Thursday am

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 chance of a bath rather than a shower, so I don't carry either my tent or the bivvy I have hidden in the back of the wardrobe, and I only ever carry two of the three Snugpak sleeping bags I own (the largest one has not been used since I crossed over from Pamplona to St Jean Pied de Port in February 2017, connecting the route I walked in 2013 towards Burgos and in 2018 when I went all the way from Limoges to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port) so something has altered in me from those original times along el Camino?

Am I getting banal in my adventuring? If this is true I didn't spot it ... Age is but a number, but aging has all these disadvantages as the body fails to cooperate with the possibilities the world is presenting. Paying hotels/bed and breakfasts/self catering cottages upwards of £80 per night is just like Bill Bryson and expecting soap, shampoo and shower gel and eating only the best food available... What am I becoming or have I become ...

Sitting here at the patio door and listening to the gentle patter of rain on the Tomorite sacks, with the accompanying bird song, makes me wonder if I shouldn't go back to carrying the tent and accessories in a 65 litre backpack and seeing how quickly I go lame through the left foot ... Oh boy hitting 50 isn't fun! But perhaps it is... I can't help laughing at the agonies!

I've got old! Sat with a bowl of gruel - a loose porridge, banana mushed up, currants to keep me regular - with one(left) foot firmly in the grave - and trying to turn the tide of time as it drags me underneath it's cascading inevitability.