A couple of years ago i decided that i could do with an adventure, to give my life some texture after a lifetime of grey, suit & tie office work. The job consumed two hours every day just in commuting! and the rest of the time i'd have to try to conform to corporate social values. Not my natural environment.
I've had a couple of previous excursions from working life, four months cycling through Spain to Morocco and three weeks walking the Pennine way. These were fleeting chances to be independent, deciding for myself what to do with each day. Years later i now have the space to do what i want. And what i want is to travel in the UK, meet loads of people, have loads of new experiences and savour some of the time i have on our planet.
When i wuz a youth a teacher said: "There are three things you need to enjoy life - time, money and energy.
When you're young you have energy and time, but no money,
In mid-life you have energy, hopefully makin' money, time is tied up in family, work & consumerism.
When old you have time, hopefully some money, but no energy."
Fortunately, at 56 years old, i am in good health and my employers have given me the whole of 2017 as a sabbatical.
I did a bit of sailing fifteen years ago when work took me to Bermuda. Deciding that sitting indoors playing computer games was not a positive way forward, i started racing a Laser sailing dinghy tuesdays and sundays for a year or so. With no previous experience my philosophy was 'how hard can it be? it's just string, sticks, sail, water & wind'.
I was surprised that when a couple of friends learnt that i'd bought a sailing dinghy, they wondered whether i planned to sail around the uk in it. I guess that the intention has been gestating in my brain for years.
So, here we go :-)
i plan to launch into the river trent on 20th May 2017, head to Boston & then go north. Sounds like an adventure.
Hi Nick. Very best of luck on the trip. Hopefully will meet up on route somewhere.
ReplyDeleteMatt
W773
Just awesome matey, see you shortly.
ReplyDeleteMarky
Good luck with all this from Alyson. We spoke yesterday on the towpath and I took a brief video of you setting off from my boat opposite, that's a boat with two heaters!! Bloggings new to me, not even sure this will post and I've no idea how to get the video to you or even improve my profile but if your making the effort to follow your dream I must make an effort to give you this little bit of support. Enjoyed your chat about going through Nottingham, I too am surprised to be surrounded by traffic running across the bridge with my lock key, doing it ourselves next week for a trip to Newark for bank holiday. Hope you slept well without the rain.
ReplyDeleteNick, my son and I will be traveling the U.K. The month of July by train, his passion and my money, hahaha! Anyway, we will be blogging as well and hope we can meet up with you. We are in London, York and the West Country to start and then on to Wales, Liverpool and Scotland. We are not committed to anything during this latter part of the trip with only Liverpool as a definite. Hope we can meet up! Happy sailing!
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