Reviewing 2020

As we pass through the end of one year and the beginning of another, it is a time for both reflection and for looking to the future. After all, that is the origin of the name of this month, January. It is not without reason that the  Romans named this month after a god with two faces, one looking backwards while the other looked forwards. In this posting, I will look back on 2020. I will try to mention the  C-word as little as possible, though it may be unavoidable, since it dominated so much of the year.

Back in  January 2020, I  started the year with high hopes in terms of not only my walking activities, but so much else as well. I defined my walking objectives in somewhat vague terms as follows: The journey towards Santiago will go on. There will be more marathons. I will aim to reach at least 6.5 million steps for a second year in a row. I have some other ideas, but they are less definite.

By the end of January, my ideas had indeed crystallised, and I had made arrangements to go ahead on the Camino in May. Those other ideas became a plan to walk the entire Jura Höhenweg in day stages. And I started looking for marathons and booking my place. But as the poet Robert Burns noted: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.” More recently, Murphy’s Law expresses a similar sentiment. In March, the world went into lockdown, and by April, it was clear that there would be no walking on the Camino in May. Marathons were being cancelled or severely restricted all over Europe.

But in among those disappointments, there was a glimmer of hope. The lockdown allowed two hours of exercise outside, and I used that to good effect going walking every day for the full two hours allowed.

And I didn’t cancel the Camino. I just shifted my plan to September-October timeframe. After all, we all thought the nightmare would be over by then.

My plans for the Jura Höhenweg did not suffer so much, and by May, that was progressing well.

So now that 2020 has ended, it is time to look at the results.

I had set myself a basic goal for the Camino of reaching Santander from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. I also set a stretch goal of doing two days’ walking past Santander. In the end, I managed one day past Santander. This despite feet that needed medical dressing every evening, and weather that certainly could have been much kinder. Storm Alex was the worst case of bad weather, when I arrived at my lodgings at the end of the day looking more like a half-drowned rat than a real hiker. But it is done, and I am pleased with what I achieved.

There were, unfortunately, no marathons for me in 2020. But I have hopes for the future.

In terms of numbers of steps, I comfortably broke my target of 6.5 million, achieving 7,038,986 steps in the year. Appropriately, I passed that 7 million mark on a walk up Lugnaquilla with my sister in Ireland. It was one of those walks that, as the photo shows, was not entirely pleasant, but I came away pleased to have done it. The wind was effectively sand-blasting everything with particles of ice, the rime forming long icicles on the rocks near the summit. Few things worth doing can be done without effort, and that was a walk that tested physical and mental resolve.

And I completed the Jura Höhenweg in full. I have described it in these pages, noting the additions and detours that I made to include additional summits along the way.

So in spite of the difficulties that 2020, I end the year pleased with what I have done. It is not only that I achieved almost everything I set out to do, but I did not let the circumstances of 2020 get in my way.

That is my walking review of 2020. I will turn my thoughts now to 2021, and document those here in the coming days. And only now will I mention that C-word: Covid. To all my readers out there, stay safe and healthy, and have a great year in 2021.