summer – Because You Can

The Edge of Reason

Whenever I walk the Seven Sisters coast path, I notice a significant number of people who are prepared to stand – or even sit and eat lunch – on overhanging cliff edges on a stretch of coast that is known for its crumbling rock.

I am not one of these people and I would dearly love to know why they are prepared to take a very obvious risk and why I am not.

Do they simply have no fear or does it never cross their minds that a cliff fall would happen to them?

I’m the same with narrow edges and ridges in the mountains – my fear of falling off them is validated time and time again with stories of it happening yet people continue to do it. I would never take a risk that was unnecessary, just for the thrill of it.

Am I missing a risk-taking gene?

Which one are you? A cliff-edger or a far-away-as-possibler?

Herd community

One of the best things about solo hiking for me is not knowing who I’m going to meet along the way. I often end up chatting to someone, briefly, and there is something special about meeting them on the open road, away from any distractions.

Last weekend I met a woman with a dog called Bonnie (sadly I’d didn’t get a picture of her but I feel awkward asking someone for a pic in the moment).

Bonnie was a sheepdog – a border collie. Normally these dogs are too intent on herding some unseen sheep to pay attention to humans but Bonnie came up and pressed her head against my leg.

I got chatting to her owner who said Bonnie has a gift for seeking out people who need a dog hug. In the woods near where they live, she told me, Bonnie has twice tracked down people who are crying and feeling lost and stayed with them. Perhaps she is using her herding instinct to look for humans who need contact with other beings to feel good about themselves. That certainly applies to me.

I love to walk alone but I love the people and dogs I meet even more.

Everything is food

One of the things I’ve been learning on my Indian philosophy course with Sudhir Rishi is the idea that whatever we take in through our senses is ‘food’. Whatever we taste, smell, see, touch or hear feeds not only our physical body but becomes associated with our thoughts and moods, our memories of joy and sadness. You might say, ‘we are what we sense’.

My hike yesterday was filled with the smell of wild garlic, the sight of yellow dandelions, the sound of birdsong and lambs, the taste of lemon drizzle cake and the feel of warm wood under my hands as I passed through gates.

While walking, I thought about how I feed my body and mind, not always with the things that make it happy, whether that’s scrolling on my phone, watching trash TV, eating processed food, drinking alcohol or listening to an argumentative political radio show.

Once you start thinking of all these things as food, it’s easier to cut some of them out. In Indian philosophy, everything in existence is ‘god’ including your own body, so why would you offer it something bad? I’m not saying I’ll be able to change all my bad habits overnight but it’ll make me stop and ask myself some questions before I let them in again.

Soggy Dog Story

I’ve been thinking about comfort zones. On Saturday evening, I walked up a heather-covered fell with no one else around, in wind and rain, at the end of the day when I really should’ve been heading back. I even tried to go further but my gut was screaming to go back. I found out later that I was heading into a notoriously boggy area so my gut had been right (as always).

Today I tried to cross that bog and found myself panicking (and crying) in the middle of it, believing myself to be stuck. There were fighter planes from the local RAF base flying at eye level with me as I stood in the middle of the bog. It was a most surreal moment. I got out, but I’d crossed my comfort zone again.

I know when I’ve stepped outside it – I start to breathe quickly and shallowly, I feel like crying, and then I start talking and singing to myself (and to sheep) to keep my spirits up.

I kept thinking about 26-year-old Alex Staniforth from Chester, the fell runner I cheered into town on Friday night, as he completed his Bob Graham Round in 27 hours – 42 fells, 66 miles, 26,000ft – unaided. I kept wondering how hard it must have been to have been on top of a fell at 2am, on your own, with only a head torch to help you.

I later found out that he has already attempted Everest twice, aged 18 and 19, stopped only by the Nepal earthquake and the avalanche that killed 16 Sherpas. The holder of the record for the ‘double Bob Graham’ – 84 fells in 45 hours – is a woman my age: Nicky Spinks.

The thing about the Lakes is that you keep meeting inspiring people. It’s where people congregate, bright-eyed, to share tales of fells they’ve traversed and people they’ve met. I realised that I’d met legendary fell runner Joss Naylor when I was hiking here last. I had no idea who he was at the time but he had an aura around him. He was the first to congratulate Alex on his Bob Graham, of course.

And then there was Lisa Bergerud in my last blog post, with her incredible story. I remembered what she’d told me about deep breathing when I started to panic today. Like many people here, Lisa has learned to keep pushing against her comfort zone, and in my small way, so am I.

