The Conclusions of 2016

The 2016 Walking Season
 arrives at its end.

So we made it through 2016, one of the worst years in living memory, indeed perhaps the worst year that I have lived through and the temptation to not bother looking backwards is pretty strong, especially as my walking season is already starting to feel like a bit of a failure, so the major point to consider about 2016 must be, Was the Walking Season Successful or Not? If we start by breaking down the list of projections for the walking year, made last February, the year did not come around all that well, with only a couple of targets coming together relatively easily, notably the completion of the Yorkshire Wolds Way and my regular targeting of the city of York, but many others being relative failures. Some more paths were struck around Leeds, as promised but none at all were made in Bradford, going unseen for the entirety of the year, and similarly, paths were made around Lower Wharfedale as scheduled but no attempts were made to break to the north in the direction of Harrogate and Nidderdale, despite having the strongest of intentions to travel out there. The most notable failure of the season was the social aspect, utterly failing to get my colleagues out onto the remoter paths of the county, finding that trying to get a disparate bunch of people involved is a lot like herding cats, and making no effort at all to get any of my friends out either, finding that I prefer the solitude of the trail to having to force some sociability out of my soul. Even worse, I made no attempts to do any walking in Lancashire, only getting over for one night to celebrate Younger Neice's birthday, and only getting together in the Hope Valley because My Sister willed some social interaction with the whole family in the late season, the lack of effort on my part for the year has been frankly shameful.

On the other hand, the mileage total on the year was very satisfactory, as I'd set myself a target of 500 miles and managed to achieve that with plenty of days to spare, and in all honesty, topping 550 miles in the season was well beyond my expectations, we might have gotten off to a slow start but we topped 15 miles on fourteen occasions, albeit in the flatlands mostly, so the stamina proved good throughout the year. Sitting down to reflect in the Dark Season has also allowed me to finally edit all of my walking career into a single interactive Google Map so all the paths walked, distances achieved and places visited can be seen in one location, one which makes it look like West Yorkshire surely couldn't have that much more to offer me when observed from a distance. The thing is even with the mileage added in 2016, my experience field close to home doesn't seem to have expanded all that much, only gaining small amounts of territory in Lower Wharfedale and across the Ainsty to York, and that might feel down-heartening until we acknowledge the fact that West Yorkshire still has So Much to Offer. I may have made it into only half of the areas that I had hoped to in the year, but that means that I still have another half to travel through in 2017, so the City and Alpine Hills of Bradford, the Upper Airedale - Lower Wharfedale bracket and the underknown lands of Harrogate and Nidderdale can be ventured into in coming season. Even if this season feels like a bit of a flop, it means that my fears of running out of local paths within three years are certainly unfounded, I've probably got at least four years worth at current rates and its been instructive to find that North Derbyshire isn't as far away as I'd thought, so venturing further afield in the coming years, in directions that aren't towards the Yorkshire Dales, ought to hold no fears for me either.

But Seriously Folks, Fuck 2016, because this year has been garbage, and not just because of all the great and good people we have lost in the last 12 months, for that may have been painful to all of us, starting with David Bowie and Pierre Boulez, and continuing on from there, but that has really been a statistical quirk. (Briefly explained, as we get older we become more aware of the people who die, them having been more active in our time, and as the Age of Celebrity has coincided with post Second World War era, death cutting its swathe through the Greatest Generation through to the Baby Boomers, suddenly makes it feel that bit closer to home. Notable to recall is the thought of 'why does death claim all the good people?', and that's because there are ultimately more admirable people than contemptible people in the world!) No, the real reason to curse 2016's name and to spit upon its memory is the horrible decisions that major democracies have made, which are certain to provide an ugly and destabilizing influence on our lives for potentially years to come, the prospects of these decisions made in the UK and USA fill me with a kind of horror that I have never felt before, as if lessons learned in history are about to be discarded and we are about to lurch into a dark and confusing future. Neither outcome was something that seemed plausible at the start of 2016, and even now it seems that no one, not even those in charge of either of these political debacles, has a clear idea of where they are going to lead, as many certainties of the modern world are going to be turned on their heads. I feel a lot less secure as we face the dawn of 2017, and the most positive thought I can ultimately conceive is that I hope we live to learn from the mistakes made in 2016, because I get the feeling that 2017 is going to have the potential to be much, much worse.

Next Up: Getting the Hell out of the Dark Season.