Thinking backwards and forwards

January is not my favourite month, it forces me inside and encourages reflection and planning. Every year I promise myself that I wont let it get to me, instead I’ll embrace all the nice things you can do inside like catching up on ‘must watch’ telly and batch cooking. Reflection can be helpful and one of the main reasons I write this blog is so that I can look back over the things I’ve done and remind myself what privileges I have to be able to do many fun things with some of the best people in the world (obviously I’m a little biased). However, as I wrote about in November reflection can also include a lot of comparison to others which in general is pretty unhelpful. A lot of year review posts seem to be a never ending festival of fun and frolics with beautifully stylised pictures to match.

So I’m going to have a peep back in the archives and refresh my memory of the highs and lows of 2017 and jot down a few things I’d like to do in 2018.

I really enjoyed using time in the hills to spend some quality time with friends and family. I had a great weekend in the Lake District with my sister for the Arc’teryx Lakeland Revival. I also enjoyed a multigenerational hike along the Cotswold way with my mum and my sister.
My love of the mountains and a desire to visit them lead to some fantastic holidays in some slightly wilder places such as my trip to India and the source of the Ganges.
I also really enjoyed revisiting local hills such as the Brecon Beacons. Visiting somewhere for the second or third time enables you to plan your walks in a little more detail. On my second visit to the Black Mountain I was able to mentally plan for a quick dip in the lovely Llyn y fan fach.

However it wasn’t all sunshine and perfection. I worked out that over a quarter of my days out walking were spent in full waterproof gear. The commitment I made to climbing a mountain a month led to some fairly tenuous (but still enjoyable) ‘mountains’. Despite including some very petite hills in my mountains of the month I did manage to complete Trail Magazine’s Everest Anywhere Challenge which I am pleased to see they are running again this year.

So what would I like to do in 2018…I’m not going to make this a binding list but sometimes I think it is helpful to commit ideas to print and so here are a few things that might inspire me to get out and about this year.

To walk some more of the Cotswold Way with family, maybe the section from Cheltenham to Chipping Campden.
To carry on running after managing to complete the NHS Couch to 5K plan this year. I really must do a Parkrun, I’ve printed my barcodes out at least 3 times and still haven’t made it to a run yet!
Foolishly I’ve signed up to the Dramathon Half Marathon, mainly in solidarity with my partner who loves whiskey and to honour this love has decided to take on his first marathon.
To visit some more exotic mountains, maybe even to explore altitude again.
To watch a national or international climbing competition
To take our first trip away in our van which is in the process of conversion

This list isn’t exhaustive, maybe it will get added to, maybe somethings won’t happen but it’s always good to start with plan A.

I saw a lot of #bestnine photos on the social media. Here are my #bestnine #realadventure pics for delectation.