All of the wanders outlined in these blogs have presented multiple challenges. One might imagine that route finding in the Black Forest would be somewhat more simple than wandering around the poorly mapped hinterlands of Nepal or Rwanda. To be confirmed or not once we get there. We actually have a map this time. A real one. With impossible to replicate folds. The full package.

Happily, we also seem to have overcome the vagaries of booking dot…really, albeit Rose did initially book one accommodation venue for the right day but the wrong year. There is though, a further trial ahead. Mix five years aging with lockdown inactivity and a soupcon of decrepitude and the finely honed bodies of our last wander are but a distant memory. Yes, we are not the men we used to be.

Wandering man and Rose have taken different paths to feebleness, one more prosaic, the other quite exotic. In the case of Wandering Man, the relentless but somewhat predictable advance of arthritis has led to periods of enforced inactivity interspersed with the insertion of spectacular bits of metal into the spine. Quietly confident, after the resulting disappearance of neurological claudication, i.e. the ability to feel his feet again, there remains only the wobbly knee syndrome and muscular atrophy to conquer. Plus of course the maintenance of heart health which observant readers will be well aware prompted these wanders in the first place.

Rose, however, does it differently. In a colourful list of ailments to have assailed him since our last wander, he lists an eyelid tic (the insect variety, not the behavioural disorder), a bout of Dengue Fever and a broken Achilles tendon. All of these infirmities have been a consequence of toxic encounters with other members of the animal kingdom. Even the Achilles issue came about as Rose sought to release an elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptile of the suborder Serpentes – a snake to you and me – that had become tangled in some netting covering a well in Rose’s garden. 

Apparently there are wolves in the Black Forest, so on current form Rose will probably experience some other anatomical malfunction consequent upon a close encounter of the Canis lupus lupus form.

Predictably, we have taken different approaches to regaining lost youthful vigour. Wandering man has joined two gyms and now undertakes grim exercises with intimidating names such as ‘front squat with dumbbell’, ‘deadlift’, ‘press on flat bench’ and the hideous ‘alternating sled push/pull’. Rose, on the other hand goes for walks on the beach. And it’s a lovely beach, with sand and waves and no gym music. Absolutely no gym music. Whilst Rose listens to the gentle crash of waves and observes the ocean, Wandering man endures thumping bass and watches the TV to learn all about food he is not allowed to eat from the cooking programmes taunting him above the gym machines.

Because dieting is, of course, the other ‘regime’. Enforced inactivity and French cuisine have taken their toll. Years of natural selection have allowed the average French person to tolerate morning pastries, extensive two-hour lunches, rich sauces, and fine wines. No such luck for the average Anglo Saxon like Wandering man, who balloons at the mere mention of the word Cassoulet. As for Rose, he is in a better position in finding hot climates incompatible with eating food. It also helps that he spends hours round the garden, pursuing his chickens who give him the right run around. Whereas most people take the dogs out, it’s the chickens that take Rose for walks.

So here we are, trying to lose weight and put on muscle mass in a vain attempt to rediscover the elixir of our lost youths. How our newly rejuvenated mid-sixties bodies will cope with the first incline, we wait to see. The wander we have planned is called ‘Lakes and Mountains’. Lakes sounds OK, it’s the mountains bit that sends shivers down our spines. What’s left of them anyway.