Health

Since I became very ill last year with various problems I have not cycled, ran or walked/hiked since the end of 2014.  Snowdon was always one of my favourite walks/climbs so now that I am a lot better I really wanted to test myself and climb Snowdon again while I am in North Wales.

The day was wonderful, the weather was ideal, the sun was shining so I decided today was the day, but I didn’t want to go too early as the carpark at Pen y Pas fills up very quickly with all the keen and eager early climbers, I know you can do the park and ride from Llanberis but then you are restricted time wise with buses etc. so I decided to take a drive over after lunch and try to park in Pen Y Pas so I could do the Miners path.

I haven’t done the Miner’s path since I took my boys up many years ago, the times I have done it since we went on the Pyg track and it was in the worst conditions on one occasion; I was working with a company called ExpeditionWise and we were taking a group of people on the National Three Peaks challenge in June, the weather was so bad, we got drenched many times in between the strong winds drying us on Ben Nevis, stopped from climbing Scaffell Pike because it was completely flooded with the Fire brigade stopping people going up, so we ended up staying in the mini buses in a carpark in Carlisle while we waited for the weather to improve before we could move on down to Snowdon.  But when we arrived at Snowdon the weather was even worse with driving rain and 50mph winds, but the group had paid to be guided on the challenge and after doing a risk assessment it was decided that it was a possibility so we went ahead and made the climb and in record time, I think everyone just wanted to get it over with.

Another time I went on the Pyg track it was with two lovely friends from Cycle club and we had a lovely day, we took our time and enjoyed the views, the weather wasn’t too bad but it was a bit cloudy and cold at the top but we celebrated our climb with a Welsh beer bought from the café at the top.

Anyway I got to the carpark at Pen Y Pas at about 1.30ish after lunch, the drive over was tremendous, having come from a different direction to the way I have come before, the views of Snowdon were amazing during most of the drive and I was really looking forward to the climb on such a lovely day, there was a little cloud covering the peak of Snowdon but mostly it was a good day.  I got to the carpark and it was full, so I was really gutted and sitting there wondering what to do when a car came out of the carpark which meant I had a space, great, I quickly parked the car went to the loo and started my journey, there is still some pain in my knees and legs in general but I felt compelled to do it as a kind of benchmark by which to measure my recovery.

I suppose mid-afternoon is not the best time to go up for most but the path was pretty clear, just a few people ahead of me and a few behind, I met very many coming down so I think I chose the right time, the climb was harder than I remembered, I had taken banana sandwiches to eat when I got to the high lake which was the start of the real climb, before that on the Miner’s path it is pretty flat for a long while and the path meanders around a few lakes but there is a higher lake which you have a gradual climb to then the fun starts, anyway I got to the high lake within an hour and a half, ate my sandwiches and carried on up the hardest part, it took me roughly 3 hours in all, but the best thing about it was, from quite low down I could see the peak, the clouds had cleared and it was a completely clear sky which only egged me on more, it was tough, my knees were in pain but it was not insurmountable, I was very careful not to fall or trip over the rocks.  I reached the stone post which is the point where you can see the views over the other side of the mountain and it was jaw dropping, you could see the whole of Anglesey, the Isle of Mann, the Wicklow mountains in Ireland and even parts of the Pembrokeshire coast.  I just stood for a while and marvelled at the view along with a few others.  By now the sky had no clouds to be seen just pure blue sky; I carried on up the path to the summit as the train passed me taking more people down the mountain to LLanberis.

I reached the summit and just couldn’t keep the smile off my face, when I was ill last year I never thought I would be able to do this again, due to the damage done to my knees and feet and ankles because of the RA, but I did it!!!!!  I quickly started to dread the descent which is much harder on your knees.  I opened my pink Champagne which had been given to me as a gift before I left and celebrated my achievement.  I sat on the summit for a while just looking out at the wonderful views and just enjoying everyone else’s success, there was a young dad with his son, a teacher with a group of school kids, a group of American girls, two guys with their bikes (MAD) as well as some others milling about so I became chief photographer taking pics of them all on the summit.

I went in the café and sat for a while looking out again at the views and watching the train coming and going with more passengers, I did contemplate going down by train but apart from the fact that it would have cost £22 it went down into Llanberis and I was parked in Pen y Pas so I would have had to get the bus to get my car, I quickly dismissed this idea and prepared myself for the descent.

I took my time coming down because, as I thought, it was much harder on my knees but as there weren’t too many people about it was ok to be slow, I got back to my car about 9.30pm and I have to say I was really worn out and aching, I suppose the thing you forget when climbing a mountain is when you reach the peak you are only half way through your walk, but anyway I was so glad I did It and have smiled to myself ever since.

