It’s December 9th and my mum is downstairs writing the end of year round robin email to one of my dad’s childhood friends – he’s excruciatingly bad at writing emails. Got to do the one to Auntie Thelma later – I’m not sure what relation she actually is; maybe my grandad’s cousin? Anyway, she’s in her 80s, she has a Oxbridge degree in maths, which is unusual for a lady of her age, I think she worked in the nuclear industry and Dad writes her a long letter every year keeping her up to date. I’ve never met her. I don’t think Dad has since he was a teenager but he keeps in touch. I did wonder for a while if she even knew who he was, if she kept receiving these letters from a total stranger and sending a polite “nice to hear from you, happy Christmas, please don’t turn up at my house” card back, but we had a short letter from her in early lockdown and it seems she does know who everyone is.
So I thought as Mum’s writing to Paul, I’d write to you. Her letter is is full of hospital appointments, news about my grandmother and “… what else did we do this year? Umm… we’ve put the Christmas decorations up?”.
Mine is… well, how do you condense an entire year into a post? Especially an entire year like 2021.
2021 was the year when life was supposed to get back to normal. The virus was supposed to evaporate on the stroke of midnight on December 31st 2020 and all restrictions were supposed to end. It didn’t. At this point, another year on, it doesn’t feel like we’re any further on still. 2020 at least had an element of novelty to it. Now every hint of trying to stop the spread and kill it off and put an end to all this is met with #IWillNotComply and I block and ignore because otherwise a galaxy swirls in my brain and stomach telling me that life as I knew it has ended forever and nothing will ever go back to normal and we can’t put an end to it unless we systematically eliminate all the people who break lockdowns and refuse to get vaccinated and wear masks and that’s never going to happen and then I just want to cry and scream because if this is the future, I don’t want to live here anymore.
But it wasn’t all bad.
I didn’t do much in January because we were in lockdown. Some country walks was as adventurous as it got. It snowed in January, didn’t it? I woke up early one Sunday, went out for a walk in the low light and to take photos and then dragged my parents out of bed to see it before it got slushy. That’s about the only interesting thing that happened in January, except that my boss decided his niece was coming to work for us for a few weeks and I was going to manage her. And I did, and it went pretty well!
In February, I did a lot of Guidey stuff. I held their annual winter survival camp, Sparkle and Ice, in the garden and replicated as many activities as I could within the confines of the lockdown. It was great! Wasn’t even that cold in the tent. We did a weekend-long virtual sleepover for Thinking Day with the Guides and I finished the weekend at the virtual Pax Lodge celebration.
March was a bit quiet. Pax Lodge had a virtual birthday party and I went to that, but that’s about all I did.
Did it pick up in April? …no, not really. More Guide stuff – I did the adult leadership mentor training and attended a mentoring meeting. I even met two leaders in person, out on the grass on a lovely sunny afternoon, and we went through the qualification book.
May was when 2021 finally got started for me. My open-air pool reopened and so I started to swim twice a week. I went to Monkey World, Mock the Week came back on TV and Ragnarok’s season two was released on Netflix. It’s not much – but come on, I swam twice a week and that means I did more in May than the rest of the year so far put together! And I met one of the county ladies face-to-face to do the practical part of my first aid renewal, so I’m all first aided up again for a couple more years. Oh, and I had my first Covid jab. Blog-wise, someone linked my post on Icelandic deleting Z on Reddit and I got a month’s worth of traffic in less than two days. I guess May was quite a busy month, as 2021 goes.
I started travelling again in June. I went tree camping on Brownsea Island, followed immediately by my North Dorset glamping trip. Took the weekend off but then was off camping in Devon the weekend after. Three trips in one month! And I still squeezed in two swims a week. By now I was obstinately doing a mile each time after my boss casually observed “Oh, I swam a mile this morning and I was absolutely exhausted by the end!”
Two more trips away in July. I enjoyed the tree camping so much I went back, and I went back to the campsite on Dartmoor as well. I had my first live comedy show since September – one of my local theatres has a bit of waste green land down the side so they put a small stage in the bottom of the hollow and called it the Ampitheatre. Nice evening in the dying sun, with a mix of people gathered in the bottom on camping chairs and people like me sitting on the slopes on blankets. I taught my first archery session in eighteen months, on a range with no curtains and arrows in the worst condition I’ve ever seen. And then I had my second jab. It was due in August but I was able to bring it forward. Of course, most importantly, I did my kayaking Discover and Explore awards. Those were the highlight of my 2021, I think.
