A rebel without a clue.

And I've woken up bored. Bored of my life. Unexcited by going through the morning routine to get myself to Wetherby for the Wetherby routine and then carry on until the evening when I fall into the dream state. I need an adventure. But can I afford one before the start of Summer when I will have to position myself dog centre of Wetherby... It could be worse? I read somewhere that death can be caused by cell boredom too... Pseudoscience at its worst, but interesting? I know boredom is an aspect of what causes depression. I am rarely depressed when I am drifting with no actual goal really in mind. Got down to Boar Lane for the 7 am bus. Ready to be removed along the same streets, with the same spoken stop points. Last night I returned to the flat to make a rice dish with a broth I'd made from the various spices, herbs and three eggs - this morning I washed up and put everything back in its place. Yesterday morning was Robert and my monthly meeting, but, first the first time ever,...

At 7am I left the flat with the intention of walking for two hours and coinciding with the X99 on the A58, but by the time I had reached the gates entrance to Roundhay Park, and in the glorious late spring sunshine, I felt inspired to continue until at least East Keswick and then catch the bus three hours after leaving the flat, but as I sat in the same sunshine, by the war memorial on Whitegate, I drank some tea and decided I could perhaps reach Woodhall and then I'd be in the direct environment of Wetherby and finish up at Raby Park, and an earned libation, at the Cinema before perhaps meeting Mother, Finley and Lola. But I hesitated in Wetherby, in the sunshine, a few hours before returning to Braine Road where I briefly saw Lola. Now I've realised I've been neglecting her and will, after breakfast with Robert, make it up to her - down to the river and a bit of fun.. Yesterday I covered 15 miles in 5 hours. And I wasn't sore ...

Monday morning, final few days of May. Quiet Sunday. Not exhausted or sleep deprived, but needed not to open Pandora's box ... Washing linen, making porridge and thinking of walking a little distance this morning - no buses to Wetherby until after nine - a Sunday service this Spring Bank Holiday. Meeting Robert on Tuesday for our monthly get together and yesterday I didn't look at the Course once... Reading Graham Greene but finding the novel a little flat or haphazard in its narrative structure... Perhaps it is me as I wasn't dedicated to the duty of getting into the story unfolding? It's been a while since I read anything with the cataract.

Five days since the eye operation and I feel fine: I might be overdoing the CBD though... Need to stop that! I am almost sure I am stoned from it. Everything is a bit foggy. Running a bath before getting it together for Lola and Allotment, then walking Monday ... But I forgot that Lola's at Emma's, so I am surplus to requirements: a quiet day around Leeds, some nice lunch, etc, chill out and go to Wetherby Monday morning. Yesterday I did water the allotment comprehensively.

A day earlier than I realised is the big op, D-day, freedom from this smudge on the right lens - cataract - I'd put it on the calendar for 7:30am on Thursday, but, after a courtesy call from St James's Hospital, I was made aware it's this morning! So here I am drinking water up until 5:30 and awaiting the sunrise over Jimmy's - blue skies all the way again. Returned to the flat, washed all that was in the cylinder, ate a protein rich dinner and faded out, but then had broken sleep as the room is getting warmer, as it does in summer, so slept mainly on the covers until the temperature receded and crawled back under until I had a feature length dream about working dockside for a luxury yacht company handing out passenger keysets to get onto a rig being blown around by a storm on the Quayside - somewhere like Middlesbrough in my head. Half an hour of drinking left before nothing for 2 hours ... I've muddy feet from watering like a madman up on the allotment in sandals!...

I've taken a larger step in the direction of CBD by buying a kit, rather than a disposable vape pen, and now I want to reduce the dosage of SRNI by half and see if I still feel as chilled out as I do currently... Less anxious with people around me. However I definitely need to reduce smoking the vape pen to more like twice a day or around meal times and not as a 'go to' like some 1940s big screen idol! Two more sleeps until cataract surgery and last alcohol until the other side of it. But how I wish it wasn't a dominant part of my life. It's so destructive. But it's been a part of my life since mother provided me with Woodpecker cider from the bottle shop in Craigie back in 1988...

My problems began the morning of the first day at Wetherby High School in September 1983 and didn't cease, except for those all too brief years in Australia, until 2013 when the big implosion occurred. Thirty years, give or take. But then something true opened up within me from 2013 and I have been readjusting to it for 10 strange years. Now I am 51 so it's 40 years in a kind of wilderness: barren, stoney, parched and unrelenting, where the horizon never changes and all potential is a mirage. In a manner of speaking, I caused this way through life myself, as I twisted and turned to constantly face a perceived threat which, however real, was mainly in my head. What complete fool I have been! At no point was the world a threat to my security at all... And I put myself on the chopping block without any consideration that I could get up and walk on away from it: turning the other cheek, waking up or becoming the Christ?

