Week 27 started with a trip to the Isle of Skye with my mountaineering club. We were staying in a remote hut only accessible by boat or a 4-hour walk in. I walked in on Friday. The aim had been to add to my Munro count, but unfortunately the weather didn’t play ball – it was very windy, with snow, sleet, hail, and rain. We did, however, get some good scrambling at lower levels done, and had a fabulous view of the Cuillin Ridge from the hills just out the back of where we were staying.

​As the hut was full on one of the nights, ahead of the trip, I had opted to camp to save money. However, given the weather forecast, the other hut occupants offered me the floor to sleep on. However, my tent mate Franklin decided he was still going to sleep outside, and after watching him struggle with my tent in the wind for a bit ,I undertook an act of kindness to go out in the rain and wind and help him put it up. Once it was up, I thought I may as well take the opportunity to add to my new challenge item, of a night under canvass. At 6.30am, after no sleep and a night of being slapped in the face by the tent in the wind, I wish I hadn’t!

Over the weekend, I was mainly cooking bog standard hill ratios of pasta and sauce. However, I did take in custard powder and some muffins, so given I had to do something to the custard powder to make it edible, I’m claiming that as a ‘dessert made’ for my challenge. The weekend finished with a very long walk out, as the stepping stones across the river that we’d arrived over where now deep under a fast flowing torrent of water from all the rain 

The middle of Week 27 saw 3 letters posted – one congratulations card to a weight-loss client of mine who had reached her goal weight, one wedding invite acceptance card, and an application to make my vote for the EU referendum a postal vote, as I’ll be in Sri Lanka when the vote happens.

The following week saw another act of kindness. I used to be Treasurer for a charity called Be United (I’m still a Trustee) and stopped as I found I really don’t enjoy doing accounts and it was making me procrastinate on doing any work at all. However, the new Treasurer was at the point of submitting his first Annual Accounts and was a bit stuck, so I spent 3 hours of my time with him, teaching him the knowledge I’d picked up from doing it the year previously. While he was in my house, I also gave him a bit of coaching about what he wanted to do with his career, so he also counts as one of my free coaching sessions.
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Last week, I finally managed to progress on my Munro count, with a weekend away with Matt to claim a long-sought-after set. We had a leisurely start from Edinburgh on Saturday and climbed 2 easy munros on the East side of Glen Shee (Glas Maol and Creag Leacach) in the afternoon. We then headed to the Deeside Inn for the night, and for a delicious dinner (who’d have thought a blue cheese scone on a top of a steak and ale could have been quite so delicious.) The next day saw an early start to do the Lochnagar round – 5 munros and 32km in a day. We were blessed with terrific sunshine (and hence a bit of sunburn) and finished the round within guidebook time, which is unusual for us as we like to bimble slowly. As I’d already done one of these 5 munros before, I can now claim an additional 6 munros for my challenge from both Saturday and Sunday.

The rest of the week didn’t see that much action, although I did complete another colouring picture. I also went back for a visit to my NLP tutor for one day of the Practitioner course and met an ‘interesting person’ – Amy Gray. Amy is in the final stages of her Practitioner course and currently works for the council in Aberdeen, but would ultimately like to move to the countryside and run a campside. We connected on a love of nature and hillwalking, and I have every confidence she will graduate the course on Sunday. As the day involved a lot of coaching, she also counts as one of my free coaching sessions.

Finally, the week ended with a Zumba class this morning, adding to my different types of exercise. My experience of Zumba is that you spend an hour looking entirely ridiculous as you desperately try to follow the latin movements of the instructor. You are both performing the same moves, yet there are some differences……she looks awesome – sexy, sleek and rhythmic……you look sweaty, confused and like you’re having some kind of twitchy allergic reaction. If you ignore the mirrors, its actually a lot of fun! I also saw Judy Murray going into the next-door tennis centre, and took some solace that I am least a better dancer than she was!
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My learnings for these 2 weeks:

1. You really can get trapped by rivers in the mountains. Water rises fast and really can make rivers uncross-able. I have learnt about it all my Mountain Leader training, and have turned back from rivers before when there’s been a 15-minute detour uphill to find an alternative route, but Skye was the first time I’ve had to turn back from a river and opt for a much longer route. A 10km day actually turned into a 20km day to stay safe. Safe, not even dry – our ‘safe’ route involved wading 3 rivers at knee-height, but thankfully not the one torrent that had already reach waist height on one of our group before he even reached the deepest point. This was a river I had easily crossed with completely dry feet 48 hours before, and with one slightly damp foot 12 hours before, and was suddenly a waist-deep white-water death-trap.
2. Balmoral House and Estate (near our Lochnagar round) is open for visitors between Easter and October! That’s entertainment for my Mum’s next trip to Scotland sorted.
3. An odd glance at the mirror has taught me I really don’t look as cool as I imagine I do when doing Zumba.

So Week 26 was a week and a bit ago, and it marked my 30 and a half birthday and also the half-way mark of my challenge. So I took a bit of time to reflect on where I’ve got to, (and will write about week 27 next week) with some mixed results. But first, a wee update on what Week 26 held.

