Just Looking...

Migratory birds probably feel like this, or burglars trying to stay clean but finding themselves driving by Securitas cash depots that aren't on their way home.... A longing. A pang. Some insistent pheromonal whiff calling, and, like a little kid hopping up and down with his hands between his legs, I gotta go.

With my office door shut, furtively at my desk in suburban Virginia, instead of reading about hyperbaric medicine or deciding what we're having for dinner ( Turkey Sausage might be nice...it's easy and those squishy Martin's Potato Roll buns. Oooh. Yes. Those are good. Do we have buns? Hmm. Maybe I should get some buns. It's all about the buns, really.Or maybe I'll try stir-fry again. God. Am I up for another a mound of swampy disaster and all those murdered carrots? I don't know if I can stand it. Turkey sausage. That's the safe way to go...), I am seeking Adventure.

I am just noodling around the edges of Adventure, really, trailing my toes in The Bubbling Pool of Adventure where well-muscled, Chicklet-toothed, and tuque'd people beam at me, their smile lines, etched by squinting into a Serengeti distance, are beautiful. They beckon bobbing in that pool, that Rocky mountain campfire where they monitor wolf migration or a hundred feet into an Amazonian jungle canopy where they take notes on the courting ritual of purple toads the size of nickles who live their lives in the tops of trees."Come in and bob around with us and our perfect teeth," they say, "We are so handsome and fulfilled."

I find myself perusing web sites suggesting Surveying Aid/Technician position intriguingly described as being located in "Back Country/Wilderness." I am pulling the little phone number tabs off the bottom of "Roadie Wanted: Heavy Lifting. Must Have Most Fingers"

Walkin' the Wolds

The journey is the reward, they say, and planning a walk in the Cotswolds is a journey in itself. There are a number of long (>100 miles) walks to choose from and several enthusiastic hiking web sites to get you on your way. Oddly, it's not easy to find a useful (and free, since I've waited til the last minute, of course) map of the entire region on-line.

The All Great Britain-All the Time web site

Britain Express

has lots of history information and links as well as great map links to rental cottage sites.

There is the jaunty

Go 4 A Walk

and its cousin,

SherpaVan

provide real muddy walking guides, maps, and insight. Sherpa Van provides hiker and biker back-up on long-distance footpaths and bike trails.

Go 4 A Walk, on which someone's dog wrote, "Suddenly, and usually about ten minutes before sunset, that "only half a mile to go before we get back to the car", becomes a brutal two hours of deep heather, falling into holes, blasphemy, bad language, heresy, disloyalty to the Crown and emergency sardine eating frenzy," provides walking maps and hill climbing advice with an Electrolyte Energy Gels and verve.

The steadier

Ramblers

and

National Trail

are full of steady advice and historical insight.

The Toadsmoor and Me

It being February, and having been waved frantically away by every sensible Tour Britain web site, we're off to England to roam the drizzly Cotswolds in the sleet. We'll be staying in a 17th century stable on a stud farm, and hiking the whimsically dubbed Toadsmoor Valley from pub to pub.