Post sailing more hill walking..? 17 10 5 (17) 25 1 29

...yeah, the kind of pattern that developed was a leap from only visiting UK once a year in the early years of my retirement to the major change of visiting twice a year: once in the spring early summer and then again in the autumn. The reason for this was simple: if i wished to complete my round of the 282 Munro hills of Scotland from distant Scandinavia and a particularly flat part of Scandinavia where i normally reside, when most of my adult life i had been climbing these hills with my wife and therefore tending to climb the easier less remote ones first, i would need somehow to retain a fairly high level of fitness which for me necessitated more trips to the hills than a solitary once a year.

This also meant i should be spending less time at home with my wife as she was no longer up to walking 10 hour days especially since she began to be less competent on the ascents than she had been in earlier years, and preferred cycling to climbing for her cardiovascular work-outs. I on the other hand had had all forms of exercise except hill walking, activities like longer distance cross-country skiing, middle distance running, cycling and swimming denied me because of injuries in my right leg sustained around 1991 through over exercising... So the autumn breaks for me in Scotland became a time when she would maybe cycle with girl-friends either in Scandinavia or for the odd week here and there in Europe: once she and a friend cycled along the River Danube from Munich to Vienna during a 6 day trip and both of them enjoyed it immensely.

Of course these changes didn’t happen over-night for the spring/summer visit typically had been with the two of us visiting family together in England during the first week of our annual visits: maybe starting with a couple of nights at my brother and his wife’s home in Oxfordshire and then crossing country to visit Cambridgeshire to see our younger son and his family of wife and two daughters before travelling to the northwest to the town in which I grew up which is still home to my sister and her enormous extended family of husband 4 children their husbands and wives and now their 10 grandchildren.

A few years ago this first week would involve an over indulgence of partying until on more than one occasion my climbing days thereafter would be marred by bad colds or chest infections and so in this last year we cut down on the partying with overall good effect… After 3 such weeks together my wife would depart for home leaving me to continue for maybe a couple of extra weeks so i could scale some of the bigger and more remote hills.

All of which is to say I got to meet a lot more people whilst travelling alone and as an English-speaking person getting to speak my mother tongue became an added attraction for keeping up this hobby of climbing only Scottish hills.

On my last trip over I once again got to be seated portside on the flight from Stockholm to Edinburgh only this time I was in the window seat and the aisle seat was taken by this young Finnish lady who was returning to Edinburgh to complete her fourth and final year of a degree course in mediaeval history. Again as luck would have it the seat between us went unoccupied. In contrast to the young Taiwanese lady of my last blog when we reached our destination instead of my showing the ropes to the lady, the lady on this occasion showed me how to take a down-town bus at something like a third the price of the regular “Airport buses”, albeit taking a more indirect route but for an old guy on vacation saving time is no longer at the premium it was when I was gainfully employed in industry.

Well on this occasion the young lady in question, a delightful Emelia, nevertheless displayed just as impressive a knowledge of smart phones as with hers she was able to track our route on the bus to show me exactly where we were and where I was to alight in the Edinburgh down-town area for the minimum distance to walk pulling my Jag. Vll rucksack on its trusty trolley wheels, to a new hostel I got to stay at the "Kick Ass" just off the Grass Market in the heart of the city centre. 

On the journey over we both of us talked incessantly on a whole range of subjects to do with what she was going to do with her History degree and what i had done as a former student of chemistry and the sciences but throughout i got to understand this would not be one of those relationships which continues as in former times either on MySpace or F-book, and when i didn't feel confident taking my camera out for a memento pic despite her being a very attractive looking young lady, which rather suggests that not only am i getting to climb more of my remaining Munro hills but that i am also getting up the learning curve of growing old dare i say with a modicum of grace? hahaha!!!