EVERY JOURNEY OF 214 PEAKS starts with a single step…
These boots are brand new out of the box and this symbolically marks the start of a grand adventure: discovering the ‘Wainwrights’ and everything that implies.
I often ponder over things – you might have noticed – and recently the focus of my furrowed brow has been… hill walking. I’ve been wondering why it is I love rambling so much, be that along a riverside, through a forest or indeed up a fine Lakeland mountain.
Now, after many years, I believe I’ve realised why. Because… I love rambling! I mean, rambling in general, in any sense you can imagine. It liberates everything, and it’s a lifelong passion of mine.
Rambling with my feet; rambling with my mind; rambling with my eyes, my hands, my fingers; rambling with my lenses; rambling with my words; rambling with my brushes and colours. Rambling. It’s such a lovely way to while away a lifetime or two. It’s the thing to do!
Heading voluntarily vaguely, yet with great purpose and pleasure, towards a largely blurry and indistinct destination. Sounds like my idea of a fine day out.
The great thing about rambling is, you’re not 100% certain of arriving where you had in mind at the beginning, if you actually had a fixed goal, and that’s fine, even desirable. It’s much more fun to discover something new and unexpected than the same old same old.
So, if you meet someone you weren’t expecting to meet, discover a track or hilltop or perfect picnic spot that wasn’t on your list, snatch an achingly beautiful lyrical line for your next poem out of thin air… so much the better.
The Laggard of Lakeland 
(Lakeland Chronicles No.11)
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Wainwright Log: 2 of 214 Fells Felled / 0 Books Bashed / Visit Log