Friday morning. A good night's sleep. A fairly good Thursday. Not too hungover after a very random Wednesday, where I literally went north to come south (went left to come right)! Via Knaresborough (on the train - gratis), Spen Lane, Kirkstall Road, Otley Road, Leeds University, etc, before a bowl of baked beans - gratis - and an unbroken night's sleep. But yesterday was tough, as is usual for me (and on Ascension Day too), however it's the morning of the second Occupational Health appointment in the Light Surgery and I am not hungover as I was at the initial screening a few weeks prior. Also an appointment to have the cataract surgery done a week on Thursday (25th May at 7:30am) has been registered in my diary/calendar. Tomorrow I have Ruby overnight so I do believe, against my usual pattern, I will manage two days straight without reaching for another half pint of some real ale as I stretch out to oblivion like some desperate fool... Yesterday I spend from 9am until I ret...

Lovely morning on Monday down in the various parklands between 42 the river and the return. And at lunch time too. Decided to buy a little meat to share with Lola that fine afternoon: lamb steaks, asparagus and a medley of vegetables: Lola got around one third with her dinner. Then, stupidly, I popped out to get bread, etc, but didn't get further than the vape shop or Snug and Chatter... Oh well. Lola had a bit of a fight with me before we turned in. I awoke at 1 feeling the effects and took two painkillers. Just fed Lola - biscuits only - later something special. And am about to get ready to face this Tuesday. Unlikely to go to the allotment today, but mum's back Wednesday morning/lunchtime so I will spend the afternoon there weeding again?

Mum's away in Scarborough. It's the first time I've been @ 42 alone since before Lockdown in 2020. Mum hasn't been away in so long it's untrue! Yesterday I took Lola out in the morning for a brief walk and then we climbed aboard the X70 around 12:30pm to be dropped off on Wetherby Road, near the junction with Rudding Lane, Harrogate, to walk into The Great Yorkshire Show ground passed Fodder along the Crimple Beck by the disused viaduct, prior to meeting Nick in North Bar just after 3pm. Now all three vizslas I caterer for have visited Rooster's Taproom on Hornbeam Park Industrial Estate. She was a bit excited and barked frenetically as I let her settle in and ordered a vegan burger and a half of a Rooster's ale after having a half of a keg beer(both below 4% abv) then we walked into Town via the Stray and The Tap on Tower Street, The Little Ale House and Cold Bath Brewery before heading to North Bar where Lola had a tin of sardines and we sat outside waitin...

The promise of dog sitting in Bramham vanished into the ether: Emma's friend Lou asked another person. C'est la vie. And I don't know her dog anyway so I'd have to get to know him soon if I am to dog sit for her ever? One door shuts: now I have Ruby for an additional two days overnight on the 20th a little before I get her during July and August for a couple of weeks. We get on so well and she's super happy to be with me, and Lola gets on well with her too, so it is more ideal; it'll be nice to see her again? Just now I was looking back over the photos I took in June 2015 walking from Arles to Lodéve and recall it was when I was 'learning' about Le Chemin and really didn't know what I was doing down there in Gard and Hérault: the highlight was the Camargue and Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert abs climbing up the escapement/gorge to overlook the whole of the Hérault area: quite beautiful. After I 'quit' the Chemin I returned to the UK walking back from...

Well you never know what is around the corner? Here we are Friday morning and pretty skint for the next quarter and then a week's dog/house sitting comes along. Emma's friend Lou, in Bramham, needs me from the 27th May. Now it looks possible I am going to Montpellier with Glenn after all (as a replacement for Mark, who is, sadly, dead). Glenn wants to rock up during their solstice summer festival: which I've tried to sleep through when walking from Arles in 2015, and perhaps 2013 when I met him there (briefly). There is the route north from Nîmes/Arles to Le-Puy-en-Vellay ... Must start thinking of another pilgrimage just when I may need one as Wales wasn't a pilgrimage with too many glasses of wine! But perhaps a couple of glasses on the Strand south of Montpellier, by the large Etang de Mauguio - Carnon and Carnon-Plage ... About to catch the 7:30am X98, the one littered with chav school kids enroute to Wetherby Sty School and having a coffee and pain aux raisin in Pr...

I am currently reading a Bill Bryson travel journal and, although laughing out loud loads, wondering why he's so 'conventional' in his approach to the places he visits? Staying in nice hotels, doing all the museums and galleries, getting fatter and falling down drunk, forgetting to undress, and struggling to collect himself the following morning? The final part I understand well, but the ordinary way he goes about his vocation: travelling by train, booking into exorbitant hotels, flying across a continent (Sweden to Italy for instance)? The time he spends in Hammerfest is intriguing - just to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights - but what is he really telling me about the 'adventure' he is one? When I originally read his writings years ago I didn't see the obvious way he goes about his journeys where nothing seems at random or leftfield at all. Perhaps it was a different time? As I get older I prefer a comfortable night's sleep, a nice firm mattress, the ...