I started off going on retreat with a good friend, and fellow coach, Saffron. The venue had originally been booked as a retreat for clients, but after a lack on marketing on my part, I took the opportunity to go on retreat myself and focus on something I’d been meaning to do for months (perhaps even over a year) – write an e-book. The reason I’ve delayed it so long is because I find the whole idea rather terrifying and memories of writing essays at university, chained to my desk until 3am in the morning to finish it ahead of the deadline, did not help. As there was no deadline set by someone else, it hadn’t yet happened. So I took the opportunity of a beautiful venue, and good company of someone else who wanted to work on something to write an e-book, called 4 Simple Steps to Solve Your Biggest Problem. You can sign up to receive a copy here: http://www.reachthepeak.co.uk/sign-up.html

We took the opportunity to coach each other on what we were working on, so Saffron counts as one of my free coaching sessions.

While on retreat, another opportunity presented itself – to go feed some lambs! The retreat venue is on a working farm and out of one of the windows, you can see the farmer’s house. I saw him carrying several small fluffy bundles into the house, and the next time I saw him come out of the house, I took the opportunity to ‘get something from my car’ as an excuse to bump into him and ask him. He then said he had a barn full of lambs that needed to be bottle fed, and would I like to help? Yes, yes, I would!

Richard, the farmer, also counts as one of my ‘interesting people’ – he was a school teacher by day, and a sheep farmer the rest of the time, also helping out with his sister’s cows and brother’s pigs. He had 4 extremely well-trained sheep dog and a clear passion for lambs. He normally tried to time lambing seasons with the 2-week Easter holiday, but due to a cock-up (some might say, literally) – his lambs started coming a week early, meaning several long nights picking up hypothermic lambs, his daughters having to take a couple of days off school to cuddle them and keep them warm, while he went in to teach.
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I also cooked 2 new recipes for myself and Saffron, again from the Simply Cook flavour pots. We enjoyed a Thai Red Prawn Curry, and a Mapo Sichuan (beef, aubergine and rice) which is a Chinese dish. Both were delicious! I also baked some cupcakes for the retreat (and another batch when I got home to use up the left-over buttercream icing.) Now, this totaled 24 cupcakes…..In the interests of my diet and weight loss, I am tempted to count each individual cupcake as one towards my total of 30 cakes/desserts……slightly cheating I know, but it’s my challenge, my rules! I will continue to bake different cakes/desserts, but that eases the pressure on making 30 different ones! In a random act of kindness (and totally something I’d not normally do) I left 3 cupcakes behind for Matt while I was away. 

The day that the retreat ended, given I was already in the highlands, I decided to go and grab a near(ish) Munro, taking my count to 5.

So, at the half way point, here’s a round-up of how I am getting on.
Make 30 recipes - 11
Make 30 soups - 8
Climb 30 new munros – 5
Read 30 books - 6
Visit 30 restaurants/cafes - 16
Do 30 acts of kindness - 9
Reconnect with 30 old friends - 12
Create a playlist of 30 favourite songs - 0
Drink 30 different alcoholic drinks - 27
See 30 new films - 19
Lose 30lbs - 11
Try 30 different hairstyles/hairdos - 16
Write 30 letters/postcards - 11
Learn to say hello/thankyou in 30 languages – 0 (well, I just need to record them)
Say yes to 30 opportunities - 22
Meet 30 new ‘interesting’ people - 20
Bake 30 cakes/desserts – 28 (including 24 cupcakes!)
Give 30 coaching freebies - 10
Do 30 different sports/exercise/classes - 20
Ski 30 ski-runs - 0
Attend 30 networking events/meetings - 18
Colour in 30 pictures - 9
Add 30 new bands/artists/albums to my iPod - 0
Write 30 blog posts - 17
 
Weekly or One-Off Challenges
Play piano for 30 minutes a week – Hmmmm – have only done this once in 26 weeks!
Go for a 30 minutes walk at least once a week – Yes, every week except post-surgery recovery
Earn 30k – still some way to go on this one!
Cycle 30 miles – not yet
Walk 30 miles in a day – not yet
Put 30p per day in a jar and treat myself – Hmmm – jar is currently empty – I have some catching up to do with paying in – it should be £54.60 by now.
 
So, I’m at or over half way on some challenges: Restaurants, films, alcoholic drinks, networking events, exercises, blog posts, hairstyles, opportunities and new people. I basically need to get Cooking, Colouring, Climbing and Coaching.

As you can see, I’ve made no progress on skiing 30 ski runs as I didn’t get around to skiing holiday this year, and given its now summer, I’m unlikely to. So, I’ve decided to change that challenge item to spending 30 nights under canvass/outside/snow-holing. Given 2 nights over new year, and 2 nights in a snow hole for my winter ML, that puts me at 4. And I can add ‘Camping’ to the list of things I need to do above. Cooking, Colouring, Climbing, Coaching and Camping.
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If anyone fancies joining me for a 30 mile walk or bike ride, give me a shout! For the walk, I’m thinking of something flat and easy to follow, either walking from Edinburgh to Falkirk (plus a bit) along the canal, or walking the length of the Water of Leith and back (plus a bit.) Any other suggestions of where to go?