Walkabout

I have signed up to join the disabled Ramblers Association.  It only costs £15 a year and that enables access to a trampster trek whenever you want one.  I am looking forward to that because the landscape means a lot to me - I have decided to show more photographs this week.  It is also to show that I run a responsive blog - my Scottish pal enjoy the images of the Yorkshire Dales and where we have lived for 33 years, and has requested more.  This countryside has always been a spiritual and emotional comfort blanket for me.  When I was working hard and there were problems that were getting on top of me I would put on my boots and disappear most Sunday afternoons for about 2-3 hours on the Chatsworth Estate

grouse moors at the back of our house, whatever the weather.   A really memorable walk was in a white out one January and another was when Liz and our friends Wendy and Ian were with us. We walked through huge snow drifts to Grassington and couldn’t stop laughing because Wendy who is not as tall as the rest of us was up to her thighs in snow at some points on the journey.                                                  

I always came back from walks relaxed and with things in a better perspective.  MSA has killed that, so I only have memories now and some lovely photographs.  I go to the gym instead but it’s not quite the same although the drive there on the scenic route, not the shortest route, is over the moor.

One lesson from this is that visual diaries of favourite places are precious. You don’t realise how precious until you can no longer get to them.