My final decent...the countdown begins

He often used to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep and every path was its tributary. 

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”

Frodo Baggins about Bilbo, The Fellowship of the Ring, Three is Company

Well Jane A this was not a 40 mile hike, or Danielle anywhere near as long as your trek (hope the backs feeling better today), but I thought to mark the start of my birthday week I would see where a 40 minute walk from home got me (and back again). It's more a hobbits size walk, but as Lao Tzu would say 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step', and I must have done a few of them in my time. 

The weather wasn't what I'd ordered, good old Cornish mizzle, but even on a cloudy damp day the countryside near home holds a kind of majestic mystery, as if it has stood this way since the dawn of time. With the cloud hanging in the valley I felt I was walking up in the clouds like a plane on its final decent. In someways that's what this week feels like to me, it's the approach to something different, while I'm nothing new. There is something so calming about a good walk, it gives you plenty of time to reflect on life and all its goodness, while the rhythmic tread is soothing for the soul (and best of all it's absolutely free). 

...home in time for tea