The first step…

February 19, 2017February 19, 2017 | Mairead

(Cangas de Onis. Old Roman Bridge)

Home today (Wednesday) is a car park in Cangas de Onis, a very attractive town on the edge of the Picos mountain range in northern Spain. The sun is shining and it’s warm. On Tuesday home was the car park of a hostel in Bilbao, it was sunny and warm there too. On Monday it was a camper van park beside a lake in the south-west corner of France, it was grey and raining there. The day before, a different camper van park in Fontenay-le-Comte, which is about 50 km north of La Rochelle, it was cold and dark there. On Sunday we were sleeping on the Rosslare to Cherbourg ferry where it was wet, windy and surprisingly pleasant due to an amazing invention – the stabiliser. (From Wikipedia, stabiliser: gyroscopically controlled system used to reduce the rolling of a ship. It works.)

(View from the bridge)

I decided before leaving not to blog… because I didn’t know how to write about the other kind of journey, the one last year where lots of things happened… but they didn’t happen to me so they weren’t my story to tell.

(Lac d’Azur south west France)

Now I find myself on this other journey through France and Spain and eventually Portugal and I realise I miss the writing. Without it I feel like I’m ignoring some important extra sense of what’s going on. Of course I could just write in a notebook. Yes, I could just write in a notebook. Why don’t I just write in a notebook?

(Close up to the bridge)

I think I don’t write in a notebook because of a character flaw – I am a procrastinator. I put stuff off until tomorrow. I put things into the tomorrow tray… and the tomorrow tray is just an imaginary tray where no writing (or anything else) ever gets done. Stuff only gets done in the today tray, if you get my drift? Blogging, for me, has a deadline and although I don’t like deadlines I do respect them and they make me put stuff into the today tray… so blogging gets done.

Step 1. Write, Mairead.

Feeling the Sky

September 30, 2016 | Mairead

(Star rising)

I wish I could show you the sky last night. It was the same as the sky above you but maybe you weren’t outside. Or maybe you were busy and you forgot to look up. Anyway, last night the sun started to set at 7.30pm and by 8.30pm I was sitting outside. I thought of taking a picture but they just don’t look the same and anyway it’s the feeling of being outside combined with the looking up that makes the difference and no one’s invented the camera to reproduce that… yet.

(We are here)

It felt like I was surrounded by a warm blanket, a knitted one that lets the light in, but in small pin holes. The blanket was black and dark black in the places where the trees blocked the sky. Surrounded by the blanket I felt safe and loved. I read somewhere recently the exact amount of time it takes for the light from a star to reach our eyes on earth. I can’t remember the number now but it was big – years and years. I heard that before but a bit like forgetting to look up at the sky I forgot that we live on a small rock in the middle of a huge space…

(Coffee and cards)

I worry about lots of little things. Like being late for something. Like saying something stupid. Like insulting someone unintentionally. Like doing something that makes people think about me. I never consider that people might be thinking something lovely, I worry that they are thinking something unlovely. The thing is, people rarely think either lovely or unlovely things about others, they mainly think about themselves… like I do when I worry. I worry about big things too. Like the rough seas between Ireland and France. Like the health of my family. Like my children. Like the people who are living in war. Like the people who are escaping war to find peace.

(Isn’t the postal system great, though?)

But then sometimes I don’t worry and I am not afraid… and when I am not afraid I am like I was sitting outside last night under the sky with the light of billions of stars reaching me on this small rock in the middle of a huge space and all is well. I am at peace. I am loved.

(Star setting)

I wished I could show you the sky last night so that you would feel at peace and you would know you are loved, Mairead.

Crossing Over to the Other Side

September 28, 2016 | Mairead

(Path around the lake beside the aires at St-Amand-Montrond)

It’s September, the sun is shining, I am sitting in McDonalds drinking coffee and sharing their lovely wifi and their lovely electricity. We’re back in France! We crossed over on Saturday night and it was some cross over! I had got used to the kind of crossing I like – calm, no waves, gentle lulling to sleep when you lie down. We’ve been on lots of ferries in the past five years and they’ve all been like that. (Mind you there was one about five years and two months ago that was rough so I suppose it was time.) Anyways, fifteen hours in it became calm, so all ended well and we docked in Cherbourg to sunshine and blue skies.

(There were quotes inside the door of every toilet at the first campsite… any idea what it says?)