And the soggy dog? I met a man and his very wet but happy labradoodle, heading towards the fell I’d been up on Saturday evening. I was so glad to see them both. He called his dog “Soggy Doggy” when I stooped to pet him.

“That’s the name of today’s story,” I thought, and continued on my way, stopping only to chat to two Scottish guys who were off to wild camp in the rain, grinning.

Happy Soggy Doggies, the lot of us.

Read my new memoir, CHEAT PLAY LIVE, and leave me a review! You can buy it here: https://linktr.ee/redwoods1

Agonda Diaries – week 14

This has been a week of reconnecting with friends after my Rajasthan week, and looking back on the whole experience. I fell in love with Udaipur so much that I’m going to stay there for a while next season. I need to not be in Agonda for the Christmas drinking season and will arrive here mid-January, when things have calmed down a bit.

Udaipur has little or no ‘ex-pat’ (aka immigrant) British population because it’s not easy to come by booze there, so people tend to pass through to look at the palaces, forts and temples and move on. Of course, I loved it, the chai-drinking culture, white people being in a minority, and I’m not done.

This started a chain of decision-making about my plans to return to the UK this summer and the inevitable question of what I’ll do next. I’ve decided to do a short-ish visit to Shimla-Spiti Valley-Manali before I return so I can suss out the Himalayas as a potential place to stay for a few months next summer. I like the idea of breaking up the year into two- or three-month chunks.

This also started a chain of people insisting on telling me about their own Indian odysseys and either insisting I do what they did, insisting I’ll love the places they loved, or refusing to dwell on the fact that they haven’t been to Spiti Valley, meaning they can’t tell me how much they loved it and how much I’ll love it. As someone who likes her own experience of self-discovery I wonder what compels people to follow in another’s path. I just need my Lonely Planet, not a trail of other people’s favourite restaurants. After Pushkar, which I disliked when most of my friends loved it, I’m going to blaze my own trail (and burn the evidence behind me).

I came back to Agonda to find the sand shelf on the beach had reformed, after apparently being flattened and then created again after a couple of stormy days. It hasn’t stopped the turtles coming on to the beach to lay their eggs, though – we have seven nests now, and the first lot is due to hatch next week. Watch this space!

We’ve also had a spate of high-tides in which pairs of dolphins have appeared just offshore in the early mornings. I’ve had the pleasure of accompanying one or two along the beach as they surf through what must be shoals of tiny fish.

I also had the pleasure of a day trip with The Most Handsome Man in Goa, who remains in my life in a different way, discovering the tiny Mashem beach near Galgibaga, and going back to Talpona and the little gem Tejas restaurant for vegetable biryani and Hello to the Queen dessert. TMHMIG is brilliant at these days out – the thrill of the bike ride there on coastal roads, playing in the waves, choosing the right food for lunch, and getting me back somewhere lovely to watch the sunset. I always feel the happiest I’ve been in years during and after one of these ‘dates’.

He also had to deal with the bothersome regular occurrence of Indian Boys With Cameras, who inevitably turn up right behind us whenever we find a deserted beach. Two of them popped up as we were in the water, putting their stuff right next to ours on the beach. I was fuming. They must have seen the steam coming out of my ears and one of them waded in to ask us if there was a problem? Yes, I said. You’ve got this whole massive empty beach, and you’ve chosen to put your stuff right next to ours. Plus I’m sick of being trailed by Indian Boys With Cameras. We’re on a roadtrip from Hyderabad, he said. We’re just taking pictures of the location. He probably did get a couple of pictures of us but I liked that he came to check everything was ok. The one thing that is a certainty in India is a gang of boys with phones, drones and cameras. That is the biggest problem I face in India. Maybe people just like to herd. I prefer to leave the pack behind…

Talking of packs, I got bluff-attacked by a pack of dogs by the river in Agonda last night. I didn’t take my stick because I wasn’t expecting a flat, wide beach to run on, and simply took my chance. To all those people who make fun of me for carrying a stick – you try being surrounded by ten dogs barking and snarling at you, while all the humans stand around not doing anything to help. They seem to get more feral when the weather is cooler for some reason. Even Sanjo is leaping up and scratching my arms with his claws.

