No, I don't have another day in my legs. Four weekends have now passed since my last day on the trail, and I think it's fair to conclude that the 2013 season is finished. My birthday week, two weeks ago, should have signalled the end, but I'd held out hope that a fair day over the subsequent weekends would provide me with a day to act as a finale and to get in the last plotted walk for the season on the West Riding's High Moors, but no such luck. The weather chose not to smile on me and my body did not greet any available day with any enthusiasm at all, and so the season is done, and so am I.
First weekend of November provided another glum day of low clouds and hissing rain, not the sort of day needed for a trip out from Hebden Bridge, across Wadsworth and Warley Moors to get to the viewpoint on Soil Hill, near Queensbury, and the next Saturday didn't look a whole lot better, and my body was even less responsive to a day out in wintery temperatures. The following day promised clear skies and prolonged wintery sunshine (and very low temperature but I was trying to look past that) and that seemed like an ideal day for a finale, but it seems that Sunday is a day when rail transport seem to disappear, with no local service running through Morley in the early morning, and all Calderdale services terminating at Halifax. The alternative of bussing and making multiple connections just seems too troublesome, so an alternative in the local bracket is sought, but even getting out to Rombalds Moor seems like more trouble than it it is worth, promising as much time spent travelling as it would walking, so when the morning does blaze into view, my response to it is to stay in bed and pull the covers over my head, and sleeping for a few more hours. The birthday week was then spent NIW, and travelling down country to see my Parents, largely because I haven't spent a birthday with them since I turned 18 (21 years ago!), but also so I could delve into the box of family photographs, because even though my immediate family is not particularly large, when you start factoring the more distant portions descended from my Grandparents' generations, it starts to get extensive rapidly. So it's a lot of faces to put to a lot of names, necessary to do in these days of everybody compiling their family trees, and absolutely essential to do as the number of distant cousins start to diminish, and thus three days with pictures, scanner and hard drive are absorbed when the weather showed up a lot better than it could have done.
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| The 2013 season reaches its end. |
I hadn't taken a plan for a Leicestershire walk, figuring that I needed to spend as much time as possible with building the family tree, and so the old country goes unexplored this time, and when the time comes for every one to come up country to go over to my Sister's to attend my Elder Niece's birthday, my boots don't even go with me as a quick examination reveals that the September repair job has not endured and the loose sole has become detached again, and Pair of Boots #3 must be declared dead. That is not an immediate problem, in the end, as a dense mist hangs over the West Pennines and even a brief stroll around one of the local reservoirs proves to be undesirable. This weekend passed was the last opportunity to get out, but being completely dead to the world on the Saturday morning meant that I did not venture out, and thus the walking season's end came at Haworth Station on October 26th, and my social finale didn't even get scheduled, so the concluding walk to the pub will probably be very short, if I can fit it in before the festive season consumes the month of December. Still, the slide into the dark season will hopefully give me the slightest sliver of respite from the exhaustion that has blighted the last couple of months, as the department that I had been seconded to in the hospital has been dissolved and the staff redistributed, with me returning to the Medical Records library, for hopefully a whole lot less walking, and more work for the upper body muscles that hadn't been worn out whilst working out of the Central Locate team. So I'm back where I was a year ago, which has a nice symmetry to it, as time is called on my second walking season, and I'm looking forward to the rest that comes with it, as I had felt like I was again on the slide to something going wrong, physically or mentally, and now I'm feeling like I might make it through the winter without a constant diet of painkillers and decongestants. So, Rest those aching limbs and take the pressure off that over-worked brain and recharge yourself for the final push in 2014!
Next on the Slate: The Conclusions of 2013!
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