Coda: The Road Ahead

My roadtrips are getting further from home and require increasing amounts of time and planning, and sooner or later I’ll reach a point where daytrips simply aren’t viable any more, and at that point I’ll probably stop, whether I’m on a round number or not.  But I’m not there yet.  I have plans.  There are still parts of the country within reach that I’ve not yet visited.  I have unfinished business in a few of the places that I’ve already been to.  There are pillars I want to bag to extend runs of consecutrigs, or fill in gaps in sequences.  I want to re-attempt a few of my failures, which I rarely talk about, having since figured out why I failed to get them.  And there’s a couple of pillars I just want to visit because they’re in some way genuinely interesting.  It would be nice to bag my 700th trigpoint at some stage, too.  But mostly, I want to see more of southern England, because it’s not just about visiting the pillars.  Trigpointing is teaching me where all these towns and quaint little villages are, that I know the names of but couldn’t have previously told you anything about (Where Places Are having been very noticeably absent from the curriculum when they taught me geography at school).  It’s showing me incredible sights across vast swathes of the English landscape, some of which (Malvern at sunrise) are spectacular beyond words.  It’s giving me an opportunity to marvel at the beauty of the world, and time to reflect and be at one with myself in solitude and tranquillity.  Certainly I have a renewed appreciation for the miracle of creation, because sometimes it’s almost spiritual, being above it all, alone against the sky, with just butterflies and birdsong for company.  After the huffing and puffing to reach the top of a hill, as I catch my breath beside a pillar, very often I find peace. 

And that’s almost as satisfying as filling in a spreadsheet.

Comments

  1. WilfNovember 7, 2025 at 9:01 PM

    Please Note: To keep this Coda at the end of my ongoing ramblings (or the Start - Blogger seems to insist on Newest First), I need to delete and re-post it whenever I upload a new Chapter. This means any Comments left on the Coda (rather than on the Chapters themselves) will be lost whenever I add new posts. Polly Jeez.

    Spiney Norman: Sorry, but that's exactly what happened to your Comment. You asked after my visit to Cold Ashby... I'm not sure I've got much more to impart about that location. It was in a hedge down a farm track; I gather shortly afterwards it became part of a newer and sturdier hedge, sad to say, and is probably harder to bag now as a result. My visit was quick and fairly routine, as trig bags go. Park, gate, hedge, photos, on to the next one. If you want any advice, the Trigpointing UK website will have logs from far more recent (and thus better informed) visitors than me.

    ReplyDelete

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