This weather is reminding me of British summer – cool mornings and evenings and warm days… I can’t wait to experience the real thing in May…

A Relationship with Rain

I find other people’s reaction to rain stressful. They hate it. Simply loathe it. They think it’s out to get them and specifically times itself to appear on days when they specifically didn’t want it to. They think that it’s going to rain forever when it comes. I like to call this reaction Ark Syndrome, or Weather Catastrophism.

I find myself being a keyboard warrior on social media, fighting on behalf of rain, pointing out that it rains all year in Britain, and it’s not something that only happens in autumn and winter. It has done the same thing for millennia. The sun always comes back. Yet still, the collective wailing, the disappointment: “Where has the summer gone??!!”

I’ve just returned from another Costa Rican adventure where for the first week, I ventured into the rainforests around the Arenal volcano. I stayed in a treehouse, regularly doused by rain, and found myself going to bed early, lulled to a sweet slumber by the sound of the rain on the roof and the animals feeling alive in it. I went on rainy hikes wearing a huge poncho and laughed as I stood next to a thundering waterfall made more epic by the rain. The power. The power of all that water.

Maybe because I spent the first twenty-two years of my life in North Wales, I’m completely fine with rain. It makes countries beautiful and gives you sunsets to die for. I wouldn’t dream of visiting Costa Rica in the dry season when everything is bone-dry and brown (apart from the central rainforest). What would be the point of that? Everyone smiles in the rain in Costa Rica. It does it for six months of the year so what would be the point of being miserable in it?

In Britain, people are weird about weather. Because it’s constantly changing, we live in a world where no one believes forecasts and lives in an eternal state of hope about the mythical boiling-hot days to come. They forget to enjoy the early summer days in June when it’s cooler because it’s ‘not summer’ until it’s 40 degrees. Then suddenly its autumn, they pronounce that year’s summer null and void, whilst forgetting they could enjoy those ‘in between’ days. What a damn shame.

I went to Costa Rica during their ‘Little Summer’ – a break in the rainy season during July and August. For me, it truly is the best time to go. It still rains, but not nearly as much. For me the rain gives welcome respite from the glare of the sun and roasting temperatures. It gives rhythm to the days (and nights) and makes plants and animals happy. I found it soothing to listen to at night, and during the day when I was ill. When it’s torrential everyone stands around looking at it in awe, laughing. It reminds me of when it snows here, and everyone goes a bit hysterical with delight. (I prefer rain.)

Why do we make our relationship with rain so hostile, when it’s ever-present and never going to go away, when it’s life-giving and soothing? I simply don’t understand it. I’ve chosen to accept it, enjoy it, even – there was a time when I wouldn’t walk to work in it. Now I’ve just upped my waterproof game instead. Maybe hiking has given that to me.

Also, I look at weather forecasts. When I hear, “Let’s hope the weather clears up later!” I can often be heard saying, “It’s going to rain at 4pm and then the sun will come out at 6.30pm.” People seem genuinely surprised that I have this information to hand. I don’t know if it’s a refusal to accept reality that no one looks at a forecast, but in a nation where changeability of weather is the only constant, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t. Know what’s coming so you can deal with it.

It’s made me think that people like griping about the weather – they don’t like it when you take away the guesswork and provide the actual information. They like to think that they are in combat with the rain, and I’m just spoiling it by taking away their weapons. Radio stations pronounce rainy days as ‘miserable’. I say they’re just rainy.

I’ve realised that my favourite places in the world are in countries known for rainfall. New Zealand… the west coast of Ireland… the Costa Rican rainforest… the Rocky Mountains in Canada. Weather has made those places what they are and I love them for that. I’ve been soaked by rain and sunburnt in all those places – the latter always happens because I’m never expecting it.

And that brings me to my point. Stop expecting everything to be perfect and conform to the perfect summer. Expect rain and sunshine to be part of every season in Britain or you’ll be constantly disappointed. Do you really want to live in that perpetual state? Can you really not remember that last year the exact same thing happened, or that prior to one week of rain in August we had around two months of near-constant sunshine? I know because I walk to work and I think I’ve had to put my umbrella up once.

Make a relationship with rain that works for you. Lay down your weapons and just face it full on. You’ll find yourself in a much happier place.

As the Scandis say, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes’.

You Look Summery!

If I had a pound for every time someone tells me I’m looking ‘summery’ I’d be a rich woman.

It usually happens on warm, sunny days, in the summer, when I’m wearing attire appropriate to the season. But still, people appear to be surprised that I have opted for an outfit that is so blatantly appropriate, perhaps with bright colours or a floral print.