Snowdonia is a beautiful area and one day I want to come back and climb some of the other peaks, the good thing about that is  I live in Wales and will always be coming back, even in between all my travel trips and after I have finished my travelling I will still come back to Wales.

I am going to do some walking on the Offa’s Dyke path which passes just outside the place where I am staying, so I thought I might do a blog post on the benefits of walking and new discoveries made about how beneficial it is to your health, especially walking in nature in the great outdoors.

In the past several months, a bevy of studies have added to a growing literature on the mental and physical benefits of walking outdoors. That includes recent research showing that short micro-breaks spent looking at a nature scene have a rejuvenating effect on the brain — boosting levels of attention — and also that kids who attend schools featuring more greenery fare better on cognitive tests.

The studies have been done on walking in general and walking in nature and were published recently by Gregory Bratman of Stanford and his colleagues from the USA and Sweden.  The paper looked at 38 individuals who lived in urban areas, they had half of them walk in an area of nature and the other half walked on a busy street in the city.

Before the walk the participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire designed to determine the tendency toward depressive illness.  Before and after the walk they also had their brains scanned, in particular the area called subgenual prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain shown to be most active with people are in depressive states.

The questionnaire was filled in after the walk in which case some of the questions were answered differently and the conclusion was that with the questionnaire results and the brain scan results which also were different after the walk, there was clear evidence that there was reduced activity in the area of the brain related to depressive tendency.

“This provides robust results for us that nature experience, even of a short duration, can decrease this pattern of thinking that is associated with the onset, in some cases, of mental illnesses like depression,” says Gregory Bratman, the lead author of the study.

Lots of studies have been done on walking and the benefits but this goes to show that walking in nature is even more beneficial.

Other diseases which might benefit from walking in nature include, helping to prevent dementia and osteoporosis, it’s good exercise for everyone, it helps tone the muscles, helps the cardiovascular system.  It gives you energy, boosts our vitamin D levels and it boosts your mood adding to your general happiness.

The Offa’s Dyke path runs the whole length of Wales and now that the coastal path also covers all of Wales’s beautiful coastline, you could literally walk around the whole of Wales on one path.

The 177 miles Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail was opened in the summer of 1971, linking Sedbury Cliffs near Chepstow on the banks of the Severn estuary with the North Wales coastal town of Prestatyn. The Trail is named after, and often follows, the spectacular Offa’s Dyke, a great frontier earthwork, which Offa the King of Mercia from 757 to 796 A.D. ordered to be constructed.

The Trail passes through no less than eight different counties and crosses the border between England and Wales over 20 times. The Trail explores the tranquil Marches (as the border region is known) and passes through the Brecon Beacons National Park on the spectacular Hatterall Ridge, the highest point on the route at 700m/2300ft. In addition it links no less than three Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty – the Wye Valley, the Shropshire Hills and the Clwydian Hills.

Offa’s Dyke Path is the most attractive and varied of the National Trails. The route crosses high wild moorland, attractive, well cultivated wide river valleys and ancient woodland. It passes through historic towns and isolated hamlets. En route can be seen hill forts, castles, abbeys and surviving remains of the habitations of former occupants of the beautiful corridor of the path. The flora and fauna are as rich and as varied as the scenery.

The above is some information taken from North West Walks.

I found the Offa’s Dyke path running through Afonwen where I am staying and decided to do some of the walk.  I only did a short part of it to get my bearings and to see the lovely view.  I will go back in better weather and when I have more time, but from what I have seen so far, it is beautiful, rolling hills for miles and miles.  From the top of one of the hills near Moel Famau I could see the towns of Denbigh and Ruthin in the immediate vicinity, as far as Blackpool Tower to the right and Snowdon and the Snowdonia range behind me with the continuing Clwydian range to my right.  It is really spectacular up there, the walk is very undulating with some sharp ups and downs and some meandering trails.

I took a look at the map when I got back to see where the path runs and it is definitely one I would like to do more of.  I wonder how long it would take to walk around the coastal path and the Offa’s Dyke path in one go?

It’s tough selling all your stuff, because I have advertised it online and on my Facebook, everyone knows the reason I am selling everything is to go travelling, so they very often offer less because they know I have to get rid of it by a certain time.  This can be quite disheartening, especially when I paid a lot for a certain piece of furniture and I loved it and people want it for nothing, but, having said that, a lot of people have been wonderful and paid me what I was asking for something, in a couple of rare cases people have even paid a little more and wished me well on my journey!