After all the excitement of July, August was a bit quieter. I swam twice a week and I went to the Moonlight Swim in Shepton Mallet. I should have gone to see Twin Atlantic in Oxford, rescheduled three times from March 2020 but I didn’t think I was at a stage in the plague where I wanted to be in a crowded room with a load of strangers who weren’t wearing masks. Shame, I think that would have been a great evening. I took up Finnish! I kept it up for about two months, until Duolingo started introducing weird adjective agreements and quietly threatening cases, or the equivalent, without ever actually explaining any of it, at which point I abandoned it. But I learned enough to ask where the hat is and to say “I speak English”. I hired a kayak and tried out what I learned on my courses on my own. Between August and September, I think I went out kayaking at least three times because I’ve got three receipts from the local pub – you sit outside and admire the view and use their wifi to order your food and drink directly from the table. I still haven’t been inside a pub but I’ve had a few pub lunches out in the fresh air. Guiding events still weren’t on so I did their flagship camp/festival at home, Wellies & Wristbands, including all the adventurous activities I wasn’t allowed to add to Sparkle & Ice. I think August might also have been when writing regular news pieces became part of my work week. It was unbelievably difficult and stressful for the first few weeks. I will never enjoy them but I can now generally write one without literally crying.
Ok, I did quite a bit in August. September really did get quieter. The pool closed. But I did my sea kayaking half day course and my spoon-carving course, I went to Longleat’s Night Glow and I had my first in-person in-theatre comedy show in eighteen months. It’s hard to fully enjoy it when you know there’s still a plague and only about four people are wearing masks, but on the other hand, it’s quite a small room and I glared people into not sitting within more than two metres of me.
In October I had a little more comedy. Got to see my favourite comedian for the first time since before the first lockdown and also an awkward tongue-tied shy trip to the pub. My boss came down that very day, so I spent the afternoon working with him and one of my local colleagues in her kitchen. I went off to Cornwall for a glamping trip and I did my night kayak. I think I also had a go at rowing on the river in October, right before the place closed for the winter. We did a half-day face-to-face Brownies in October, the first real meeting since before the summer, where we pitched a tent, lit some fires and made campfire pizzas and the Brownies absolutely laughed in Brown Owl’s face for her failures. Which is fine.
November got quieter again. No more comedy, no more swimming, attempts at a sailing lesson pushed back and back by the wind, although I did get there eventually. I did a glass fusing workshop – it was supposed to be flowers but three out of the five attendants pleaded to do Christmas stuff. I did an archery lesson in Storm Arwen and lost a few arrows but did make friends with the local 18-30 group. I took my Brownies to a local country park and we did some orienteering and their first aid badge.
And now it’s December. I had a couple of days at my cottage, which wasn’t actually restful and relaxing at all, what with the plague suddenly kicking up a gear. I went to Winchester Christmas market, I did two NT Christmas illuminations trail, I went on the Watercress Line Christmas train and I finished my Adventurer Rebel Badge by ziplining off Bournemouth Pier. Then in-person things more or less came to an end, so I went to a virtual Baroque Christmas concert, which wasn’t the kind of Baroque I expected it to be, I met my two best friends on Zoom, the first time the three of us have been together in a long time and our usual 23rd-at-the-pub went online for the second year in a row but at least it meant everyone could come. Finally, the booster rollout picked up speed and I got mine – I had it in my diary to see if I could have it by early February so at least that’s one thing achieved for 2022.
And by then, it’ll actually be December 30th, when this is published and my year will be over! Well, nearly over. I haven’t celebrated New Year since I was at school, when various people used to hold fairly big parties – well, big by the standards I was used to. I don’t think there’s much to celebrate. 2022 is going to be much like 2021 – the plague will still be here and the novelty will be so far back that it’s just going to be miserable. I know there are people who are planning to camp out on New Year’s Eve. Maybe I’ll pop the tent up in the garden, but that’s as exciting as it’s going to get in the remaining 32 hours of 2021.
A few more things about 2021
- Distance walked: 1,166.57 km (as of 11:21 30/12/21)
- Distance swum: 63.63 km
- Nights away: 17
- Furthest travelled for a night away: 120 miles
- Most consecutive nights away: 3
- Blog posts: 108
- Views percentage increase 20-21: 44.3%
- Visitors percentage increase 20-21: 42.4%
- (Views percentage increase 19-20: 36.1%)
- (Visitors percentage increase 19-20: 39.8%)
- Best month: May (1st time ever above 7th place)
- Most viewed post of the year: Down to Earth with Zac Efron in Iceland (20.4% of all views)
- Most viewed new-in-2021 post of the year: Netflix’s Katla review and local guide (6.2% of all views)
- Unexpected hit of the year: The A-Z of Iceland: Z, the deleted letter (7.8% of all views)
Plans for 2022
My number one plan for 2022 was to get my booster – but then Omicron came along and plans got accelerated and I managed to cross off my major 2022 goal before 2021 even ended! My other plan is for the pandemic to end, but there’s not much I can personally do about that, apart from wear my mask and have my jabs and try not to do too much spreading.
