It's a trigger point, leaving. Especially if you think there's the smallest chance you might not make it home, it's a time to revisit all the people who are close to you. They are all part of my journey.
From left to right; Mrs / Dr S, Huw my sheep farmer neighbour, Gary who builds my woodland steps and Graham the Dig who built nearly everything on my land except the old part of the house.
It doesn't seem at all real now the journey has started. Clearly nothing planned here, just whatever is waiting for me. Sometimes we make the process of a journey around the world more complicated than we need to. I have decided to take each day as it is happens to be, and repeat that every day until next April. Three days on the road and I get into a safe place and want to eat and then sleep. Legs good, heart and lungs functioning with adequate capacity whilst my enthusiasm, linked to mental health, is moving positively to a point where it needs to be. Less questioning, just a mood to get on with it.
The three family dogs; Cadi the eldest along with Teggie and her daughter Pipsqueak, all border collies with Caroline loving the shallow waters of Ynyslas across the estuary from Aberdyfi.
Caroline is missing me too. Her natural emotional resource being playfulness. There is a parallel between how seriously we take life and the amount of problems it gives us. I'm on the road and still packing and she knows that. I have never left my house and not had to retrieve something I'd forgotten. Maybe everything and anything happening or not is simply a state of probability. Packing properly and doing everything as right as you can is part of the maths but to be apart for so many months is a challenge quite far. Assumptions that she'll be waiting for me to return is based on understanding and logic and anger and despair until things settle down and then there is resignation followed by hope.
Caroline’s film
Wife Caroline says goodbye. She’s logical, a scientist who uses few words when many would work equally well. Balanced in how she needs to feel knowing I leave for a very long time. “I know you’re coming back,” she said, “so I will wait for you.”