Month: February 2021

I Can’t Stan The Rain

~ kewajodoblog ~ Leave a comment

There are quite a few high-visibility types on our various yet-to-be-regulated social channels, who parade their apparent enthusiasm for our predominant British winter weather facet – dreek wetness – by posting rain selfies, forced grinning into a spattered camera. You can almost smell the damp nylon kagoules.

Don’t misunderstand me – outdoor exercise has been a saving grace for all of us able to avail ourselves of it, and if you are in the right conditions (wrapped up very warm, in a picturesque location, heading towards the racing certainty of hot chocolate and a toasted teacake), a shower of rain at the walk’s end can be embraced and welcomed, admired for the pretty reflections it creates, enthused about due to its life-giving properties to plant life and the refilling of rivers and reservoirs. But let’s face it, otherwise, it’s just pretty miserable, isn’t it?

In all probability, there is a bye-law somewhere that says you have to at least pretend to enjoy getting drenched with monotonous regularity to be allowed unhindered access to footpaths. Sure, if you are lucky enough to be walking through the Lake District, it’s a bit churlish to expect dawn-to-dusk sunshine and the surrounding landscapes are magnificent under threatening clouds, and watching a rainstorm traverse Ullswater, backlit by intermittent shafts of sunlight, is wondrous. If, however, your context is That Circuit Around Your Neighbourhood which the ‘current difficulties’ oblige you to perambulate by default, then doing so whilst having your face washed by the wind is not fully conducive with joie de vivre.

At times, you can feel entirely like Rob Mckenna the Rain God, needing only a waterproof notebook and pencil to document another new variety of precipitation as it seeps down the collar of your innermost top layer to chill your spine.

Yeah, it’s raining today and no, I don’t feel like going out in it at all.

Keep Going

~ kewajodoblog ~ Leave a comment

It was my first proper outdoor walk since hospital, the other day, if you don’t count slowly increasing circular shuffles around our estate. We went to our nearest body of open water, a set of reservoir pools for the canals which have long been referred to locally as ‘lakes’. It was 1o C and the ground was a mix of frozen mud and slushy puddles, wherever the perimeter path wasn’t gravelled. The first part of the walk was the hardest, knowing it was all still to do, being able to see how vast the irregular circuit appeared to me, adjusting to the rush of cold air into my hesitant lungs with every breath. I stopped awhile to look over the pools, awash with watery sunshine strained through limpid clouds, and I was honestly unsure that I could do this. Maybe just get as far around as I can, have a rest, turn back? My wife suggested we just tackle the nearest and slightly smaller pool to start with, for today. The relief was like a warm gulp of tea.

So around we trudged, dodging the occasional couples and family groups of walkers and their dogs, and the cars which brave the single-track causeway road, an icy bath plunge beckoning on either side of the wooden paling. We meandered down through the kissing gate to squelch along the fishermen’s path. The ditches and brooks which run in to feed the pools were all swollen and overflowing with muddy water from the recent rain and snow. The water was calm and slate grey, reflecting a moody sky, but still welcoming to the wildfowl who seem to prefer the cold water to the muddy banks. I was well dressed and in good walking shoes but nonetheless the cold seeped into my house-softened bones. I was aware of my own quiet panting and huffing, noises I never used to make knowingly on a walk unless we were trying to climb something anti-socially large and steep. At about 1/4 of the way around, I started to feel like my legs were becoming a little numb. We carried on and I realised that actually, they had begun to warm up and loosen out a little and that what I was feeling was how your legs are supposed to feel when they are getting a decent workout!

We made it all the way around and I got a few lovely photos as a bonus. It was the single largest number of steps I had taken in one go, not just since Covid, but from a month before that. I must admit I was properly tired out afterwards and needed a mug of hot chocolate back at home to recuperate. It was just so good to be out and about again, with water and sky and nature and that piercing clean air, as refreshing and reviving as the sweet, cold trickle of oxygen from a nasal canula – that last little one you don’t really want to give up, just in case, just in case…

I’ve admired the likes of The Body Coach TV – YouTube but somewhat from afar (!), chivvying everyone on to get off of their sofa-sagging bums and move about more, and I have even pinched a few of the quick daily exercise tips from BBC Breakfast and am gamely struggling to do these each day a.k.a. when I remember and can be bothered. Keeping going even if you don’t think you can – and not beating yourself up when you cannot – seem to me to be pretty important in navigating the path back to being okay with how you feel.