Trail Tunes: Day 1 on the Dales High Way

Music is never far from my mind when I’m on the trail

Let me start by saying this: “I’m blessed.” I’m lucky enough to live a life in which access to joy feels at times unlimited.

That doesn’t mean that crappy stuff doesn’t happen. Life can and does bring its ups and downs. And over the last few years I’ve found myself becoming prone to periods of mild to moderate depression. But the downs come. And they go. Those darker periods, the days or weeks when the very idea of joy seems completely inaccessible and unattainable? Those, too, do pass.

The fact remains that probably 90% of my day to day life provides access to joy (as I said: #blessed). If you’ve been reading for a while (all of three posts!) you’ll know that music is a massive source of joy for me. Another wellspring of joy is walking, particularly multi-day long distance walking, preferably up in the hills. It’s when I’m closest to being my most authentic self. While Bermuda is beautiful, it doesn’t offer the landscapes or the terrain to make my heart sing. And so, as frequently as possible, my wife Tina and I head overseas (generally to the UK), to engage in our shared love of hiking.

Today we started the Dales High Way, a 90-mile walk in northern England, from Saltaire to Appleby, traversing the western edges of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. We’ve been in the Dales twice before and it ranks among my favorite places in the world.

Invariably, either prompted directly by an individual comment or by a conversation we’re having, or simply drawing from the songs that so regularly seem to be running through my brain, there ends up being a soundtrack to any given day out on the trails. And today was no exception.

So I present to you the soundtrack of our first day on the trail, a lovely 13-mile jaunt from Saltaire to Addingham. Only a short selection today, but here are the tracks that were running through my head at various times today.

“All I Wanna Do” - Sheryl Crow

Within the first hour of our day, after making our way out of the old mill town of Saltaire, and walking along the Leeds Liverpool Canal, we crossed the River Aire via a small footbridge and found ourselves in Trench Wood.

While walking between and beneath trees just beginning to shed their leaves in a begrudged acceptance of the onset of autumn, Tina stopped short. She turned to me and, surveying our magical locale, exclaimed, “this is all I wanna do!” I couldn’t agree more! I also couldn’t let the moment pass without belting out a little of the Sheryl Crows classic from her 1993 debut album Tuesday Night Music Club.

“Too Late For Goodbyes” - Julian Lennon

No idea where this one came from! I just suddenly found myself singing it or, more accurately, singing parts of it. The same parts. Over and over again. How annoying! I remember liking the song when it first came out in 1985, but not sure I could name another Julian Lennon track. But nonetheless, that was tune two of the day.

“Linger “ - The Cranberries

As we made our way up onto Hawksworth Moor I found myself humming the introductory vocalizations from Linger, the seventh track from The Cranberries’ absolutely stunning major label debut Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? I remember being absolutely blown away by this album when it came out. The ways in which the exquisite instrument that is Dolores O’Riordan’s voice is woven into the background of the songs on this album remains nothing short of breathtaking. A fitting track for a desolate but gorgeous landscape.

“Return of the Mack” - Mark Morrison

With a little more than an hour left in our walk, I found myself singing, of all things, “Return of the Mack”! It’s not a bad song by any stretch, but it’s also not something I’d normally find myself singing and I was literally thinking, “why in the actual f**k am I singing this song?” So I took a look at what I was actually singing (incorrectly as it turns out) and it was the line “don’t lie to me” (it’s actually “you lied to me” but anyway).

Ten minutes earlier I’d asked Tina how her pain was on a scale of 1-10 (we’re each struggling with a minor physical ailment). And I’d said “don’t lie”. Not because she has a penchant for doing so, but because she often tries to tough it out when she’s struggling. So that “don’t lie” had been rattling around for ten minutes and re-emerged as the Mark Morrison banger from the spring of 1997. Her pain was a 1 to 2 by the way, so we’re all good!

And that’s it for today! Not sure whether I’ll be posting through the course of the week, but I’ll definitely take note of the “trail tunes” along the way and report back at some point.