Monday 16th September.

Another working week begins, it's dark around six but the traffic noise drifting from the A1 to the east is building constantly. Summer is almost gone with October just around the corner. Crows chatter, pipes groan, wood creaks - all in the dawn blue - and I'm awake before it's supposed "healthy" however I know being awake naturally when the day begins is truer to my being. A spider spins its web by the back patio doors ready for another day catching lives. The sky is ribbed and carries broken clouds, to the east is a purple pink glow. It's going to be a lovely morning a blackbird sings. The dawn chorus only somewhat smothered by the sounds floating to me from the A1. Someone shouts on York Road breaking the moment. Back inside, brewing tea, I wonder how much the spider registers of this same beginning - does it experience everything as I do while setting it's trap?

Is it a habit waking prior to the dawn? It's the only time of day when I feel nature has a upper hand in the town and I'm more at ease.

Yesterday I walked most of the day, with a bright hangover, north eastwards. The penultimate day of waiting. Gathered all on my back and traipsed the distance. North from the flat to Chapel Allerton, through Pasture Lane, east along Gledhow Valley then over Soldier's Field passed Waterloo Lake in Roundhay Park and up to the outer ring road on the other side of Leeds Golf Club to Green Belt, high and relatively quiet.

It is only early on a Sunday morning I find it possible to walk out of the city, through north east Leeds' suburbia. With a few green spaces dotted around, to break up the monotony, and enough mature arboreal releasing peace.

Usually I walk backwards from Wetherby on a Saturday, but only as far as Oakwood where I catch the bus which goes passed Lovell Park and l can leave Harehills the other side of the glass.

Once I walked the other way, around 20 miles, via Menston and Temple Newsom, but walking into Leeds afterwards is pretty grim: Halton Moor, Neville Hill Junction South Accommodation Road, urban noises and M1 sounds disturbing the bitumen pathways over Richmond Hill.

On the north side of Leeds it's paddocks, pasture, smoothly interweaving fields, mature trees and no one. Meandering along Old Brandon Lane a couple of horse riders passed me, but otherwise I had the hangover to myself and blackberries in abundance.

On Tuesday morning I will pick up the other way in my life - the one which gives me meaning - Camino aka Pilgrimage. Which means being on my own in nature most of the day for days on end: it helps greatly to reduce the burden and heaviness I feel surrounding me.

Back in April I "hung my boots up". Appallingly, after Geneva to Le Puy, I told myself that this constant, enjoyable, revelatory Way was over. This was a huge mistake. Since that time - when I was extremely high - I've descended to new depths vis-à-vis mental health. There is only one purpose in my life and now I am fully aware what it is. Obviously I made a mistake in April and I am sorry to myself for this blatant mistake! Just keep walking and one day the relief will be perpetual.