Thought for today:
"I visited the hospital again yesterday for my post chemo course medications and whilst there as I was feeling constantly tired I had a blood test. It would seem that the explanation for my tiredness is that my blood count is dangerously low and that I need another blood transfusion which I will have in hospital over six hours today.
I now have more blood belonging to other folk in my body at the present than of my own stock. I sometimes wonder how long it will be before I cease to feel my 'own man'?
Following a trying six-month period of chemo treatment, me and Sheila have decided to have a three day break up in the Lake District during early November to celebrate our second wedding anniversary that falls on my birthday, It has been a fair time since I last visited the area. I just love the surrounding landscape and cannot look towards its mountains and hills without thinking about Alfred Wainwright, MBE (17 January 1907 – 20 January 1991).
Alfred was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. He invariably walked alone and frequently commented that his best companion was himself and the silence of the fells. His seven-volume 'Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells', published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the Lake District. Over two million copies of the Pictorial Guides have been sold worldwide since their publication. Visiting all 214 Wainwrights is a common challenge for those fell climbers of much stamina.
What I love about Alfred Wainwright and his works is the meticulous detail and the beautiful maps and writing that he penned with his own hand in producing them. Although from a much different time to that of Wordsworth, I often read his description of the 214 fells he documented for the sheer beauty of his written word. His effortless writing conveys in every utterance he makes, the love he feels for Lakeland. He was undoubtedly one of Nature's wordsmiths.
My regret is that I never managed to climb his beloved fells in my youth and now that I would dearly love to, am unable to. Still, to read his works is to travel the journey with him as though one was actually there." William Forde: October 2nd, 2014.
"I visited the hospital again yesterday for my post chemo course medications and whilst there as I was feeling constantly tired I had a blood test. It would seem that the explanation for my tiredness is that my blood count is dangerously low and that I need another blood transfusion which I will have in hospital over six hours today.
I now have more blood belonging to other folk in my body at the present than of my own stock. I sometimes wonder how long it will be before I cease to feel my 'own man'?
Following a trying six-month period of chemo treatment, me and Sheila have decided to have a three day break up in the Lake District during early November to celebrate our second wedding anniversary that falls on my birthday, It has been a fair time since I last visited the area. I just love the surrounding landscape and cannot look towards its mountains and hills without thinking about Alfred Wainwright, MBE (17 January 1907 – 20 January 1991).
Alfred was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. He invariably walked alone and frequently commented that his best companion was himself and the silence of the fells. His seven-volume 'Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells', published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the Lake District. Over two million copies of the Pictorial Guides have been sold worldwide since their publication. Visiting all 214 Wainwrights is a common challenge for those fell climbers of much stamina.
What I love about Alfred Wainwright and his works is the meticulous detail and the beautiful maps and writing that he penned with his own hand in producing them. Although from a much different time to that of Wordsworth, I often read his description of the 214 fells he documented for the sheer beauty of his written word. His effortless writing conveys in every utterance he makes, the love he feels for Lakeland. He was undoubtedly one of Nature's wordsmiths.
My regret is that I never managed to climb his beloved fells in my youth and now that I would dearly love to, am unable to. Still, to read his works is to travel the journey with him as though one was actually there." William Forde: October 2nd, 2014.