Selling stuff in a car boot sale has been worse; a lot of people want stuff for next to nothing no matter how much you paid for it or how new it is.  I had one person arguing over a book I was charging 50 pence for , he wanted it for 30 pence but I didn’t give in I stuck to my guns and got 50 pence woohoo!!!!  I have to say that sometimes if people are polite about offering me less then I will take it but it’s all about the way it’s done!  I feel that car boot sales are like reverse capitalism, you go with 500 quid’s worth of stuff and come away with 50 quid if you’re lucky!!!

There was one day during the whole getting rid of my stuff thing that has been lovely, both my boys helped me clear out the shed, ready for its new owner to pick it up the following day at 9am, (£700 shed sold for £100, gutted but had to go before the 2 weeks was up) we took lots of stuff  to the tip and after we finished we all had an Indian takeaway then had a bonfire to burn all the old paperwork, school work and Tobi’s school uniform (end of an era).  After the bonfire had burnt everything we lit the brazier and toasted marshmallows.  It was a lovely day, shared by some of my favourite people including Caitlyn Zak’s girlfriend.

That night all my diaries from the last ten years went on the fire along with the other stuff and it felt weird, watching each page burn was like saying goodbye to my past even though I suppose I have already done that, I feel that holding on to the diaries meant that in some way I was holding on to the past.  The past is gone, I can’t bring it back, I have my memories and they are the best but it’s time to let go and move on into a new era in my life a “finding myself era”!!!!

I miss the life I had with my children and I don’t mean my current life with them I mean the time when they were my children, the fun we used to have, going on picnics, the beach, walks, out on the bikes, picking blackberries and taking them home to make a crumble etc. etc.  Nothing prepares you either for the getting rid of their stuff, as you bring it all down from the attic each item holds a special memory, finding the pile of sheet music which was for piano, singing, flute, violin and all the books which they used to learn their skill, the times I spent watching them in concerts, the time I spent taking them to their lessons, it all comes flooding back and I miss it.  They don’t want the detritus of their lives as children any more so if you don’t have a house to keep it in then you can’t keep it.  I don’t need it to remember the good times they are firmly implanted in my memory but getting rid of the stuff just reminds me of the years of joy I had with them.  I have cried so much for what has gone but I’m sure it’s the same for everyone when their kids grow up.

I managed to sell most of the big pieces of furniture but ended up giving some of it away because in the end I just needed to be rid of it, the notice period in my house was creeping up on me.  I had quite a lot of stuff which was supposed to be going to a house clearance company and they were going to give me a price for it all, so I put it ready and they didn’t even turn up and they didn’t let me know either, in the end a friend of a friend took it all and will sell it on.  It has been very liberating but also quite poignant selling all my stuff, most of the furniture was part of our lives when we were all together so it holds special memories but I know the memories will stay with me, I don’t need stuff to remind me. I am at the point where all I own now is my car and the belongings in my mothers’ house which does scare me slightly, but it had to be done.

A lot of people are asking me and family members what I will do when I come back, I do have a bit of a plan which I might reveal in another blog post, depending how the blog is received, but the future is far away and we all need to live more in the now, I will cross that bridge when I come to it, but having said that, I can always rent a room with someone and get a local job, it’s not the end of the world if I don’t have all that stuff!

The main thing I have learned about myself is I am a terrible hoarder and if I had carried on moving all the personal memory stuff from house to house over the years I would have been like one of those old ladies on the tv programme about hoarders. Never again will I a hoarder be!!!

I do feel a kind of freedom now I am not tied to the paying of the bills and all the responsibility of owning a house and owning a business.  I wish I could bring my kids on my travels with me then it would be perfect but I can’t, so I am happy to keep going back to see family and friends because even though you can stay in touch much better now than years ago, there is still nothing like a cwtch from your kids to make you feel alive!!!

Before I came to North Wales I had read on an article on Facebook, a story about this ship called the Duke of Lancaster which had gone aground on the beach at a small town called Mostyn in Flintshire so I really wanted to go and see this.  I’m really not sure why, but I have a weird interest in weird stories and abandoned shipwrecks, buildings, piers or in some cases whole towns, I don’t know why they fascinate me but they just do.

Anyway I asked Nicola, my host about the shipwreck and she said it wasn’t far away so I decided to take a drive and go and find it, I was told that once you are on the right road heading for Mostyn you will just see it.  I drove quite a way on the coast road from Flint and couldn’t see it so I stopped in a carpark and asked a gentleman there who took me to the end of the walkway and pointed further down the coast, around the bend.   I got back in my car and continued my drive and sure enough there it was as large as life, looking like it was in a field,  but as I got nearer it was obvious it was on the beach close to the shore and could be seen the other side of the field.

