New Year, New Challenges

Apologies for leaving such a gap since my last post, but I do hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and New Year, and that at least one of you has some adventures planned within your New Year's Resolutions. 

I just have the one made, as suggested by a work colleague. That is to endeavour to stay out of jail in 2017! No promises, but will give it a go.

One fabulous thing that happened is that I got another photo printed in the Observer New Review. 

The subject was "memories" and this was a picture of my late Father's treasure tins! Tobacco, plasters, mints, all sorts of tins filled with all sorts of odds and ends which were bound to come in handy one day!

So onto 2017. I think it is more of the same. I had a fantastic 2016 and did some incredible things, so this year I intend to carry on with that, but to really make an effort to explore new places as well as revisit my favourites. 

To this end, on my first solo trip of the year, I headed to Anglesey but on a new walk.

I found a circular walk in one of my many Anglesey Walk books that started in Aberffraw and took in part of the Anglesey Coastal Walk.

As with many of these walks, they start you off with a possibly false sense of confidence. The first few instructions are spot on and you begin to relax until you come to the gate that isn't mentioned, or the right hand turn that isn't actually there! Then when you navigate those, you end up in the field that is actually a swamp. Been there, done that often!

So the walk I followed probably wasn't the official one, but it was still pretty fabulous.

This church is St Cwyfan's and it is completely cut off by the high tide. 

This fabulous winch mechanism was situated on the top of a cliff edge. There was something very life affirming about standing there in very strong winds, near freezing temperatures, being completely alone and doing something I love. 

Much of the walk back was actually on the shore and with the tide being very high, this involved quite a lot of rock scrambling, which although was enjoyable in a perverse kind of way, it also caused a few injuries to joints and muscles that I didn't find out about until trying to get out of bed this morning! 

The coastline around Anglesey is incredibly dramatic, which is probably why I love it there so much. Definitely the go to place for the zen top up!

Lessons Learned: Treat the guidebooks as "suggestions" and an opportunity to improvise. Life is nothing without creativity and I've not managed to get myself irretrievably lost. Yet!

Diet Diary: OMG, what has happened? Where did it all come from? Surely I didn't eat that much! 
To which the answers are: I ate too much. Cake and chocolate. And yes I did!

Rambling Record: I am having another go at the 1000 miles challenge, but doing it a bit differently this year. Instead of counting all my walking which included work and shopping, I am just counting designated proper hikes. Going to be a bit more difficult but I reckon I can do this.