England’s Coast to Coast 2015

 

Hi all, I’m back.  For those of you thinking the blog had gone silent for a couple weeks well, it had.  For the last 2 weeks I’ve been leading a small group of people including two families on the Wainwright Coast to Coast trail across England. Beyond the Pale readers know I did this trip originally in 2012 with my son Gabriel as a father – son “coming of age” event.  That trip went so well I thought I might see if others, particularly parents and teenagers, would be interested in doing the journey as well.  Through the International school I work at a couple families expressed a desire to go so on July 2 a group of seven of us boarded a British Airways flight from Hong Kong and off we were.

For 14 days our little group averaged almost 15 miles a day on the 200 mile trek through the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, and the North York Moors.

They realized very quickly it wasn’t easy…

There was rain, mud, wind, sun, cold, heat, and blisters to deal with all while climbing and descending mountains and hills. There was the relief of arriving at a beautiful bed & breakfast every evening mixed with the anxiety that after a night’s sleep we got to do it all over again.

But it’s in challenging times like this that people learn a lot about themselves and our little group was no exception.

I can speak for myself that I learned that leading a group is a whole lot different than walking a journey by myself.  Rather than an internal reflective time that I experienced on previous walks, my thoughts on this recent trip were instead consumed with:

“Can this person make the walk today?”

“Has dinner been ordered for the group tonight?”

“How do I arrange transport if someone can’t make today’s leg?”

“Where can I get medicine for a sick team member?”

“How can I encourage the team member who is getting discouraged?”

And a myriad of other thoughts along similar lines.

But that was the job… to “pay it forward”.  To give folk who would not normally take up this type of challenge the chance to experience it for themselves, and for some of them, with their teen-age children.

The responsibility of leading a team made it worth it when about half way through one parent came to me and said, “Thank you for organizing this trip. We could never have experienced something like this unless you were guiding us.”

Yeah, it was worth it!

But, that’s just an update on why you haven’t heard from me in a bit…but Beyond the Pale is back…and should be podcasting soon as well!