2025, a personal review

I'll start with the fun stuff:

• 174 hill summits, of which 169 were new. 69 of the new ones were only TUMPs (30m prominence, no minimum heights), the rest were more significant including 5 more Historic County Tops (16 left out of 85).
• 78 new Dartmoor tors, total now stands at 457 out of 929 (49%)
• 51 trig points, 48 of which were new.
• 18 new Dartmoor 365 squares, 16 left to go
• Ran 920 miles (of which 722 was trail), only really starting again in May after my ankle recovered.
• Walked 356 miles, hiked 174 miles, cycled 51 miles, swam for 116 hours covering 37km outdoors (a lot of that was in Croatia) and 6.2km indoors, paddleboarded 56 hours covering 129 miles and learned to move around the board and do step back turns.
• 4 heatmap swims (Anstey's to Hope's nose through a jellyfish swarm, Maidencombe to Watcombe with my first jellyfish sting, Babbacombe to Anstey's, and Teignmouth to Sprey point). I've now completed South Devon from Shoalstone, Brixham as far as Ness, Shaldon.
• Ran/walked some more UK coast path in Wales, Somerset, Yorkshire, Hampshire.

That was my most summits bagged in a year, an improvement of 35 summits on the previous best (2022).

And perhaps most significantly was that blissful, sigh-of-relief inducing return to proper running form after 2 1/2 years off with blood clots followed by a broken ankle. I ran a marathon in June for the first time since the DVT, which was a really notable achievement since I genuinely didn’t know if I’d ever be able to run long distance again. My calf struggled with its 75% bloodflow, but I did two more 22-milers later in the year and those were okay, so I think that each time I re-reach a new milestone my body learns that it can again, and so there’s no reason I can’t train for an ultra again now.

I went away a lot: trail and sail in Croatia in July (incredible, and a new country tick), an island bagging trip to Orkney in August (met some lovely hill-baggers and went on a very rolly boat trip in the Pentland Firth), Lake District in September (as a recce for a future Wainwright trip), and Italy in November (for my first UTMB race). These were continuously active trips and I reached an all-time Strava fitness high of 130(!), which is slightly artificial due to my venous insufficiency and resultant elevated heartrate but still pleased me and I’ve managed to maintain a level near it.

I also had the magical pleasure to paddleboard with dolphins in June. I agreed to a dawn paddle which is VERY unlike me as it meant getting up at 5am, but I felt this unexplainable draw to the idea and had this uncanny hunch that we would see the dolphins - and we did!

Some non-active thing also took a lot of my time. I was on a FODMAP diet for 5 months to work out what is causing my IBS but I didn’t reach any conclusions. I also decided to sell my Stoke house as my tenants were being awkward about work I needed to have done on it, I put it on the market early March and sold it mid September. I used some of the money to upgrade my life, uncharacteristically buying a fancy electric car in Oct (second hand but still 6.5x more than I've ever spent on a car before, and even that was 3x what I'd spent on all my cars before that) and a upgraded to the latest phone to go with an upgraded sports watch I treated myself to earlier in the year. I’ll be more sensible with the rest and put it all into the new house.

Another biggie was applying for Mountain Rescue, or at least it was meant to be, but I didn’t get in. I had spent 2 years plus mentally adjusting for it, preparing to free up my time and ensuring I was fully committed to the demands it would bring.

I knew there was a selection day but I thought that was to assess you against a minimum standard, I had no idea there were only 4 places for 20 candidates, and as it happened I didn’t manage to get one. That was more of a knock than I bargained for, as I expected it to be a whole lifestyle change and I had mentally embraced that.

Other negatives - 3 friends died. One that I had spent 2024/2025 New Year visiting and bagging mountains with, one close friend (and I don't have many of those) that has always been there for me and genuinly accepted me for who I am, and one special 16 year old boy who I’d known since he was a baby. I think about them often. I've reconsidered other friendships, moving on from people who never get in touch. I'm not that great at it but I do try and I do make occasional contact, it's not really that hard to send the occasional message or facebook comment and some people do absolutely nothing, so I think it's fair to say they're not actually friends in any way.

My house that I bought in 2024 continued to be a positive, a lovely safe place that I like to be in. Because of that’s it’s sometimes hard to tell if life is tough elsewhere as it’s such an effective escape. Some work stuff has definitely been stressful and I maybe didn’t pick up the signs early enough because of that. I did stop doing other stuff but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a natural consequence of being more settled, I guess time will tell - I didn’t make cider for first time in 15 years; I stopped (ceilidh) calling (and dancing largely); I mostly stopped orienteering. I know if you do fewer things your comfort zone shrinks, but don’t feel as capable as I used to, and also living in Devon I have lower energy levels as there is less buzz to feed off. I think it helps if I think of my comfort zone as a line more than a circle, that I can meander either side of, I don't have to contantly keep pushing it out. I still did a lot, and June and December were absolutely non stop. I do think life is hard, perhaps just a mid-40s thing, and much like my body is getting less bouncy, my mind is too, and each difficult experience takes its toll a little more and I don't bounce back as much (accompanying photo here is when I mentally gave up on a 22-mile run event, never done that before, seemed a good parallel). I realised that I have very few moments where I feel joy, and I made a conscious acknowledgment of that as joy should be a choice that is within our power to make and I didn’t know how to make it at that time, but I didn’t want to miss the moment when I do.