So a full day back in England and I slept so well at the flat in a freshly made bed. I'd washed the entirety of my bed linen, including the undersheet protector, prior to going down to the Dee Valley. The sun was shining as I got off the number 7 on Vicar Lane and went and bought some 'essentials' for the flat: banal toilet paper and bland toilet cleaner: both whiter than white. And a nice selection of veg to whip up a nice dinner, which was a halloumi based biriyani - but without the sauce. And I had the official letter about a PIP assessment which neither I nor Glenn can make so I will be postponing and hoping the one postponement doesn't clash with the expected cataract surgery? Why is there only one postponement ... Oh well, I will go along with one eye covered and affect a pirate accent - sounding like I am from Bristol - and hobble on the left foot and stumble on my right knee. Oh the joy of getting passed 'it' if I was ever capable of 'it...

Well that was an interesting, if a bit expensive, five nights in and around the Welsh Marches. It cost close to £60 per night, but I prefer beds to tents now so it must be? It was a weekend of discovery and Wales is firmly on my radar now as another option in my long list of potentials between now and the end of the path I weave? Got back around 6 with a bag of sausage, chips, mushy peas and a can of Dandelion & Burdock (Ben Shaw's) £7.30 from The Frying Pan before making a bed and sleeping some 12 hours, again, creeping down to start the 9th of May. Now I drink a second cup of filter coffee by the back patio listening to the cries of the crows and the remains of the dawn chorus, while our humanity steers into the various roads away from the Coronation bank holiday into work and I consider how quickly I can clear the debts accrued over the rest of spring and summer before I set sail for France come September and Mont Saint Michael... This morning I reconnect with Lola for the r...

Walking back the way I came. Yesterday sun, but today drenched. Just over an hour to recross my steps passed the church, horseshoe weir and giant oak along the towpath then went right along the main road with damp boots. If it breaks I may walk to Chirk... that's unlikely though. Time to catch the bus... On a miserable morning I am on the number 5 towards Chester, to change at Wrexham and head to stand 7 @ 10:45am to Caer/ Chester before the long haul on Northern Rails direct service to Leeds. Last meat related morning. Great breakfast and welcoming tea at the café in Riverbanc after leaving the Sun Inn at 6:30. Hung around until 10 reading the first chapter of Bill Bryson's Neither here nor There ... Back into a book. No traipsing uselessly today. Mentally and physically exhausted! 

Blessings. Sunday and asleep by 1800. Walked back passed The Sun Inn @ Rhewl, the back road route from Carrog, and asked if they could accommodate me a night to which the landlord said 'I'll just ask the wife' and low and behold I've a comfortable double mattress on the floor, two giant Pyrenean Mountain dogs and a snack at nine, when I finally awoke from the snooze ... I was tired I apologised for sleeping ate gratefully, paid £30 and waltzed back up to the best bed so far since Wednesday. But the I was led here. I tried Corwen and the Grouse @ Carrog for accommodation, but Corwen was too expensive and rough around the edges and the sister pub to the Grouse was even more expensive and on the A5 where motorbikes were driving me bonkers. So I'd just about decided to go back to Llangollen and catch a bus, starting the long route back to Leeds already or stay again at the Hand Hotel, but I was wary of pigeons waking me up all through the night - alcohol or no. Sunday I...

Drinking from mountain streams and skipping passed oblivious sheep, fleeing for their lives up wind as I head west with the sun creeping over my left shoulder. With lead in these hills go steady on the water. A little heavy metal killed noone?

End of day two. Llangollen and exhausted. Nowhere to stay - well until the final one! The Hand hotel. Room 45 a single with a bath. Breakfast is at 8 and tomorrow is 'only' 15 miles to Corwen or there is the Offa's Dyke National Path up to the coast. Like yesterday I am not sure where I am or where I am going, but I'll keep on? But my knees are stiff and feet are water damaged/logged - last section I put on the sealskinz, but I tend to sweat in them. Just about ready to dump the terrible Salomon hiking boots: I've been compensated so it means nothing and they get water logged just looking at grass... *** Good morning Llangollen. Live yogurt, prunes, banana and alpen. Two coffees and an orange juice. A hangover. Two pints of Old Rosie, many halves and then good wine... Oh well. In Europe I rarely 'play' when waking, however it was the Coronation and I am not the only male adult human with a dycotomy in my nature? It's sunny and blue. I'll be fine once...

