Not every walk works out the way you want it to. Sometimes, you find that your feet hurt before you've got to the end of your own street. Sometimes, you find that the brilliant blue skies have turned grey and threatening before you've got off the bus.
Sometimes, you find that the chosen route is flat, straight, devoid of views and can scarcely even offer you a wildflower to distract you from the fact that your feet still hurt. Sometimes, you're so grateful for a break in the weather and a sudden short-lived burst of sun-bright and blue that you find yourself taking pictures of puddles.
Sometimes, you look at your chosen destination, now visible across the rolling landscape, and find yourself fixated on the power lines, and the next squall heading your way…
…and sometimes you think: you know what? I'm going to head back now.
Sometimes heading back just becomes such a trudge that you put the camera back in the pack. You stop looking for the kind of beauty that might spark a verse. You find yourself counting mile-markers and working out your speed and wondering how long you'll wait for a bus and whether there'll be a shelter or at least a seat. You debate with yourself whether it is worth sitting for 10 minutes looking at an empty unplanted field in order to eat an apple. (Answer, no.)
I love walking. No walk is ever wasted. Even the ones that don't work out the way you want them to. Lessons learned on this particular day: I need new walk socks. My boots are fine, but my socks have done more than their 1,000 miles and they're old and crotchety and irritating. I have the blisters to prove it.
Also: a view is what you make of it…and sometimes a puddle really does feel like the most picturesque thing I've seen all day.
Also: just because you're walking into a head-wind on the way out, doesn't mean that it will be helpfully at your back on the return. It had shifted into a cross-wind which was probably even more annoying.
And: that if you focus on keeping going, the weather will reward you: the rain that almost had you giving up before you'd begun will vanish in a sunburst.
Or it might spite you, blowing clouds back over and winter-cold precipitation down your neck.
Sometimes the best thing to be said about a walk is that it was a good 8 to 10 miles of fresh air.
In which case, probably the less said about it, the better.