From Cherbourg we drove south over the Loire river and spent our first two nights at a lakeside campsite between Orleans and Bourges. It was a quiet site with a handful of fishermen around a pretty lake. We chose this site in the usual way: pick a general area, look up one of the campsite books and pick one with facilities we want. Electricity and toilets are essential. If there’s a shop nearby that’s a nice bonus. If there’s a neighbourhood restaurant – triumph! This campsite had the basics and was close to a town so we figured the shop and the restaurant were very likely. We usually find this process works.

(Huge cathedral in Bourges)

This time we’re trying something new… we bought a book called Escapades in a Camping-Car. (Camping-Car is what the French call camper vans and motorhomes.) The book consists of 5 to 17 day circuits around nineteen areas in France. It shows interesting places to visit and campsites where you can stay. It also shows free stops, aires. Aires are places you can park overnight, not a campsite and usually there’s no electricity or toilets… but it’s free! The book is great with only one tiny problem – it’s in French. But on the plus side our French reading is improving.

(Pretty house in Bourges)

Yesterday morning we left our lakeside campsite at 8.30am and drove to the town of Bourges, where we parked in an aire. It’s often hard to find parking when we visit a town due to our size and we usually use a supermarket car park but this was better. From there we walked fifteen minutes into the town for a coffee. I also found a wool shop as I am knitting cheerful bunting on this trip and I was in danger of running out! Denis took the opportunity to get some mobile wifi from the Orange shop (we will get free updates if I mention them more than once in each blog… and a free t-shirt for every third mention, so watch for that!) They were very friendly in the Orange shop 😉

(While I was buying what I love – knitting yarn, Denis was buying what he loves – blue cheese!)

Actually, it’s something we are noticing this year…. the French are very friendly. Little things that make us believe the French really do love the Irish – thank you lovely Irish football supporters! We were in the petrol station buying the Camping-Car book when a French man, overhearing us talk as he walked into the shop, asked (in English) if we were Irish, he noticed we had left the petrol cover open on our car and wanted to tell us. Ok we didn’t have a car but still…. wasn’t that nice? And then in Bourges at the tourist office, where I went to locate the wool shop, the lady asked where we were from and beamed from ear to ear saying “ah Irlande!” Ok, not big things but last year in the tourist office in Carcassonne when I said I was from Ireland they said absolutely nothing… nothing. Silence. So I’m taking this as a win.

(Look! Even McDonalds love us!)

After coffee we moved an hour south of Bourges to St-Amand-Montrond… and another free parking spot. It’s beside a pretty lake, there are toilets and it’s a five-minute walk to a hypermarket and a McDonalds. And it’s free… We will be moving to a campsite tomorrow because we need electricity to charge the computer and phone batteries and a hot shower would be nice!

From McDonalds, nowhere near an Orange shop (there’s my free t-shirt…) Mairead.

We arrived in Scotland!

June 22, 2016 | Mairead

(The unfinished Rosslyn Church in Rosslyn near Edinburgh)

Well… it’s been busy since the cow episode…. We finally reached Scotland. Where we saw a church from the movie, The Da Vinci Code and re-acquainted ourselves with some wee folk. It rained all the time we were there but to be fair to Scotland I think it was raining in the whole of the British Isles. But it didn’t matter to us because we were staying in a place where there was entertainment on tap all day, every day…

(This hen is from England but very close to the Scottish Borders)

If you’re lucky enough to have children or you’re related to children, you will know of the time (or you might be in the middle of the time) when they talk to you and they listen to you, and it seems like they actually find you lovely and a bit interesting. Do you know that time? Isn’t it great? Our time has passed. Our “children” or whatever we should call offspring that have grown up, no longer seem to find us lovely or interesting. Well, to be honest we don’t often find ourselves lovely, but something amazing happened while we were in Scotland… We were lovely and interesting for a short moment in time!

(This goose lives with her family at one of the motorway service areas in Scotland)

We were staying in a house with some very lovely wee folk (and their parents and one of their grandparents) and during our visit there were times when we wondered, is it possible they think we’re lovely? For example, when we spoke, one or other or even all of them, listened. Ok, you might say they were polite and they were… What about when we made a joke (not a very funny joke but a good effort) and they laughed, not always a forced laugh although I appreciate a kind-hearted forced laugh too. Again, possibly politeness. But the giveaway that we were interesting or dare I say lovely… was when they choose to sit beside us.

