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Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

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Creativity

April 28, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I’ve travelled rather more widely during this curfew than you might expect. It matters not that I only leave the house to walk the dog, replenish the cupboards or sometimes ferry our daughter to her hospital treatments. Even those journeys are more than most may be able to do.

My Fitbit encourages me with milestone reminders that are a disinformation of virtual comparisons. I’ve never walked the length of India or chased Monarch butterflies in migration. I suppose I have ascended to the clouds, not so often on foot as in planes. But I can’t ever wear the ruby slippers earned this time last year on a 50 km hike across the Dublin Mountains Way. That’s a walk memorialised by real effort, actual pain, wonderful exhilaration, some boredom, wind driven chill, magnificent views and the stupidity of postponed toilet breaks. And yet, here I am, writing about ‘badges’ and showing my version of them as a virtual walker’s map depicted in iPhone photo ‘badges’.

‘Badges’ map The Dublin Mountains Way in April 2019
All photographs © Simon Robinson
[Read more…] about Creativity

Filed Under: Anchoritism, ManRom2021 Tagged With: cartography, creativity, Dublin Mountains Way, eavan boland, fitbit, flowers, hv morton, jerry brotton, kathleen o'meara, lia mills, maps, photos, poetry, seamus heaney, spider, walking

Generosity and Coincidence

April 21, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

The Burren arrived by post this morning. A beautiful graphical representation of a timeless place scoured, smoothed and littered by passing glaciers. Driving out to the Black Head Lighthouse for a late summer sunset has more than once rewarded me with memories as permanent as the photos I could have taken. Following the road to the south, the bare escarpment to the left might be rendered pink by the dying light. Grey limestone enlivened by photons and water droplets can shimmer rose-pink-rose-pink-rose-pink. Light that left the sun some eight minutes earlier persists in the mind decades later.

‘Lovely map – sadly its maker met Covid-19’ wrote my benefactor on a card that accompanied this most generous gift. ‘Hear you are planning an Atlantic Walk’.

[Read more…] about Generosity and Coincidence

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, Covid-19, landscape, manchán magan, maps, ötsi, photography, poetry, susan connolly, tim robinson, tutankhamun, walking, wild atlantic way

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