Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
This isn’t a recipe for a ten leaf salad. It’s just a list of the potential ingredients. It’s what I like to eat after a thirty or forty kilometre hill walk. I’m usually tired and hungry enough that I become lazy, estimating the quantities by bags, half bags or handfuls. I chuck them all into a large mixing bowl, calories uncounted and if eating alone, I eat it all from the same bowl.
Our media are showing restaurants and bars, cinemas and sports. There is an emphasis on we are missing. On the face of it, the global media appear to be pandering to and reinforcing our anxieties.
It’s nearly the end of October and Ireland is back in lockdown. Our 14 day averaged national infection rate has risen to over 300. Our island is divided and the north of the island is reported within the UK national rate which is over 400. But the daily rate of infection (per head) north of the border has been four times higher than that to the south. So I guess the contrast across that border should be a source of concern for health professionals. Yet, the island politics of peace agreements and an imminent divorce has implications for border patrols and isolationist if not exclusionist travel policies.
The global inconsistencies of healthcare reporting make it really hard for the lay observer to know what is happening both locally and at large. You’d have thought the opposite would be true after eight months of ‘concerted’ effort.
Once upon a time, there was a truth to be seen while walking along The Ridgeway among hills in Wiltshire. Night wasn’t falling at all. It was rising. The darkness filled the valleys from the floor up. Another time, after walking 35 km from the White Horse at Uffington, I was collected by my friend who lived locally and told me that everyone knew mobile phones don’t work reliably along the ley lines. Had I only known of the ancient ley lines when I got to Avebury?
Forgive me cyclists for I have raged.
It’s been sixty minutes since my last encounters when I denied cyclists twice.
The incidents occurred while driving home along coastal along roads that I have used for fifty years. The constrictions, curves and cambers of these roads have been learned as I walked, jogged, cycled. I have driven cars and motorbikes around these once medieval tracks with their ever changing aspects and glorious views.
I’ve used metaphors throughout my life to illustrate how things work. I’ve come to realise that may be because the use of the metaphor helps me understand why we do the things we do. As Simon Sinek said ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’