(Sheep play hide-and-seek…)

There were two sofas in the sitting room and Denis was sitting on one and I was on the other (we just needed space nothing to do with our man eating cow problems) and one of the wee folk sat beside me and the other sat beside Denis. I passed a very enjoyable time talking about art and in particular colour, while Denis was discussing the merits of one programming language over another.

(Sheep never attack humans…)

Well, I can tell you, feeling lovely does wonders for the self-confidence. Mairead.

Beautiful English countryside spoiled by marriage-wrecking cows!

June 11, 2016 | Mairead

(This is a map of the area where we think we were…)

We have arrived in County Durham… or maybe The Shire of Durham or possibly somewhere else entirely. There’s a distinct disadvantage to not having done British geography at school while at the same time having listened to British radio and watched British television… We think we know the places because we’ve heard the names so often but we haven’t a clue where they are or anything about them. For instance what’s the difference between a shire and a county? We think we know something but in the end it turns out we don’t… and because we speak English it’s easy to forget we are foreigners.

(Ah, the beautiful arrow again)

Last week I was telling my brother, who lives in England and has done so for about twenty years, that we were in the Lake District but we hadn’t seen a lake. He though I was joking… It turns out we were near the Lake District and we needed to go west to see any lakes. When we did wander west it got very busy so we continued further west and saw the sea instead. Anyway, we love this around-the-Lake-District area so much we wandered around it for more than a week (still didn’t see any lakes). It might be called Cumbria or it might be Cumberland although there’s a strong possibility that’s just the name for a sausage and a beer…? And a pie? One thing I do know is why I like it – it’s beautiful.

(Beautiful signpost… see the path worn by feet through the grass?)

We stayed in a large campsite on our first (second when counting the magic Wales spot) night near a town called Kendal (famous for mint cake, didn’t find any and not sure I want to try a minty cake). As soon as we had settled I went off to investigate something. The Public Footpaths. Following on from the Camino and Walking in the West I am drawn to the little arrows that point you towards a walk in the country. Here in England (and Scotland and Wales) they also have big signposts pointing the way. They are everywhere and they point to lots of different footpaths: lanes between fences, paths across the long grass, at the edge of a field of sheep or… cows, an old disused road with grass growing down the middle, a path through the forest, a path through a farmyard… The thing is people have walked along this way for hundreds of years.

(Sigh)

Being able to walk through the fields also brings up warm sun-shiny memories of childhood, walking through the fields around Cashel with my friend Mary. You get a different perspective from being inside the hedge. It’s also a bit of an adventure. I’ve been afraid of cows since they ran after my mother once (long story short – they thought she was feeding them, I thought they were eating her – I was traumatised). So… I would never willingly go into a field unless I was completely sure they’re were no cows but something about following the arrows gave me courage to go in once I didn’t actually see any cows. Turns out that’s not entirely foolproof…

(Ok I like this one)

This is what happened… We were staying in a campsite on a farm near the very pretty town of Penrith. (By the way we have been staying in small campsites since and they are wonderful, what they lack in toilet and shower blocks they make up for in character. Basically this was a field on the farm, with electricity points, water taps, grey water disposal, chemical toilet disposal and a room with a view: one toilet with a little window looking out onto the rolling fields!) The lovely hostess told us there was a nice pub in the village and we could get to it through the gate at the bottom of our camping field and along the public footpath. After dinner the first night we set off. It was a lovely walk through a field of barley onto an empty field and then along a laneway into the village. The pub was lovely, the beer interesting and weird sounding. All was well with the world and the sun was still shining when we started our journey home.

(Our view of the room with a view, on the right of the picture)

I was alerted to a problem when Denis said Oh. He’s a farmer’s son with a (misguided, in my opinion) lack of fear of farm animals but he has heard me explain how scary cows are and didn’t want to hear it again. He had spotted the cows approaching. This was the empty field, for goodness sake! I began to move faster than Denis. My instinct for self-preservation won out against my generosity of spirit and I thought if I was in front they might be happy to eat him instead of me. I’m not proud of these instincts and now I may have to go to marriage counselling all because of those cows!

(Denis getting one last photo before joining me on the other side of the gate. Can you see that white one racing down the field to eat us?)

Suffice it to say I made it to the gate before the cows… and Denis. Mairead.

