Menai

I drove up from London to Anglesea en route to the ferry to Dublin. I stopped at Menai Bridge having seen a walk in the AA book of UK walks (#99). Experience on this ferry journey gave me ETA probabilities ranging between 830 (p90) and 1100 (p10) and it was more like 945 when I got to Menai. Lengthy M6 road works and heavy M56 traffic meant I had about an hour to spare before ferry boarding closed at 1120. So it was going to have to be a short walk on a mild, bright morning, the day after storm Doris lashed these parts.

The very first thing I saw was a red squirrel - quite a coincidence having heard a radio story this morning about their likely extinction in the UK within 40 years due to a combination of imported pestilence and grey immigration. Then a skein of migrating geese passed overhead at Church Island and shortly afterwards, I found myself under the arches of Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge looking at Shellduck feeding on the ebbing tide.

I walked up to fields full of apparently pregnant sheep after passing rhododendron blooms scattered by the storm. I came across a clump of wind beheaded daffodils and watched two magpies gathering twigs. It's been that mild that nature has declared Spring.

Another coincidence as I crossed the border into Wales, I heard Burton reading Hopkins, an excellent Welsh connection on the Radio 3 breakfast show.

Just 4 km because I lingered at the views, leaving some 476 km to go. 

Gus

Gus has been one of my walking companions for years. I can't fault his enthusiasm but he's messy; his bushy tail tends to ensnare sticks that other dogs might carry in their mouths. And that's on top of the mud and sand and salt water he brings home. And yet, if I walked six kilometres, Gus must have covered ten.

There were enough Sunday morning walkers out in unusually mild conditions that I could eavesdrop on passing snippets of conversation:

"Stone studies? No, no, film studies. Film studies are an Arts degree ..."

"... like mental health funding and assessments ..."

"... and you send them an email by pressing this."

Some of the local rubbish bins attempt inspiration, one stencilled "A day without laughter is a day wasted". 

On White Rock beach, we listened to a clarinet being played in the changing area. We've heard it here before. Gus is not as limber as once he was so we watched people who threw, batted and slingshotted tennis balls for their dogs.

Another 6 km leaves just 480 km to cover in 17 weeks.

Countdown

There is enough for all. The Earth is a generous mother. She will provide, in plentiful abundance, food for all her children, if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.
William Bourke Cockran as quoted by Winston Churchill in Iron Curtain speech, Fulton, Missouri 1946

It's time for another three peaks walk. This time the Yorkshire Three Peaks on June 27. Unfit and overweight, I have decided to walk 500 km in practice and today is the start of the countdown.

I read the Cockran/Churchill quote in the Irish Times at breakfast. Which gave me a theme for the first walk. I thought I'd start by taking advantage of an increasingly rare privilege and walk past the homes of my male antecedents. I live near where three generations have lived over the last 130 years. The link, in my head at least, is that we should be striving to improve the world for those who follow. Most of my antecedents did that. And knowing where you came from is a privilege that springs from the dedications of those others. This seems implicit in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Walking to raise money for Care International is another method. Helping me raise money does it too. And if we help Care, we help raise people towards self-actualisation. Globally. There is indeed enough for all.


14.5 km today. Just 485.5 km to go.