I live by a mantra that is ‘dress for the temperature, not the weather’, because living in Britain, you’d have your ‘summery’ clothes on for about five days if you only chose to wear them when the sun comes out. I start wearing my summer wardrobe (which lives in a case under my bed during the winter) right from the start of the summer, perhaps even in April or May if the weather is mild.

It puzzles me that even now, on July 4, many people and the media are still saying ‘look forward to the summer!’ when I, and the Met Office, think it’s been here since 1 June. It amuses me that at the merest hint of cloud cover, Londoners are back in winter coats and scarves, even if it’s still twenty-two degrees.

Some days I’m ready for the ‘summery’ onslaught. It usually happens right at the start of the season, when I have dared to wear a shorter sleeve or, horror of horrors, decided to get my legs out. It can happen up to five times a day and I really have to stop myself shouting, ‘BECAUSE IT’S SUMMER’ and adopt a gracious smile instead.

I started dressing season-appropriately for a number of reasons, the main one being the temperature mantra I mentioned previously. Why not get a few good months out of your summer clothes while you can? Another reason is Sex and the City. I always admired that the women in the show would go out and meet each other in a nice dress, not wearing a coat. I thought about how Brits can’t go anywhere without a cardi, light jacket or a padded duvet coat, ‘just in case’, and I decided to leave mine behind when I went out. You don’t need any of those things if it’s raining during the summer – just an umbrella. And yet, and yet, we cart these things round with us like our lives depended on them.

That got me thinking about how we wear certain clothes as armour, especially in cities. Until recently, I’ve felt very exposed without a jacket, coat or even a large bag to cover up my body – it prevents a level of scrutiny from men and women that makes me uncomfortable. We also use them to make a statement – a biker jacket toughens up a feminine dress, or a suit jacket will give it a professional edge. Without either, we are slightly undefined, I think.

We also wear clothes as much to blend in, as we do to stand out. Women, in particular, worry about ‘what everyone will be wearing’ on the run up to an event, some even going home to change if they arrive at a party to find everyone else is dressed up, or dressed down. When I first moved to London from North Wales I had to learn how to dress down at every occasion. Non-Londoners love a bit of bling when they go out but I could see the looks from some of the women I came across at parties, sheathed in black and grey jersey, when I had a bejewelled jumper on. Those looks said, ‘way too shiny, lady’.

I recently went to a gay Pride party where we’d all been asked to wear something with a rainbow theme, but hardly anyone went for it. I stood there in my big stripy dress, looking like the Uncool One, while people came up to me saying, ‘you look rainbowy!’ as though I’d just decided to do it on a whim. It was the ‘summery’ thing again, I thought, as black appeared to be the colour-of-choice that night.

I thought about a recent conversation with a young female friend who said she bought everything in black, mainly because she felt insecure about herself. Luckily, I experienced Trinny and Susannah training in the ’90s, which dictated that women should never wear black after a certain age, and never, ever keep nice clothes ‘for best’. I’m quite grateful to them for that – I rarely buy black now and love wearing vivid colours. But ooh, people do love commenting on ’em.

I guess I’m just going to have to get used to it.

10446645_1111401128875324_1424357165550764132_n — Me looking rainbowy and proud!

Britain’s Got Weather

My favourite seasons are always the ones in between the extremes – spring and autumn are the ones in which the changeover between winter and summer can be viewed almost daily in a natural slideshow of shifting colours and shapes. Spring offers the promise of balmy summer nights – I think I prefer the promise to the actual event – and autumn makes us feel nostalgic about the balminess just past.

Meteorologically speaking autumn starts on 1 September and this year, it delivered a blinder – warm temperatures and daily sunshine made us think summer hadn’t quite ended. But it had. On 31 August. But somehow September got rebranded into ‘the last days of summer’ and yesterday’s harsh drop in temperature became ‘the sudden onset of autumn’. I think autumn needs a little bit of help on the brand-management side, don’t you?

I don’t know why, but autumn seems to have become synonymous with rain, cold and misery. For me, those unexpectedly mild sunny days are the stuff of it. Walks on Hampstead Heath kicking leaves, sitting outside a cafe in the sunshine – these are autumnal pursuits that can be done without having to slather myself in Factor 50 to avoid sunburn. I can sit in the sunshine without feeling uncomfortably hot and having to go in the shade every ten minutes. Bliss. These aren’t ‘the last days of summer’, they’re ‘the best days of autumn’.

