Removing the background hum

Thank you to everyone who responded to my Facebook post with the link to this blog, not least for the encouragement and wish to keep in touch over the next few months as I finish my preparations for the walk itself, and lay down my day-to-day responsibilities during the late spring and summer.  I am also looking forward to some of you joining me for at least a short time.

By the time I've added on some holiday to each end of my sabbatical, I will be away from my routine for around four months which seems like a long time but I am sure will disappear in a flash.

A couple of people commented on the mental health aspects of taking such a break, prompted by the poem I shared last week.  I've been reflecting on that further, inspired by something a colleague said during a staff quiet day last week: the point he made was that when we take ourselves away from the day-to-day, the background 'hum' of our busi-ness has chance to disappear, and allow time for relaxation in a different way. 

An illustration: we used to live close to a main line railway, so a train would go past every few minutes, something we didn't notice because we soon filtered out the regular background noise.  One Christmas & New Year, thanks to engineering work, no trains went past for almost 10 days, and we really noticed and appreciated the silence.  In the putting down and then adjusting to a different rhythm for a few months, I am hoping to experience and appreciate something of an inner silence, without the background hum of my day-to-day work.  

Thoughts welcome.

Hoping you can help

I'd also welcome your help with a couple of practical things.  In the past week I've put together a list of maps to use as I navigate myself down the length of Great Britain, using the route which I'm following.  I will be (at least to begin with) in some remote areas, so possibly without ready access to electricity for some of the time, so I've decided to carry paper maps.  

There's quite a list, so I am looking to borrow copies of the following, which I will return afterwards and reimburse your postage in both directions.  If the map is damaged beyond useful further use, then I will replace with a fresh copy.

Please let me know if you can help with any of the following OS Explorer (1:25000) maps (numbers and names given) - the list is in numerical order which means it is largely south->north with the exception of the OL maps (some of which I know I used to have...) Thanks for your help with this.

My planning for the coming week is to firm up detailed arrangements for getting to Cape Wrath, once I've made it up to stay with friends in Inverness immediately before.  From there it's a bus, small ferry and a mini-bus, so I hoping all this comes together so I don't find myself stranded in Durness for the summer.