However it had a huge fence built up around it warning people of danger and with “do not enter” signs all around, but I really wanted to take a closer look, I bumped into another couple with their expensive cameras trying to get a closer look just like me, as we approached the fence a car came towards us and the driver got out and explained that he was on guard and that it was being watched at all times in case of accidents so there was no way we could get closer than behind the perimeter fence.

I decided to try and get around the other side, where you could see there was a path which took you nearer, but there was a stream in the way, which stopped you from getting too close and trying to climb aboard, which would have been pretty difficult anyway as it was so big, it was far too high to climb aboard.  The hull has been decorated with graffiti by some of Europe’s most talented street artists which looked kind of cool.  The artists, from the UK, Russia, Latvia and Hungary, have named themselves the DuDug collective – a play on the Welsh for ‘black duke”.

The ship has sat in dry dock in the Dee Estuary since 1979, she was launched in 1956 by Harland and Wolff who built the Titanic and HMS Belfast, after serving as a Sealink passenger ferry she was renamed the Fun Ship and used as a bar and flea market but was closed to the public in the mid-eighties.  The ship’s owner allow the graffiti artists to decorate the ship as the locals want something done with it, the council have scuppered all plans proposed by the owner and the locals want to turn it into a sort of art gallery with all the art being on the outside or a hotel.  The graffiti art is an ongoing project which is not yet finished, but already looks fab.  I love Graffiti, not the loutish nonsense daubed on the side of buildings but the arty stuff.  I used to work in a bar in Butlins many years ago in Bognor Regis called the Graffiti bar and it was entirely decorated with Graffiti, everyone loved it!

A local group have formed a Duke of Lancaster Appreciation Society, DOLAS and they have a group you can join on Facebook.  I’m going to join the group because I loved the ship and I’m not sure why, but I feel the graffiti adds something to it, it’s definitely a piece of art and most definitely better than some stuff that is actually called art, like that unmade bed by Tracey Emin, Really???????   I think more people would be interested in seeing it if they knew about it.

Definitely one of my most interesting finds while in North Wales.  I sat on the rocks, taking some pics while I marvelled at it, wishing I could get closer, I really wanted to get aboard and explore all the rooms.   I might go back and take a walk along the beach at low tide so I can see it from the stern.

As I prepare for my journey, there is a lot of thinking and worrying and wondering going on in my brain. Should I be doing this? Why am I doing this? Do I need to do this? So many thoughts, so much surmising. One of the main questions people ask me is “Are you going on your own?”

There are a lot of lonely people in the world and there are a lot of loners but there is a difference between the two. In my mind a loner is someone who enjoys being alone and is not too bothered about spending time in their own company for long periods, however, a lonely person is not that happy about being alone and just because they enjoy going places on their own doesn’t mean they are the same as loners. In fact I believe lonely people go places on their own because they want to be with other people, they don’t like being on their own and they prefer the company of others.

I believe this is one of the reasons I feel compelled to travel alone, there is nobody within my family and friends circle who can or would want to do what I want to do at the same time as I want to do it, so there are not many options other than to go alone. Many people think I am brave to make the choice to go alone but it is not bravery it’s necessity.
I have brought up five children who are now all strong independent people, admittedly my youngest is still only 16 but from a young age he has wanted to join the army, the application process has already begun and he is going through the interview stages, once he has officially left the family home I will be alone. By alone I don’t mean that everyone is gone forever and I am completely alone, what I mean is I will have to live alone. I don’t want that. For the last 29 years I have had other people living with me which includes my children and my ex-husband, one by one over the years they are all leaving, I don’t say this for sympathy, it is a fact, however, it is a fact that I find hard to take.

Living with my children has been full of joy, laughter, noise, mess, chaos and so much more and I miss all that. Apart from missing the buzz of a full house, I don’t want to be paying so much in utilities, just for me. So I have known for the last few years that things were going to change when my youngest finally left.

I didn’t expect to be travelling the world, even though I had jokingly talked about it on many occasions, I never truly believed it was possible for me because I have severe financial restrictions, but as mentioned in previous blogs I will be volunteering, which is much more financially viable for me at this moment in time.

To get back to the loneliness issue, I truly feel that one of my reasons for doing what I am doing is to alleviate the feelings of loneliness. I will be meeting new people all the time and living with them as part of their family, while working and helping them in any way I can. I think, for me, it’s the fact that I will feel needed again that draws me to this way of existing. I like to be needed. Whenever I have joined anything like clubs or associations in the past I haven’t wanted to just be like a spare part, I like to have a role and fulfill that role to the best of my abilities.