What does you To-Do list look like a week before departing on a long journey? My pack is ready, but anticipation has my mind buzzing with excitement about the walk competing with a too-long list of To-Dos.
Taking a three-month break from writing is going to be weird. I’ve been writing - first completing Soul of a Nomad and then In the Footsteps of a Roman Legion and now working on Canterbury and Other Tales - nearly every day since returning from my last trip in December 2019. Maybe this walk will provide grist for more stories.
For the past few nights my dreams have involved showing up at an airport to discover that I’m only wrapped in a towel. Pat and I then boarded a plane stripped of it’s seats. All the passengers sat jammed together on our luggage while armed flight attendants kicked anyone who stretched their legs. Doesn’t take much to analyze these dreams. I wonder if I should also be having nightmares about walking through Europe during a heat wave and extreme drought.
I’ve spent several hours over the past couple of weeks plotting our route onto our navigation app - Pocket Earth. Gone are the days of carting around cumbersome and heavy paper maps. Now a string of blue way markers wend their way across my iPad screen heading in a remarkably straight line south from Canterbury, leaving England at Dover, crossing France, over the Swiss Alps, into Italy and on to Rome. The last way marker sits on Vatican Square. All that’s left is to follow the GPS arrow. What could go wrong? Pat is bringing her compass just in case.
Back to the To-Dos. Travel insurance. Check. Dog sitter. Check. Garden tidied up. Not checked. Firewood stacked. Not checked. Best get on with it.
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