I don’t have any plans to go abroad in 2022. If it happens – which feels extremely unlikely – that would be nice. If it doesn’t… c’est la vie. I don’t know if I can be bothered to pack a suitcase and carry it around an airport and get a bus to my accommodation anyway. I’ve had a long time to basically be completely lazy.
I’d like to go to Croatia. That’s the one that keeps bubbling up in my brain, to the point that I’ve bought a guidebook ready to make plans, even if I can’t use them until 2023 or beyond. I’d also like to go to Finland and see how much Finnish I actually picked up and I’d like to go to Svalbard. And obviously Iceland. Obviously! But we’ve seen how suddenly new restrictions are brought in – we thought things were settled and getting better and then just a month ago, it was all change again and even now, we can feel lockdowns and travel bans on the horizon. In fact, by the time this is published, they’ll probably already be here.
I have a glamping holiday booked, back in the same hut where I went in December 2020. Right now I’m nervous that it might not go ahead but it got cancelled and rescheduled last time because of the November 2020 lockdown so I know the people there are helpful and very willing with the rescheduling and I won’t lose anything if Boris locks us down again. It was meant to be Sparkle & Ice 2022, only with a hot tub and a woodburner but Sparkle 22 is finally officially happening – well, you know, with the usual likelihood of anything happening – in November so I can have my holiday and then potentially worry about doing Sparkle & Ice at home much later.
Past history says whatever happens in the winter, we seem to open up in the summer. More glamping, perhaps. More camping – oh, definitely more camping. I’ve booked a long weekend on a lake complete with watersports – I’ve got a windsurfing and SUP lesson booked and an hour of kayak hire and we’ll see what else I can fit in and spontaneously book while I’m there. More Dartmoor. Get through some English cathedrals, go to the Lake District, visit Tom in Liverpool. All on my hopefully-to-do list.
And then there’s my 2022 Big Project. Ever since I did my Discover/Explore, it’s been tickling the back of my mind to take my kayaking skills further, which means I’m going to have to go upside down and self-rescue from a closed cockpit kayak. There’s basically nowhere further I can go without doing that. I’ve looked at the various sea kayaking awards and although if I kayak, it probably will be on the sea, something about doing an actual sea kayaking qualification just feels a bit out of reach for me.
It’s going to sound ludicrous, therefore, what I’ve decided isn’t out of reach for me. I want to do my Instructor Award. Yes, sea kayaking is too much but teaching isn’t. A prerequisite is my Foundation Safety & Rescue Training so I’ll have to do that too. You spend half the FSRT course in the water playing the victim for your coursemates and you do several capsizes wearing a spraydeck which means 1) we’re going to learn Hand of God and 2) that’s going to be hell on (or under) water for me. I’ll explain the backstory in the inevitable post I make for each. Getting the dates lined up so I do the FSRT in reasonable weather but before the few available Instructor courses and still having time in the summer to use it – that’s going to be the difficult bit. The instructor dates I have at the moment, which are within reasonably easy distance for me, are either January to April, one date in May I can’t really make and one in July. July would give me time to get comfortable in and under the water and fit the FSRT in, though. But it doesn’t leave me a lot of time to take out the group I intended to. January to April means doing FSRT in freezing weather, and that’s not an appealing option either.
I have another thing I want to do, and this one will not be affected in any way by whatever the plague – or Boris -decides to do next. I’ll write a post on it at some point with the details but basically, 2022 is the year I want to start working towards earning a few pennies from doing travel, adventure and outdoors stuff, and my first two goals are to write two books. One is the Iceland book, which has been an utter failure since late 2017. The second is turning my daily 2km walks into a book. One of those outdoors books that skirts along the edge of new age and has a pastel cover and line drawings. No lockdowns, restrictions, Plans C/D/E or anything can prevent me sitting at my laptop churning out words. Only I can do that, and the last four years show that I’m very good at preventing myself churning out words, which is why the Iceland book still doesn’t exist!
I have some events left over from 2020/21 – I’m supposed to be seeing Queen in London in June and Dua Lipa in Liverpool in April, although the last email I had from her said March. I’ve got a handful of comedy tickets left over – I’m almost interested to see which one ends up the most delayed – can we break two years with them? To be honest, at this point I have no idea when they were originally for because I’ve had new dates so many times and there are so many of them. Will any of this go ahead? Who knows!
In summary, my plans for 2022 are:
- Write the Iceland book
- Write the daily walk book
- Go glamping
- Go watersports camping
- Do my FSRT
- Do my Instructor course
- Anything else is a bonus
Yeah, it’s hard to write a “plans for 2022” post when you have no idea if 2022 is even going to happen. Fingers crossed that next year goes better!