It’s been nearly a year since I last posted a blog, laziness rather than a lack of something to say! My last post was about Stephen and my wanderings along The Arctic Circle Trail last September in Greenland… since then I’ve taken more family trips and, would you believe, holidays with Carolynn! Except for one that was a last minute trip to Phoenix Arizona to photograph the new Lightning F35’s air to air, that had recently been purchased by the Belgium Airforce.
Carolynn and I took a short winters trip to Iceland and a family holiday to Lanzarote, whilst I’ve done a couple of trips to Anglesey to further Jeremy and my wanderings along the Wales Coast Path and Carolynn and I have also started a couple more long distance paths with Andrew and Caroline, the Thames Path and the South Downs Way. This comes from a man that said he would never do any ‘long distance paths’!
Retirement is flying by faster than I could have ever anticipated. And another birthday has just crept up and run past me at lightning speed, I just managed to catch a couple of pieces of a wonderful Victoria sponge as the day flew by. Next year though, I’m going to have to ask ‘will you still need me and, will you still feed me?’ And when the song says ‘many years from now”, I have to say I thought it still was! Ahhh, age, only a number, right. Unfortunately that number affects my motivation to get up off my arse and train, as that number creeps up it seems to have slowed me down. I never could touch my toes with straight legs, now my hands wave despairingly at them from my knees!
I have two or three’ish more walks in the pipeline, so the incentive to train, I know, will return and that extra four or five kilograms I’ve accidentally put on, will fall off to take me back to my fighting weight. Are any of you asking what these trips might be? Well, I’m going to tell you anyway… Next March I hope to walk two weeks of the Jordan Trail from Dana to Petra and onto Wadi Rum. A solo trip unless anyone fancies coming along? Next July, Stephen and I have booked to walk to K2 Basecamp, where we’ll separate and I will return over the Gondogoro La and Stephen will do a ‘there and back’ and we’ll meet up again at the end. The training will start shortly… honestly!
I’m assuming there are one or two of you that are thinking what has any of this got to do with the title ‘A Jaguar, a Caiman and a Giant Otter’, nothing, just waffling, really.
Anyway, I’m sat here at Terminal 3, Heathrow waiting for the overnight flight to São Paulo, Brazil then onto the Pantanal, the central wetlands of Brazil where the largest Western Hemisphere cat, the Jaguar, lives… where me and my ‘second wife’ my Canon R5 (not my name for the camera, I might add), will be there to Photograph them in their natural habitat.