Rumination: The Dark Season Passes

No, I haven't given up. And the trail is due to be re-engaged.

The way time passes as you get older is most perplexing, the passage of days is incredibly rapid and recent events can feel like they were an age ago. It's been 12 weeks since my last noted walk and that time seems to have torn through, but it feels like it's been a year since I last went out, and I'm going to blame the dark quarter of the year for that, but now here we are in February and I'm psyching myself for a return to the trail.

The dark quarter of the year has been no fun at all, as having to alter my working hours due to the inconsistent performance of public transport, has meant far too many days of getting up and going out to work in the dark, and then returning home in the exact same circumstances. I'm not a firm believer in SAD but a lack of daylight certainly does my head no favours and having a light box to provide a bit of revivifying white light seems to work its trick for me. The first week of February marks the point in the year where you can at least get some daylight at either end of the working day and you can convince yourself that spring is about to appear, despite being another six weeks distant.

I still seem to have been well exercised over the last three months, despite only getting out for a couple of walks that haven't been counted in my grand total, those being a wander around Temple Newsam Park with My Sis and her family, and taking in a round trip from Morley to Toys 'R' Us (a shop I detest, incidentally) at Birstall to buy Lego for my nieces for Christmas. The exercise mostly comes from work where a change of roles in my department in the hospital has moved me away from barrow-pushing and filing, and onto trailing around the site in search of requests made by the outpatients offices. It's certainly providing me with a lot of walking, and I'm sure my site is a half-mile from end to end and that really starts to make an impression on you after a while. To put the walking into perspective, I have already ruined the lightweight trainers that I bought back in July and only started wearing in earnest in October. The heels have gone off them already and I start to wish that I'd got a pedometer for Christmas so I might have gotten some impression of my work-related mileage, and maybe cheekily putting in a request for a sub for new shoes...

The Fruits of the Dark Season -
2013 Calender & Down Jacket

I'm still a mess of aches and pains, so this time out for rest 'n' relaxation doesn't seem to have worked out in that regard, stress and too much physical soreness seem to have been the story of the season, but there have been a few useful and constructive (and fun!) developments along the way. For starters Christmas brought me a few useful bits of kit for the next walking season: a smaller flask, a smaller rucksack, new gloves, spare socks and laces and a waterproof for my ipod, all courtesy of my parents. Plus from My Sis, a Karrimor down-filled fleece that really is the most improbable mix of cosy and lightweight, and a bargain that she couldn't help advertising to us despite it being a festive gift (only £25 from fieldandtrek.com!). Not sure if it's the best sartorial statement as it does make me look a bit like the Michelin Man, but I certainly won't be cold over the weeks of winter. Also for the festive season, I put my many photographs to good use and put together a 2013 calender on Snapfish.com and assembling that was a fun couple of evenings, once I'd gotten my head around the template pattern and its odd foibles. The dark season has allowed me to discover plenty of future routes to include in my plans for  2013, not least picking out a booklet for The Wakefield Way, a 75 mile trip around the perimeter of Wakefield district which has bumped up its way in the schedule because I'm still to get route guides for the Kirklees Way and the Bradford Millennium Way. Finding useful routes on pdfs from a variety of sources means I now have plenty of options for unrelated walks in the high moors of West Yorkshire for when I've not an bigger schemes underway, I've even found one to do when I go down to Leicestershire to visit my parents!

And thus the 2013 season is due to open, and the long-planned Morley Circular has already called me to the trail when an unseasonally sunny day came calling on the first day of my weekend of being NIW. The new FOSCL leaflet has had me picking out days to take with them, having already picked four to do before the end of June, and despite me planning to factor in weekends off from walking, it's all to easy to forget and let every available day be taken by grand walking schemes. So the plans for the year include:

• all of the Yorkshire Three Peaks, walked independently
• The Dales Way, plus the link from Leeds, thus walking from Morley to Windermere
• The Wakefield Way, 75 miles in West Workshire's flattest district
• Social walks with my good friends MW and IH, somewhere in Calderdale's high lands
• taking my nieces on their first proper hill walk, probably Pendle Hill
• The Witton Weavers Way, with My Sis on the West Pennine Moors
• more excursions to Wharfedale, Airedale and the Colne Valley

All subject to change due to weather, mood and physical stress, of course, but the 2013 season is here and getting back on the trail is what we need to do to beat the winter blues and getting me feeling healthy again. Onward!