Tall grass and stampeding bullock's. Wet wet wet. Chasing them away. Next stop breakfast. Oh and nettles, but it was fun following the path alongside the left bank of the Dee before I was brought away with privacy signage ... Then it's across three wheat fields with tall wet grass. Soaked from the thighs down. But a full English/Welsh in the community café and bread to sop up the tomato sauce and various oils, fats and unions. No coronation - I am too chicken and the locals are getting on with life as normal: The Little Kitchen in Rhosymedre. Waterproof socks and a second attempt at defecation and then it's the final leg towards Llangollen along the canal, over the viaduct/aqueduct etc and hopefully somewhere cheaper than Bangor was last night. But £8 well spent having breakfast where the locals don't care for pageantry either...

No meat yesterday or Wednesday, but a well filled bap with sausages, bacon, egg and HP Sauce at the Aldford village stores. A pot of tea and off I go again - bit of rain in the skies and again the temperature has plummeted since the nice meander along the Dee by The Meadows to the Iron Bridge of the Duke of Westminster s estate... Knackered at the end. 22 miles and the same old foot pain. £80 for a self catering cottage this evening, but I am polishing off a pasta meal and considering an early night: tomorrow is the Coronation Walk. But where too? I almost went along the Marches Way, but stuck to the Dee Way, which vanished and left me walking through meadows, passed ewes and lambs, bullocks, four very noisy thoroughbreds and knee deep wet grasses mixed with nodding stinging nettles at many styles or gates: I waded through and worried not about that pleasant tingling. *** As I lay down I drifted into sleep and only awoke to the dawn chorus. A good night's sleep. I lingered in The B...

The new market hall. Ravioli and three glasses of wine: Sancerre, Chablis and Rías Baixas, but I must drag myself off to bed. I've some mileage to do tomorrow towards Whitchurch, Wem or Wrexham... All the double yews. The Watling Street... Offa's Dyke. Malvern. Oh the memories? Oh a pizza - yes. I need the calories for the walk? *** But I didn't. And that room is just too warm. Even with both windows open. So it's a new town and I played out. Once again. I am leaving though. Once I am level, not horizontal. Coffee on Northgate @ Café Gate. As Tradeteam start the morning noise rolling barrels into The Coach House Inn. It's not yet 7am. Do I not bother with a heavy breakfast? Porridge would do. Waiting until 7:30, then off at 8am. Over the bridge and away into the wilderness? *** Two coffees, three almonds and one Huel and passing under the Queen's Park Bridge heading towards another me...

Walked the walls and eaten a hearty full English breakfast (vegan). Now it's time to relax and let it work its magic: the house keeper dropped a sheet off - the under floor heating is a bit much and the windows are so large. The building is listed so the heating comes with the territory. *** At 2:30 I drank a Bruges Zot and then a Karma Kola ... Too sweet. Now I am back at Porta and only a Estrella Damm then seek pasta. Handed over The Doll  by Lukáš Tomin. Finished but it's very surreal and it wasn't so compelling. So the girl in Porta from last night, who was interested in it, can have it and decide if it's just me who struggled with it ... otherwise it's another charity book. 

Good morning Chester. The edge of the civilised world. The Roman's built their Deva opposite the Welsh/Druid/Briton madness to feel safe? And that's where my feet will be leading me tomorrow morning - to be unsafe ... I was going to Basel, but I didn't, instead of climbing out of the 13:42 to Victoria Station in Manchester I bought another leg of the journey to Chester, leaving Stockport and Greater Manchester for another occasion. At 1630 I checked in to The Coach House Inn, at five I devoured a plate of black beans, salad, quinoa etc from Big Lola's in the new market hall. At 5:30 I was sipping vino de Jerez in Portas below the Northgate arch and then I wandered around Chester, crossing the river and back over to The Rows . It's a stunning city and it's English through and through. A frontier ... Beyond the river it's banditry and hooliganism? Perhaps I should be scared of Wales as I go to be scalped by woad washed barbarians? 

Mostly coughing up phlegm since Saturday, but I may be sweated it out of me at the flat on Monday evening: the linen was drenched; and now it is fresh once more. What will today bring. I've an idea to go to Whitchurch and walk from there to Chester, the Wirral and perhaps Northern Wales... First thing tomorrow is a visit to the allotment to plant lettuce and find the disappeared hammer... I used it briefly on Saturday, when putting up the frames of canes to grow Tomatoes around, but I am sure I put it back ... But that can't be? I'll check amongst the stiffening strawberries as it might've nestled betwixt in an absent thought while this flu, COVID, fever thing was claiming me for a few days. Yesterday I laid in bed a lot as i felt very cold, but it was cold outside. By the patio door this morning listening to the dawn chorus and the distant murmur of the A1(M) as a few locals gather themselves into their motorized boxes to take them from box A and deliver them to box B ...