Often our positioning of summer as ‘the perfect’ season is based on complete myth. For many people my age, it’s based on that one summer in 1976 when the season did what we expected it to do, if we lived in California. Boiling hot temperatures, wall-to-wall sunshine – it was the driest, sunniest, warmest summer of the 20th century. I remember lying in the sun with my sister in our back garden – she got third-degree burns on her stomach that year because sun-factor wasn’t a thing back then. We also had a plague of ladybirds – I remember them flying about as my dad Flymo’d the lawn. The summer of 1976 also led to a severe nationwide drought. Joy!

Because that summer has become wedged so firmly in our childhood memories, we are addicted to its Hipstamatic golden glow with its ‘Phew What a Scorcher!’ headlines. The season has never delivered anything like it since, although we’ve had a few good ones, like last year, and this. That summer was the exception, and not the norm, but people still expect summer to deliver 1976-style levels every year, and are profoundly disappointed when it doesn’t.

It rains in summer, often for long periods. Then we get a week, or two if we’re lucky, of warmth and sunshine. Then back to rain again. I always laugh to myself when the inevitable ‘the summer’s over!!!’ cries are found all over my social-media feeds when we have one day of rain. I think of these desperate people as dogs whose owners have just nipped out to the corner shop, but they think they’ve left for good. It’ll be back, I find myself saying, trying to comfort them, and it always is. There are, admittedly, prolonged periods of rain during some summers that do make you feel like it’s all over, but I always keep the faith. It’s never let me down.

I often feel like a one-woman weather marketeer in charge of reminding everyone that Britain’s Got Weather. You get rain in summer, sunshine in the middle of winter, balmy days in autumn, freezing days in spring. It’s unexpected and that’s the joy of it. I also feel like I’m the only one who checks the weather each morning, and dresses accordingly. Actually, I only check the temperature – my mantra is ‘dress for the temperature, not the weather’, which means that I’m not uncomfortably wrapped up in too many layers on a warm but cloudy day in September. I’ve really chuckled to myself over the past month, seeing Londoners wearing winter coats because the sun’s gone in. It might still be 22 degrees, but the coats go on because the sun isn’t there to validate the shedding of them. Interesting.

This mantra of mine does lead to the annoying commentary I get in early summer when again, I dress for the temperature, and inevitably get accused of looking ‘summery’ a grillion times a day. Well yes, I say, I look summery because it’s summer, which starts on 1 June, according to the Met Office. Other people wait for the 1976 moments to get their summer wardrobes out – which of course, may never happen. I like to get a good wear out of my summer wardrobe at the earliest opportunity, otherwise it’s wasted.

I wonder if my attitude to weather comes from being Welsh. In North Wales, the skies are often a flat, dull grey. Sunny days were so rare that we’d all rush out with our corned-beef legs and moonwhite faces, in nothing short of a pagan ritual. I remember my mum shouting from my bedroom window as she saw me lying in the sun, as a teenager, determined to roast myself into a ‘normal’ colour. I used to get horribly burnt, but I didn’t care – I had a colour that wasn’t blue-white.

I got used to the sun being the exception and not the rule and learned to enjoy it when it did decide to make an appearance. And now I love holidaying in places where the weather is mercurial – I’ve been trapped in snow and rammed by horizontal hail in New Zealand, during early summer, then roasted on the Abel Tasman trail a few days later. I’ve hiked Lochnagar on Midsummer Day in driving rain, but been bathed in sunshine on the way down. I’ve been sunburned on the west coast of Ireland, as I’ve trekked through soft rain and found myself exposed on Slea Head peninsula as the sun suddenly blasts out. I’ve been unable to see two feet in front of me on Hebridean islands in the fog, and then the sun has shown me the all the treasures of the turquoise seas of Jura as it penetrates the shallow coastal water. Our coastline is nothing short of paradise at that moment.

If you are continually hankering for 1976 then you will always be disappointed. Unless you can move to California, then you need to deal with it. It’s October 5 today and the forecast is 15 degrees and wall-to-wall sunshine. Next week it’s going to rain every day until Sunday, with intermittent sunshine (a note to TV forecasters – this isn’t ‘miserable’ weather – it’s weather. You are responsible for a nation’s sense of wellbeing.)

Get out there now and enjoy lovely autumn.

You’re welcome.