Out of the Dark Season and Onwards!

New Walking Duds
for the 2020 Season!

A month on in 2020, and we're all still here, which is a relief, and with another Dark Season retreating into memory and the usable weeks of the year looming large, it's time to get back into the idea of walking for fun (and profit?) in 2020, as the first year of my Five Year Plan to get all of West Yorkshire's remaining corners and trails properly explored before I turn 50 comes into focus. Still, we've got on off-season to look back on before we set off full tilt into Season #9 of this ongoing odyssey, and it hasn't proved to be as inactive a break as I might have anticipated, as my supposed sit-down role at work has proved to be much more active than was suggested, as the need to provide cover for the Medical Records distribution, and the amount of bulk materials still being delivered on site mean that I'm not sat so much that my job immediately poses too much risk of me getting under-exercised and overweight. Thus we are alighting on the new season feeling like I'm physically ready to get going, not feeling too bloated at a measurement weight of 74.8k, a good three kilos lighter than I was at the same jump off point a year ago, and feeling mentally prepared for the fresh challenges, after only three stretches of an hour plus during the past twelve weeks of relative hibernation. They all came in around the festive season, one being the annual(ish) excursion out to Birstall retail park from Morley, which came ahead of Christmas, which we did about as low key as possible, with me hosting Mum at mine over the holiday day, before tripping over to Bolton to visit My Sister and family over the following weekend, where a circuit of Entwistle Reservoir filled out the useful exercise quota, before my traditional trip to Calderdale for New Year landed, opening 2020 with a trip out to the reservoirs around the head of the Ryburn, right at the heart of the terrain that this year's wandering should be headed. It wasn't a bad season for new additions to the walking gear pile either, landing another new wicking vest to replace the medium-sized ones that I rather boldly fill out these days, scoring many more pairs of socks to replace the ones that have either worn beyond use or proved not entirely suitable, and having finally gotten a new pair of Craghoppers to replace the two pairs that have been retired to a cupboard in Leicester, which are hoped to prove as durable as my most enduring trousers, which will be bravely entering their 16th(!) year of service as we hit the trails next week.

So where are we due to go in 2020, and walking season #9, as we start the Five Year Plan to get every remaining corner of  West Yorkshire visited before I turn 50 (while ignoring the fact that it's really the second year of a six year plan, as 2019's trips to the South crystallized the initial idea, admittedly after blazing trails that filled in some blank spaces in the North in 2018 which just confuses the issue even further)? The intent is to pretty much pick up where I left off last year, giving the feeling that this off-season has really been a brief hiatus, as we look to bust some trails from the outer edges of the field of walking experience for 2018:

• The main focus of the year will be into Calderdale, which aside from a single traversal on my Irish Coast Trek in 2015 hasn't seen any serious exploration since 2013, and as there's two years worth of tracks out there, we'll keep our focus on the southern half for now, the section above the Colne, but below the Calder.
• My holiday targets are a bit less ambitious than some of my priors, but as Mum is still game for a week away or two, we'll look towards the Rossendale Way for May, and the Mary Townley Loop of the Pennine Bridleway for September, while perhaps finding a trip to her Old Countries in Berkshire or Powys for July, maybe?
• The High Season plan is to start busting the trans-Pennine routes between West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, in the directions of the Tame valley, the Roch dale, and that weird Lancashire town that doesn't seem to have been seen by any transient travelers, and only exists for people who go there deliberately.
• Use the Early and Late Season to explore the hinterland to the east of Calderdale, the north of Kirklees, and the south of Aireworthwharfe between Dewsbury, Huddersfield, Halifax and Bradford, where far too many paths that are relatively close to home still remain unseen after eight previous years of wandering.
• Get over to visit My Sister more, and hopefully inspire some trips to unusual territories, as our previous excursions to the Peak District, the Dark Peak fringe of Cheshire and a summit in the Lake District have really whetted my appetite for expanding the boundaries of what's possible in a simple weekend away.
• And finally, remember to Break to Be Sociable, and take time off to prevent burnout as not every year needs to feature a tilt at 600 miles, as while enhancing your mental health through exercise is A Good Thing, doing it at the expense of your physical well-being is ultimately a Fool's Errand.

Doesn't it feel good to not see the Witton Weaver's Way on that list, eh?

One thing you'll not be seeing on the blog for a while, though, is stats, as my off season has seen me sitting down to properly compile my paper record of my wanderings again, having left it idle for over 18 months, and along the way I've discovered so many calculation errors, some dating back years, that all my achievement totals will need to be re-done, which is unsurprisingly going to take a while to get posted here, so there will be no fresh numbers added in 2020 until I'm certain that all my totals are correct, as my 5,000 miles targets might prove to be remoter, or indeed closer, than I've been reporting over the years. 

MAY 2020 Edit: All walking stats are now corrected, thanks to amounts of free time brought about by the weeks of Corona Virus Lockdown, and many applied hours of re-calculation, with blog stats revised back to 2018, to ensure the information presented here for contemporary readers is as correct as it could hopefully ever be.

5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 4266.5 miles
2020 Total: 0.0 miles
Up Country Total: 3803.5 miles
Solo Total: 3952.3 miles

5,000 in my 40s Total: 2860.3

Next Up: Being NIW for a week and busting the 2020 season open.