The Narrow Roads of Wales

June 9, 2016June 9, 2016 | Mairead

(Leaving Dublin Port)

We’re supposed to be in Scotland at the moment. We drove to Dublin last Tuesday week, intending to get the 2am ferry to Holyhead. I was going to sleep in the van at the ferry car park while Denis did some work. He’d wake me to get on the ferry and when we got off we’d drive to a campsite we had booked near the town of Kendal. The sailing in the middle of the night seemed like a good idea… but now we’ll never know.

Here’s the story… so we arrived at the ferry terminal in Dublin Port and there was a long line of cars and trucks waiting for the ferry before ours. We joined the queue but then as we got closer we wondered if maybe there was room for us on this ferry. If there was, then we would arrive in Holyhead before midnight and we’d both have a full night’s sleep. The guy in the office checked and yes they did indeed have room (this ferry was full when we had initially booked). So we marvelled at our good luck and settled down somewhere quiet to enjoy the journey.

(Saw this sailboat looking really eerie in the Irish Sea)

We were an hour into the sailing when I realised we had nowhere to stay when we docked…. Because of our good luck we were now going to be in Wales on May 31st but our booking was for June 1st (and three hours from the port). We have never camped in Wales or England and didn’t know the system. It turns out to be different from France or Spain or Portugal but not in a bad way. Anyway, we still had a guidebook we’d used in Portugal to find free camping spots and they had a section for Wales.

(A hen… )

Just before midnight we headed off the ferry in the dark with surrounded by trucks. Soon we had left the motorway and were making our way via small roads on a thirty minute journey to our free spot for the night. The route was reminiscent of the early days in Portugal. Sometimes the road was only wide enough for the camper and I wasn’t sure what we would do if there was anything – even a bicycle – coming the other way. (Well I mean I wasn’t sure what Denis would do as I’d definitely be screaming something helpful like, get out-of-the-way!) Luckily there was nothing coming on the very narrow stretches and very little in general. They must go to bed early in Wales. Eventually the sat. nav. said, “You have reached your destination” and we drove into a car park with six other campers parked. It was pitch dark and silent so we tried to keep the noise down and went straight to bed.

(Pretty flowers… )

Something woke me at 4am. The police? The land owner? I opened the blind as quietly as I could and looked out the window… it was kinda shocking: Sunshine, sand dunes, blue sea and birds tweeting. Just in case I was dreaming I took a picture and went back to sleep. We have had sunshine constantly since that morning, so we’ve been pottering around the shire of Cumbria, more about that next time.

(That’s the view (out the back window of the camper, between the bikes) of the sea… at 4am)

As I write the rain pitter-patters on the awning but I’m not bothered because this trip seems to be filled with pixie dust and moonbeams! Mairead.

Nearly home…

March 29, 2016March 28, 2016 | Mairead

(Over and under the Millau Bridge)

Ah the journey is nearly over… we are getting closer and closer to Cherbourg and our boat home on Wednesday. We were in Spain the last time I wrote, in pouring rain and although the rain is pouring again we had a week of sunshine. We have started travelling in one hour segments off the toll roads and it was a little disconcerting to begin with but I’m glad we did. We have been in some beautiful places… We decided to go over the Millau Bridge and then under the Millau Bridge on our way to a campsite. The road over it is very wide… the roads under it are not and some of them say No Camping Cars…

(Fog filled campsite in the valley of the Tarn river. There is a hill directly behind the house in the picture)

Finally we reached our campsite on the side of a hill in a village called Saint-Rome-de-Tarn (Midi-Pyrénées). The reception was at the top of the hill and three hairpin bends later we were at our pitch. There would be no climbing back up on foot if we needed anything. We didn’t need anything. And the toilets? They were magnificent! The showers also! Next morning I took the photo above while wondering how we would navigate out in the fog.

(Rising above the fog filled valley)

But I needn’t have worried, there was fog all along the valley but as we drove higher the sun broke through. We stopped to get a picture above the clouds. It’s funny to think that a village up there would be in sunshine with a respectable 9º while twenty minutes down at the river it was 2º.

(Surprise! Chateau!)

We were heading to a camping car overnight parking in the village of Montsalvy (Auvergne) but with twenty minutes to go there was a diversion. No problem, Molly was on hand to find a way… Unfortunately, Molly thinks we are a little smaller that we actually are and tried to send us on paths we might have been hard pushed to fit on walking side by side. We rejected many of them but eventually we took one and had a bit of a mystery tour.

