023 Scotland

"Scotland"

Scotland. Its all I have ever known for the past 14 years. In July 2006 I spent a few days in Manchester but didnt know as I crossed the border back home it would be for the last time. I really wish now I'd made the effort to go further South when I was doing better. I actually went far enough north that if the car had pointed South I would have been in England again.

The map above is a fair representation of where I have been in the past 5 years. Not entirely accurate. Furthest North on the East Coast we did get to Dornoch in October 2016- made famous by Madonna and her marriage to Guy Ritchie there. That is 211 miles from home. That is scarily close to how far by road Manchester is at 207 miles in the other direction. And it's not as if I did not have reason to. My wife took the kids down there a few years ago and although I was still mostly free of agoraphobia at that point my confidence was rapidly disappearing so I gave that a miss.

I am feeling a bit hemmed in at the moment. I seriously can't ever see me leaving this little island again but I hope to be proved wrong. I'd love to go visit my uncle and aunt down on East Anglia who are not keeping too well but can't see the change happening quick enough for that to happen. Inspired by Tony Robinson's rail journeys, Alexander Armstrong's midnight sun adventures as well as many more. There was a spate of pilgrimages too and although I'm not a fan of celebrity reality I found these fascinating on walks like the Camino de Santiago. I'm taken back to Michael Palin's travel writings and the fiction of Jack Kerouac. I'm itching to get back out there and see the world but right now not only can I not manage getting out of my country but I can't even leave my town again. I am hoping though I can overcome the latter before the year is out.