Saturday 29th May 2021
I’d planned for this week to be my health week. The idea was to get out and moving while the weather was nice but for one reason or another, that just didn’t happen. I sit down for long periods of time and it’s easy for me to become so detracted that I don’t move for hours. I forget to take breaks to get up and stretch.
I’ve done a couple of videos for C recently. They’re into their trading card box breaks so I’ve been lending my camera equipment so they can film them. I then edit the videos together, put a title on the front and create the finished video for them to upload.
Trouble is that they turn these box breaks into 90 minute monsters. I’m not sure that’s the most effective for Youtube… but it’s keeping them occupied during the Pandemic and it always seems that bucking the trend and doing your own thing is the best thing to do. So I let them do it however they want.
Trouble is that is that as it’s producing the finished file and uploading to Dropbox it’s commanding my PC. I have memories of PCs crashing while you were processing video and then tried to do something else before it had finsihed, so I have a habit of leaving it well alone while it’s working.
So with nothing to do, and it being a nice day, I decided to go out for a walk and do a few Geocaches.
Back before Leggeddon, I used to be immobile and wanting to go out for walks. They were nice but there was no incentive to go out. I started geocaching as a way to encourage me to walk… and it worked. So now with the Pandemic and after illness, where I find myself in the same position, I find myself wanting to do it again.
My back and knee are fucked right now. I think it’s due to weight gain, but it means that – despite walking to C’s every day – anything longer than about 1km and everything starts hurting. I’ve been slowly trying to build back up, push through the pain a little, sure that strengthening muscles will actually aid me.
So with the PC chugging along, a nice day, and having found out my old GPS unit which I loaded with all the local caches, the plan was to go down to one of the local parks and spend a couple of hours rummaging in hedgerows.
What I didn’t count on was the field these caches were all in, being filled with a funfair. I know people need to make money, but a funfair in a pandemic? Seriously, it feels like the entire world has forgotten about Covid.
Because you look odd jumping into hedgerows, there was no way I could cache at my original target.
Time for a change of plans.
There were a few that lead away from town, over the motorway and up into the downs, so I decided to go do those, with the plan being that when I started to ache I would turn around.
One of the things I’ve learnt about geocaching is that it is good exercise. You have to bend down to pick up cache containers, you sometimes have to climb over fallen trees. Nothing too strenuous, but enough to get you moving. I’m not sure if that’s the reason why, but I kept going for hours.
I ended up on top of the downs in a lovely little village with thatched cottages. It felt like I’d escaped my surroundings for the first time since I went to Uffington last summer. That village felt like a goal so, now starting to ache, I turned around and came home.
I estimate it to be about 8 miles that I walked today. That’s seriously not bad, and whilst I feel exhausted – I have a weariness that I can feel down to my bones – I feel better for it.
I didn’t find a huge number of caches. I’ve got rusty in my time away. And there was one that I could not open. I am so weak!
But I had fun. I might now be dehydrated, aching, and unable to move for most of next week but it feels like progress. In a week where the focus was on health this is exactly the type of achievement I needed and a major milestone in recovering my health.
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