(Can you make out the white van on the road?)

An hour later we stopped at a lay-by on the side of the road to have lunch and took the photo above. It was glorious, cold but sunny so we bundled up and had lunch at the stone picnic table.

(Lunch on top of the mountain. Reward for surviving!)

We set off again full of smiles. Then the road got narrower. We entered at least five villages where we weren’t sure if we could squeeze between the houses, let alone what would happen if we met another car. There were no other cars. There was a tractor. When I saw it coming I covered my eyes! But they must make them brave around here because even though he was on the steep drop side he drove up on the kerb and was gone before I remembered to breathe. Viva les français!

(Each camper space had a hardstanding, hedge of privacy (!) a grassy area and a picnic table!)

We left the day foggy campsite at 9am and sometime in the afternoon we finally arrived at Montsalvy our home for the night. Because it’s winter (I think that’s what the sign said) there would be no electricity, no water and no toilets, but it was completely free and very pretty.

(I got very excited when I saw this shop. They sell craft paper! No, they office supplies!)

I woke in the middle of the night and thinking it might be morning looked out the window. There was a full moon and all the trees were silhouettes. No pictures but I took one the next morning. In black and white it’s a close-ish proximity to what I saw during the night. Minus the moon. This is like a magic place.

(The view from our bedroom window at the free overnight spot)

I will remember this day for a very long time, Mairead.

A day in the life…

March 18, 2016March 17, 2016 | Mairead

(A little bit choppy)

It’s St. Patrick’s Day as I write and as luck would have it, there’s rain so we feel quite at home! I promised my friend, Julie, ages ago to include the normal day-to-day stuff of life in a camper van and I never did… So for Julie, here’s a typical day on the journey! (Well, a typical travelling day.)

The alarm went off at seven am and I got up, opened the roof vent blinds to make staying awake easier. The blinds in the van are really good, complete darkness guaranteed but when it’s dark it’s tempting to fall back to sleep. Then I drank my health drink, got dressed and sat down to meditate.

(Can you see the spray?)

Afterwards I went off to take some sunrise pictures as we were by the sea, waking Denis before I left. As we are by the sea the site is sandy so I don’t wear shoes inside the van so that’s a bit fiddly taking off and putting on shoes or slippers. It was very cloudy this morning and I think I was too late for the moment of sunrise. I’ll look at the pictures later. When I got back Denis was up un-hooking the electricity and turning off the gas. He’d taken down the cab blinds and turned the driver and passenger seats to the front (they can turn around to face the table when we are stopped).

(I like the reflection of the sunlight on the water)

We used to have a list of things to do before we left a pitch but we lost it… Usually we remember everything and if we don’t I can do them as we move… slowly. Like pushing the buttons to secure all the presses and locking the fridge door. Putting away the kettle, the dishes and any food. Opening the window blinds and turning off the 12V battery and the water pump. Putting away the laptops. Plugging in the phones and turning off the wifi. Securing everything that might fall off the table.

We were driving out of the campsite at 8.10am following the instructions of Molly (we named our sat nav Molly, Molly!). We love Molly, even when we take the wrong road she never fusses, she doesn’t even say recalculating she just goes quiet for a moment or two and then finds a way to make our mistake go away. She takes very good care of us (except when she was taking us on the very scary roads in Portugal but that’s in the past, we’ll say no more about that…)

(Stripes of colour)

Molly takes us on the toll road and I am very happy. Denis is not as happy but we have reached a compromise – the one who sits closest to the oncoming traffic gets to choose, so we take the toll road today. Our two and a half hour journey cost €20 in tolls, I feel it was worth it. In Spain you stop and get a ticket as you enter the toll road and then as you leave the toll section of the road you put the ticket and your credit card (or cash) into a machine. In Portugal the number plates are scanned as you drive under cameras (like the M50 in Dublin). We may be getting a big fine because although we connected our number plate to our credit card, the system is really difficult to understand.

(What is that?)

We arrived at today’s campsite at noon and I brought our passports and camping card (there are reductions off-season) to reception which was at the bar. It’s slightly different at each campsite, but at this one you pay first, get a choice of pitches, the location of the toilets and showers, the wifi code and then you’re on your own. Sometimes we walk around looking at each one, to find the very best…. today we took the closest and reversed what we had done to leave the last campsite. Within half an hour we were sitting down to lunch.

