy bread and tries to tell me not to walk today. I begin to forgive the morons because I am one of them, a powerless creature looking for some kind of certainty. And soon I am beyond this sphere anyway and I have given myself up to chance, no longer needing to feel any kind of control. In a forest or on a hill where only walkers are found. And then I begin to enjoy the air and the steady beat and the weight of my pack and suddenly the walk opens itself up to me and my body and mind start to harmonise and accept and with the acceptance of a long walk the anger fades and I begin to find something deeper, more harmonious, altogether better.

The view from my tent on a hill by the coast path.

Later there is a kind of melancholy about walking alone, a loneliness that creeps up on me after about ten miles. The internal dialogue begins to quieten, becomes less insistent and a poetic solitude takes its place. A melancholy overcomes me that allows me to smile at strangers and I feel the self-awareness that has dogged and irritated me (and some of those around me) for most of my life begin to slip away. I smile at people, stop to chat with other solitary walkers. Easy and unforced. The bomp bomp bomp of my boots connecting me with the earth translates into the steady bedomp bedomp bedomp of my pounding and dysfunctional heart and that in its turn connects with the steady rhythm of air, flowing in, flowing out. Sometimes hard and fast as I climb or descend or speed up on the flat, sometimes almost nonexistent, imperceptible as it drifts gently, first in then out like a low tide when there is a half moon.

On a longer walk of between 12 and 20 miles, that melancholy too begins to break down and I become at one with the grass, the path, the trees, the other walkers, the lovers in the park, the accordion player outside the cafe. Then I breathe the same air as the sheep and the grass and the seals and the trees, from their mouths, lungs, cells and into mine and I become post-vocal, unable to find words, unable to form them and string them together in any way that makes sense. Feeling full of the most beautiful, astounding emptiness, wholeness, connectedness and, not wanting to nibble at its perfect edge with thought, intellect, communication or attention, I merely grunt if required and hope the other, should there be one nearby, will recognise my blissful state and leave me in such deep peace until eventually, inevitably the feeling begins to fade and the daily world and its meagre and petty concerns begin to take hold once again.

The big walk is coming along. In fact it is next week, I have had to shorten it a little, in part because my fitness level is not what I would like it to be and partly because there are transport issues. So, the walk as it stands is reduced to three days. My target is to walk between the lighthouse at Strumble Head and the Cathedral at St David's in two or three days. And then, depending on how I get on, to walk for another day.

I am feeling ready to do this now. After I got my heart prob I thought I wouldn't be able to get up into the mountains again, but I have been up in the hills quite a lot for day walks over the last couple of months, in the Brecon Beacons a couple of times and more locally on the Taff Trail. I'm feeling ready to extend my range, so I will need to make overnight stops and that means carrying more gear. I have been gradually replacing bits of camping stuff with lightweight versions. So far my cooking gear, pots and stove have been replaced with superlight versions, my sleeping bag and crash mat, rucksacks and tent have all been replaced and I have bought some technical clothing that is extremely light and warm and from soaking wet will dry in half an hour.

The Bubble

2011-05-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

Pontsticill, brecon beacons

I used to be a runner. At school in Lancashire I ran cross country. Pounding over hills, across rivers and streams, leaping from rock to rock, that was all about pace and balance, but there were also the smells and the sounds of the hill and its occupants. When I moved away from the hills and into town, the nearest wild country was further away and I became a cyclist so I could get there. When I moved into the city, cycling was too grimy and unpleasant and so I became a runner again. Then, here in Wales I rediscovered the hills and having ruined my knees through running on the hills I started to walk on them.

Brecon Beacons

Walking and running are very different. I see more when walking, I relax more, learn more, go further and stay out for longer. Running created a kind of bubble around me, a small tight bubble that detached me from everything but the next step, the next breath, the next goal, even focusing on what I would do when I got home, what I would eat, what the next day would bring. My world contracted, my focus tight. Cycling was the same, all about targets. Now I see people further contracting their bubble by running with headphones on so that the natural sounds of the world are also excluded to them. But for me, maybe it is age, maybe it is the activity that I choose but when I walk, my bubble expands and expands until there is no limit, no focus. I will often, when out walking think briefly about something, perhaps my next target and so I set the map, take a bearing, plan the next leg of my route but then the route is long and I have time to let go once that is done and the bubble expands again. Targets are few, I carry what I need to eat, sleep, protect myself from the elements, cook and make myself comfortable should I need them. I use them just when I feel like it. I know how to find my way and find my way home. So targets becomes more whimsical, a reaction to the environment, to the weather, the the feelings in my body, to my mood, I will go to that peak, or that lake or that woodland, or just go home now. If I feel like stopping for a rest and to listen to the world, feel the air, I stop and rest. If I want to lie in the grass and read my book, I will. It is so far away from running which to me is more like going to work. Targets, focus, pressure. What targets does a wild horse have, what focus does a river have?

In this expanded bubble are the sensations in my muscles, the grass, rock or water where I stand, the pressure on my feet, the resistance of my boots, the temperature in different parts of my body, my heartbeat and breath as usual but there is also the weather, the breeze and its force and direction, the sun or cloud and its meaning in terms of how the rest of the day will turn out, the animals, the insects and birds, the hills around me as far as the eye can see. There is also colour, some of which has meaning some of which is just enjoyable like the bluebells in the woodland. The dark cloud may mean rain, or the fluffy cumulus cloud which may hover above a peak. The deep dark green of a valley may mean vegetation growing by boggy ground to be avoided, or it may mean cooling waterfalls and rocks, the dark green of a hillside may be woodland giving shelter, coolness on a hot day and perhaps something to nibble on.

My horizon becomes blue with distance, my world expands and in this expansion I become happy, small, insignificant and connected. The rock and I are the same, the river and I are the same, the beetle and I are the same, the horse and I are the same, the hawk and I are the same. All unimportant travellers, yet all vital to the whole.

Travelling wouldn't be an adventure without the difficult bits, from the new and unfamiliar right through to the painful and life threatening. It is all travelling, just travelling, even when sitting there at home.