Tag: awareness

Tears of travel anxiety

Well, it is here. The day I’ve been rattling on about ALL year long. Mr W and I are embarking on a fifteen day tour of Scotland. It is the longest trip we’ll have ever taken together and the most intricately planned one too.

We will be staying in 14 hotels, travelling over 1800 miles, drinking copious amounts of tea that have been made using our car kettle, going wild swimming for the first time and we are taking you with us!

Yes, to add to the 12-14 hour days, the miles upon miles of hiking and the basic meals of oats and pot noodles, I will be writing every single evening. I’ve often wondered if this will put too much strain on the trip and whether I should wait until after. But truthfully, this is the chance to get every emotion and opinion down as it is on the day without inference of the delay of time.

If you’ve been following this blog so far you’ll know I’m either bordering on OCD or already a fully fledged member of the OCD Club of Organisation Addiction Awareness. So you may not be surprised that every blog going forward already has a template from which I will be able to work from. I also have a notepad that’ll be with me in the car and a printed itinerary I can edit along the way. I really want to learn as I go along on this trip, which means if something I have researched (albeit meticulously) does not work out, I want to find the answers and tell you everything. You may have gleaned by now that I’m passionate about travel beyond measure and if I can inspire (ick word) you to take the trip you’ve been putting on the back burner well that’s just a beautiful thing.

So today, we are driving up to Thirsk in order to break up the mammoth drive to Edinburgh from Essex, our very first and brief stop on Saturday morning. We’ve stayed in Thirsk a number of times now and it works perfectly for us as it’s small enough to not have any traffic and it has a big Tesco and petrol station. It has made the perfect overnight pitstop previously and there’s nothing better on your first night than familiarity. It also helps that our hotel has a restaurant, a budget one, so we don’t need to dig into our food reserves and can be at full energy for the longest start of the trip.

We have an exceedingly early morning tomorrow because we still have a 3 hour drive before our first stop, so we will be up before the sun and on our merry way.

As ever, my nerves about leaving home have started hitting me. This has been happening in its worst form for about three years now. It is hard to pinpoint the exact time it happened but I think it has a lot to do with the time we had to leave our home without a housesitter in 2019. Although we had various people coming in and out at least three times a day, I was incredibly worried about our dog and cats and don’t think I’ve ever really recovered from the guilt. Since then we have secured a housesitter every single time we have left for longer than two days. My dad will always say it’s not an issue but really his doing this enables us to really go out and live.

I literally can’t sit still the days leading up to when we travel and I dare say a lot of that is down to nerves. I love to come home to a clean and tidy home and before we leave I’ll often remember tiny little jobs I’ve been putting off , for instance I’ve been pottering in the garden getting it ready for autumn and reshuffling photos in the hallways.

This week that has been made a darn sight harder due to the flare up of my back condition. Oh yes, we have a 30 page itinerary for a 15 days trip and now is the time my back doesn’t want to play ball. I’ve tried movement, stretching, walking, sleeping, sitting and resting and so far sod all is working. It’s been over two weeks and I am slowly but very steadily getting pissed off. I am determined to keep to the plan for the trip as this has been so long in the planning and even longer in the dreaming.

Putting the final touches to everything this week has definitely kept my mind busy but I know I’ll be a blubbering mess as we leave in a short while. It’s ridiculous really for someone who lives and breathes to travel how much it makes me nervous. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. It catches me off guard and I feel my breath catch in my chest. It’s like a wave of worry washing over me. An anxiety avalanche if you will.

Mr W asks if we should cancel and I know that I can’t stay here forever, holding down the fort, protecting what I can’t while I’m away. Therefore it is off to the horizon we go, me and him, finding the next adventure and praying my anxieties get lost along the way. Maybe I’ll tie them to the rear bumper and give them a good chance of joining us, if they can hold on that is.

Right, here we go. Scotland 2022. Let’s see what you’re all about.

Miles: 232

Comfort Zone

Today I saw my friend who is visiting the UK from New Zealand. 

We met in school over 20 years ago. I remember him from school. I don’t know how close we were. But reconnecting on facebook a number of years later led to very long conversations on summer nights in the garden. We spoke of our time in University and how life had changed or stayed just the same. We spoke so freely and unlike any other way I’d encountered until that point and when he left to go home I remember sitting and replaying the evening over and over. It fascinated me. 

Soon after he left the UK and travelled. I maintained my habit of working to pay for my travelling and then upon my return from Australia in 2013 my life changed drastically. Me became a we and I became an us. We would be travelling to Spain. Both of us made choices in our lives. As life does, time moved on and before long those chats with my friend seemed a distant memory. If it wasn’t for social media and emailing, the friendship would have struggled. 

It was in 2016 that we reconnected while he popped back to the UK and then flitted away again. And yet our emails remain to this very day. We are both married and settled. I was lucky enough to watch his wedding over zoom last August and was grateful to be one of the few who graced that group. Our emails now speak of how life is treating us and the next big goal we each have. 

He flew into the UK last week and his parents held a garden party today for family and friends to see him and his new wife. It seems I am the last friend to stay in contact with him, he points out that he also lost contact with others, taking ownership of his actions as usual. I felt extremely appreciative to be included. Mr W was there, naturally, but I felt extremely nervous to be surrounded by people I did not know. This was cushioned by the fact that after 6 long years I was seeing my friend again.

I was being flung between the zones of comfort and excitement. Something that took me by surprise was just how ‘known’ I was. His parents and sister all knew more about me than I expected and I felt like it acknowledged this friendship we had all the more. After 5 hours of talking and laughing with strangers I felt almost confident to step outside the comfort zone. To talk freely about nothing particularly important but let it bolster my nervousness and say ‘hey, this is how you grow.’ Would I see these strangers again, possibly not. But does that mean you don’t bother engaging with them? No. I think it goes a long way to have a voice no matter where you are. Or who you are with. I know that this time last year talking to strangers was really difficult for me. I felt I needed to be asked questions or find an instant common ground. But now, today especially, it felt great to just talk as if I’d known people for years because that’s when the ‘I’ comes out in me. How interesting it is for the other person I’ll never know, but it goes a long way down the path of self-awareness and acceptance. 

The biggest example of this dare I say ‘progression’ is discussed in ‘Coffee for four’ (link below). The best way I can describe it is feeling as comfortable talking to strangers about nothing in particular as talking to a loved one about something deeply personal. It resonates on a different level, from a different zone but gives you that same feeling of warmth and acceptance. I’d like to think it opens me up to new ideas and opinions. Which ultimately is what we seek in travel. To have our eyes opened to new cultures and places. So embracing that ideal in our home lives can’t be a bad thing. I think it’s just something that’s more accepted when you travel. As if your brain is ready for the onslaught of everything new, shiny and exciting. When you are at home it’s almost as if you don’t need to try. You are comfortable. 

Fundamentally, this is a question of confidence. It reminds me that somewhere inside still exists the girl who chases horizons and finds joy outside the comfort zone.

Coffee for four