Denis makes dinner each day and usually lunch too and I wash up. Today because of the rain I turned on the water heater to wash the dishes in the van, usually I wash up in the campsite sinks. It saves gas (we need to save gas because the gas bottle connectors are different here, so we must bring all the gas we will need from Ireland). It also saves the water in our clean water tank and it means we don’t have to empty our grey water tank as often.

(Foamy waves)

While the water was heating I went to investigate the toilets. Toilets are different everywhere we go and bear no relation to the cost of the overnight stay. We are paying €20 per night at this campsite, the most we have paid so far on this journey. My friend Magda was asking me what I was looking forward to most on this journey and I said the toilets! She thought she had misheard but no it’s the toilets! Everything else is so new and interesting and fun but…. toilets are essential.

We have been very lucky, the toilets have always been clean. After that, toilet paper, soap and a drier make everything perfect. My investigation showed there’s no toilet paper, soap or dryer here… oh well time to take the toilet bag out of the wardrobe…. The toilet bag contains a toilet roll, a bar of soap and a hand towel. (Note to self: Remember to bring the toilet bag…)

(This is my favourite one)

Now both of us are at our computers, Denis is at the table, I’m on the bed with my feet tucked under my favourite patchwork quilt. He’s talking to a client and I’m writing… this. Next I will look at the pictures from this morning and add them (or older ones) here before posting. Then I will have a shower – no queues in the afternoon. And back to working on my book. We will eat dinner around 7.30pm. Then read or play a game or if the wifi is fast we will watch the latest video from our favourite YouTube camper van geek. I will be in bed by 10pm. Denis might be working until midnight.

Too Much Information? Mairead.

PS Forgot to mention breakfast! I cannot survive unless I have breakfast within an hour of waking. Normally, I have it before we leave but today with the picture-taking there was no time so we stopped at a service area before I got too grumpy where I cooked my Irish Paddy’s Day Flahavan’s porridge.

I think… a lot

March 17, 2016March 16, 2016 | Mairead

(The rocks at the lighthouse near Sagres, Portugal)

It’s coming towards the end of this journey and as always my mind stops living in the present and moves ahead. It’s very counter productive because on the one hand I am thinking about leaving and missing this lifestyle and on the other hand if I’m thinking about leaving then I’m no longer here! So I’ve left the travelling already… two weeks before it ends! I used to do the same thing when I got a massage. The session would hardly have started before I’d be thinking, I wonder how much time is left, I wish this would last longer….

(Port with little lighthouse near Sagres)

For the past two weeks I’ve been meditating using Headspace and that’s how I recognised that I was in this pattern again. During the fifteen minutes of the meditation, the guide, whose name is Andy, reminds you to pay attention to your breath and count along with the in breathe and the out breath to ten and if you get distracted by thoughts or feelings to stop the counting. Then notice you had a thought or feeling and go back to counting the breaths. I used to think that I couldn’t meditate because I was continuously distracted by thoughts but now I realise that the distractions are the place where I learn what I’m doing to myself.

(This guy was in the campsite at Luz, Portugal)

And the thing that I’m doing to myself, is thinking… constantly thinking. Thinking about the future, the past, the bad things that could happen, the good things that could happen, the things I might miss, the things I did wrong, the hurt I caused, the apologies I could make, I didn’t make, I can’t make. These thoughts have an impact on my mood, my well-being, my mental health, my relationships, my productivity, my sanity! Since restarting meditation I have been noticing my thinking as it distracts me for a fifteen minute section of the day. (For the other 23 hours and 45 minutes each day I hardly ever realise I am continuously thinking.) For fifteen minutes a day I cannot stop those thoughts but I can notice them and then return to counting my breaths and that helps.

(Gibraltar, of course)

Today, in the meditation Andy asked me (it’s pre-recorded, he’s not actually talking to me…) to consider the bigger picture. To consider everyone I meet is doing exactly the same thing to themselves. Everyone I meet or see on the street or hear in the shop is doing this to themselves. And they can’t stop. We can’t stop the thinking of the thoughts, the best we can do is to notice it and then return to what’s actually happening. For the rest of this journey I will be practicing returning to what is actually happening here, because I’m still here, even if my thoughts are not.

One teeny, tiny, baby step at a time, Mairead.

P.S. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Ireland!