Tag backpack

Top Ten Retirement Adventures: No. 10

Reg Spittle Leave a comment

It was 2012. Sue and I ended our work lives after toiling away since we were teen-agers. We had raised three sons, left jobs we enjoyed, and embarked on a mission to discover where “the rest of our lives” would lead us.

First stop: Italy. We were nervous, not sure how we would negotiate the language and culture, thinking we would make fools of ourselves. But we set off for Rome anyway. This photo makes us laugh. We were too cheap to pay for the real gondola tour for the iconic photo op, so we found this good-natured gondolier, who rowed us and another twosome across a Venice canal for two Euro. A five-minute ride, tops.

We explored Rome, Pisa, Venice, Vatican City, Cinque Terre, Verona, Tuscany, and much more. We started a travel blog named Carryoncouple, Sue’s idea. We carried everything we needed in carryon cases that doubled as a backpack.

A backpack? A year later, that word would take on a new meaning neither of us saw coming. We have been trekking long-distance trails ever since. But there’s more. Much more.

Number 9 is next.

The Salt Path: A Book Comes to Life in England

Reg Spittle 2 Comments
The path plunges and rises with the valleys, over and over.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then walking the South West Coast Path is indescribable.

I am reading Raynor Winn’s best-selling book, The Salt Path, while walking in her footsteps on England’s South West Coast Path.

Except I am hardly following her lead.

Winn walked after she and her husband Moth lost their home in a business deal gone sour. Plus, he had just gotten news that he was dying from a neurological disease. They camped, mostly, and she wrote that they lived off 48 pounds a week. In two segments, they trekked almost all of the 630 miles.

Sue and I are fortunate that we are healthy and will return to our Oregon home. We have a shower, warm bed, and pub meals at the end of each day. We are carrying everything we need on our backs, sans the tent, sleeping bags and stove. Finally, should our script play out, we will hike “just” 260 miles from Minehead to Land’s End.

But, like Raynor and her husband and all who venture here, we are astounded by the glory of England’s southwest coast. The steep path challenges, but our senses bask in this experience.