The first time I thought about walking the Fife Coastal Path was over 10 years ago. I was younger and healthier and had just finished the Edinburgh Moonwalk Challenge for the second time. The training plan I had followed had got me off the couch and I enjoyed walking, enough to walk for 26.3 miles through the night and still be willing to turn up for work a day later – no mean feat! When the Moonwalk was finished, I started looking for other walking challenges. Hadrian’s Wall? Too far away. The West Highland Way? Too risky (for someone as accident-prone as myself) to walk alone. I was chatting about it to my friend’s father who lent me a book about the Fife Coastal Path and, as I read it, the idea lightbulb in my head switched on…then gradually dimmed over time until it went off again.
9 years, a minor operation, a major bereavement and a significant ankle injury later, I had fallen into the hole of clinical depression. It’s deep and dark down in that particular hole but I am blessed enough to have persistent friends who metaphorically gave me lamps, made ladders, lowered ropes and occasionally grabbed me with hooks to drag me out of it. When I looked into the mirror properly for the first time after I came out of the hole, I could see an unhealthy, very overweight, middle-aged woman who still walked with pain. Huh. We stared at each other in the mirror and thought, No. This won’t do at all, what are we going to do about it? Please bear in mind that, at this stage, talking to myself in the mirror was the least of my problems.
And that was the second time I thought about walking the Fife Coastal Path; last Spring after we went into Covid-19 lockdown. What else was there to do with a pandemic roaming the world? I dug out the book that belonged to my friend’s father (still not returned to him after all this time – I wonder if he misses it?). I made “The Plan” (I like making plans and it was a good Plan that deserved the capital letter). I asked around to see if any of my friends wanted to join me (some of them did, some of them made mumbling, non-committal noises). I procrastinated thoroughly throughout the summer of last year, then throughout the autumn as well. Then it was winter, and really who wants to start a walking plan on a coastal path in winter?
Throughout the pandemic I had been walking with friends whenever the restrictions allowed, but never more than 3 miles at a time and I was still procrastinating over the Coastal Path because I didn’t feel fit enough to start it. Then again, did I mention that some of my friends are persistent? One of them decided that she and I were just going to randomly walk part of the Fife Coastal Path; joining not at the start or end, but halfway through, and just walking along it for a mile or so. The overly-cautious, meticulous-planning part of my brain went into immediate panic mode. My carefully laid Plan had just been blown away and I was thrown into “just doing it” as one sports brand says (other sports brands are available). So I went with my friend on my first Coastal Path outing… and loved it.
These are my physical and verbal ramblings.
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