During today’s walk I saw calves and their mothers. Their mothers were mooing me away but I was taking video so I didn’t move until one after another started to approach me. By then I had the footage I wanted to have. I had a strong fence fixed with wooden posts and a bush between myself and the cows so I calculated that the risk was low enough not to bolt.
Yesterday I went for a walk in the rain. I walked for two hours, took pictures and listened to Echo Der Zeit and this episode of the Thru-Hiking podcast. Gretel Scarlet was the interviewee. She talked about South Bound (SOBO) hiking the PCT.
It’s interesting to see how different her attitude was to most people’s, how being a dancer, and someone who considers nutrition, speaks differently of food and injuries.
Thanks to the rain most people stayed indoors. This was a good opportunity to walk along routes that I have been avoiding for weeks due to the pandemic. In the process, my trousers and shoes got soaked so I was squelching along. Even cars were not that frequent. I crossed two people during my ten-kilometre walk.
Today I ran and then walked a reverse journey of what I did yesterday. I wanted to take a picture of the corkscrew tree. It would have required for me to wait for two slow walkers and their dog to pass and because they insisted on walking two abreast it made more sense to turn around and take an alternate route.
Slight increase in the number of cases in Switzerland.
For this 40th blog post on the topic of self-isolation, I’d like to speak about local adventures. I feel the need to do this because I see people posting about their trips to someone two to three hours from live and work during a pandemic and I strongly believe that getting into a car to have an adventure far from home at this time is short-sighted and selfish.
Between running, cycling and hiking I have got to know more and more of the local routes. I have found that there are a lot of nice places to walk off of agricultural roads where you can avoid everyone. Today I was walking in the woods by a motorway and I found what I call the “corkscrew tree”.
By May we may be able to go back to doing sports in groups as long as they are not “contact sports” in Switzerland. For me this means hiking, running cycling and other related sports. For me climbing is a contact sport because we touch the same hand holds as everyone else climbing the routes, we use the same ropes and we share quickdraws and belay devices.
This being said I also have no desire to do sports like climbing at the moment because they require us to stand around and socialise and I haven’t really socialised in at least 38 days. I need to ease back into the world of the extrovert. Hiking is a good way to do that.
Today I went for a Hike from La Barillette to La Barillette. It’s a shame that the restaurant wasn’t open to the public. It is currently marked as private, and scheduled to open on the first of May. Today I didn’t expect to do a long and physical hike. I expected to complete my usual daily tasks and then to go for the usual walks around where I live. In the end I did do such a hike, but it involved a slightly different geographic location.
You build up plenty of dust as you plow the fields at the moment. The drought continues, as does the desire for this pandemic to be over. For now, the downward trend continues so we could feel optimistic. I’m still optimistic than in two or three weeks recycling centres will go back to normal. At the moment recycling centres remind me of something else.
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I have a strong desire to go hiking. I would like to go on a hiking excursion that lasts for a few days. In theory I could do the Via Alpina route one starting in Nyon and ending in Lichtenstein. It’s a 21 step hike going north.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RsTPWkKZKk
I had lunch watching one and a half episodes of this video series. They’re short, lasting just ten minutes each so easy to fill spare time with. As I’m trapped walking around in various circles around where I live it’s nice to see people walking in a straight line from one side of a country to the other.
We’re in day 29 of ORCA in Switzerland and I have an ever increasing desire to go for a hike. During today’s walk I listened to two podcasts about hiking and I walked yet another variant of my usual walk. Apple tree blooms are increasing in number and the Colza looks almost ready to harvest.
We’re also going into a dry summer. During this pandemic we have hardly had any rain for a month. The whole of Switzerland is either yellow, orange or red with the risk of fire. I’ve been walking outdoors with a t-shirt.
My shoes are wet and my socks are wet because today I tried river walking. If a child was to do the same it would be called immature and irrational but when an adult does it then it’s adventure, and trying something new.
My motivation to river walk came from the pandemic, or more precisely from how people behave during a pandemic. When I walked yesterday I had a runner pass right by me and then spit on the ground a few meters ahead of where I would have been going. When I walked through the woods yesterday I could hear groups of people so I avoided walking along the same routes.