The Pennine Why!

The Pennine Way. What do I want from it?

There’s the question!  The real question, however, there are so many answers it’s hard to know where to start.

I think the best place to start is with the affirmation I write down three times every evening and focus on.

‘I am a brand that makes enough money so that we have financial freedom and can then help others unhindered.’

I think everything starts from there.

However, in the first instance I am walking it because I want to. I have wanted to walk it ever since I knew it existed.

I have walked five other long-distance walks; however, this one is three times longer than any of them.  You can’t slip it into a weekend. It’s the first one that will be mostly solo and the first that I’ve wild camped.

My knees are not good, and I will be carrying twenty-four (ish) kilos on my back.  It may rain, as it is as I write, every day.

Spending that long in connection with the countryside is likely to have an effect on me.  In what way I don’t know. But there will be days of absolute exultation, in some of the most beautiful places the UK has to offer and there will be some days where putting one foot in front of the other will be a massive challenge in itself. That is why I pushed myself so hard in the last shakedown.

Belief, in myself and in what I believe, for sure.  Hopefully I have,  put the minds at rest of all those who have looked to lay their fears onto me as well.

It is definitely a step into the unknown.

I also wish to raise my profile enough that I can achieve my affirmation. That means that the events I run, the speaking opportunities I have and books that I write are in enough demand that I can spend all the rest of my time looking to help people make positive choices to support their MIND health, preferably using the countryside as the greatest value resource available.

Thus, the decision to look to promote the work done in supporting people with mental health and raise funds for my CIC ‘Slow the Mind’ and the Baton of Hope was a no brainer.

With that in MIND, I enlisted the help of Amanda Fitzgerald and her team to make what I do and the walk itself as visible as possible.  She brands herself as ‘The ultimate door opener’. As I write this its beginning to look like she is going to do just that!

As well as a mission to help others I have a brand and a story that hopefully people will identify with and a style that is unique and recognisable. 

For the Pennine Way that means a combination of a Rucksack and a Frock Coat!

Ultimately though, I believe everything that has happened in my life has led me to this moment: forty plus years of anxiety, thirty five years of alcohol abuse, the haunted drunk my wife married because she could see what, or who, lay behind it, my dreams as a child, the message of horse, the advice Jacqui gave me at Space to Emerge, ‘shine brightly’, the story of Grey and Blue I wrote about this year, Paul leading me to Mike McCarthy and the Baton of Hope, never mind Slow the Mind.

I should also have an app (what three words) that means people can find me, so if you fancy joining me for a stretch of the Pennine Way, you just have to let me know.

However, never mind all this, bottom line, I’m not taking on any pressure. Its just me and the countryside and if nothing else happens, that connection is inherent to who I am and that will be enough.

What will I get from the Pennine Way?  I don’t know, yet. 

Well, apart from hairy!

Bottom Line. Why am I doing it? Because I want to.

Simon Pollard                   August 2024