Rain, rain, rain.

The rain is falling. It's perpetual. The fields are waterlogged and everything smells of damp corruption. So Autumn is in fifth gear. Soon the season should switch into winter mode and things should be stiller, but frigid and settled. Most of the trees have reduced to leafless shadows of their former majesty.

There will be no variant to the bus journey from Leeds and back again until Emma sorts out the situation with the new house: it's two weeks overdue her moving in and things are a little tense at 42. Mum went to Harrogate for a change of pattern, even on a very wet day! Emma was about to go into bitching mode about living with mother. Finley was off school with a cold and said nothing to me as he passed the time on his iPad.

Lola and I picked up Dan's Lola and had a good two hours threading through the margins of the ploughed up fields, stubble and fallow. Yesterday after the way I felt coming into 42, with its attitude problems, and the on going issue at The Mews, where an apology isn't enough to allow me to head there for a pint, I returned to the flat sensing a hopelessness in my world again!

Two weeks walking 270 miles in La Mancha, being challenging by both conditions and environment, and within moments of coming back to Wetherby I felt pointless and bleak. Normally this feeling takes a few days to settle in.

Thankfully the walk this morning, siesta with Lola and a spot of messing put me back in a happier place.

Veering away from Bar3 I continued in the rain back onto the X98 and left Wetherby for another night. Lola knows I will be back tomorrow and I left her content and curled up in her space on the sofa.

Did the walk have any meaning? Does it help me? Haven't I got a little desperate to experience that beautiful plateau of tranquility when forcing myself into the present, without looking at what is to come ahead, most mornings on The Way?

It was interesting to realise I was grasping for a feeling I'd had without any expectations before. Like the feeling of the first hit of a drug, never experienced before, it was a truly original joy.

Why do thick women talk all the time, to one another, about the most basic nonsense? There is no gap between what is happening inside and what comes out of their tiring mouths. It's every time I come on the bus. What do they learn from each other from it ... It really does my head in. Usually the option is to retire inside earphones or headphones or a book but I've none of these at my disposal. Now they're quantifying the time the bus has taken to reach Regents Street roundabout. The bus has gone the wrong way. It's meant to go along Roundhay Road and passed my flat at this time of night.