It all started at a party as so many good things do. A Christmas party as it happens, in the Somerset village where I am lucky enough to live. “We’ve got this trip coming up, walking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, should be fun, how about coming with me?” I answered with all the care and attention that I had given to the earlier multiple question “red or white?” I laughingly agreed to give it some thought, not really clear on quite what was involved.
Some 20 months later there are only six days to go before we gather at Heathrow and set off for Peru. The process of deciding to say yes and all the preparations that I have made has been life changing, physically and mentally. I am the fittest and lightest that I have been for years. I have never worked harder and yet never had so much energy. I have met new people, studied different cultures, bought things that I never planned to be part of my life (a self-inflating ground mat for goodness sake!) and have finally, five years on from losing my beloved husband Richard, felt genuinely happy. Even if this trip were cancelled tomorrow it has delivered more benefits that I could have dreamed off on that December evening. I simply can’t keep all this to myself. I feel the need to share. Writing this blog is a means of ordering my thoughts and making sense of what has happened and will happen to me. I hope it may help and amuse and I know it will help me in achieving the happy and healthy balance of life on the level.