Sunday musings

The funny thing about walking - it is hard work.

However, the rewards out weigh the effort required.  The miles, as they pass beneath your feet, seem to help leave behind irks and irritants (you do have to factor in persistent flies who follow you as you trudge up a sunny hill side. They gaily flit around your hot face and crash into your ears or eyes and generally are annoying).

Then there is that hot airless pocket that needs wading through as you walk alongside the hill face followed by a blessed relief as you reach a point where the cooler air begins to move.

That feeling you get, when, once you have sat down and the view is laid out before you, that feeling of relief, of enjoyment, of quiet contemplation - does wonders for the soul.

It gives you the chance to allow the landscape wash over you, absorb you, refresh you. Your eyes drink in the different levels, the contrast of shadow and sun laden fields, the far pale shades of the horizon and the closer sharper greens and browns of the moorland fields dotted with sheep.

The sounds around you are of nature and not man - the sky lark, the curlew, the lapwing.  The distant continuous questioning and responding sheep bleats as ewe and lap separate and reunite across large grazing fields.  The breeze whispering past your ear, the tumble of water on rock, the swish of grass and rustle of leaves as the wind - hot and languid - lazily swirls over the landscape.

The exquisite pleasure of removing warm boots off warm feet and feeling your toes breathe! Or, even more delightful - lowering them into the stream.

So, yes, a plod, a puff and rather warm - but necessary, cathartic and so very good.

Hope you had a good weekend too x