Who am I and what am I doing here?

Hi! Welcome to my new blog. If you don't know me, either in real life or from my older blogs, I'm Mel! I'm one of those 'busy' people. I like to stay busy and I have many, many hobbies. I'm also a little unreliable, in that I jump in and out of my hobbies as the mood takes me. Some might think I am a little hyperactive/short attention span, but possibly I just like to do lots of different things. 😁

So why this blog? 

I'm a big girl. At the moment I'm bigger than I have been for a while, but I do love to be active. For quite a few years (2012-2019) I was a Sh'Bam instructor, and I loved that. But I had to give it a rest because it was wreaking havoc on my knees. And when I did that I put on a bit of weight (OK, definitely more than just a bit...). I went through a bit of a stressful patch too, which didn't help. Then, during 2019 I changed jobs (to one I absolutely adore) and started paying a bit of attention to my mental wellbeing. Things were starting to go well and 2020 started (I probably don't need to explain that too much!). So yeah. Despite my best intentions, I wasn't a great iso-exerciser. 

Anyway, as restrictions started to lift I thought it might be good to be a bit more active. So one day after work I thought I'd go for a walk. As I work in West Belconnen, I picked the One Tree Hill trail, which starts just behind Hall. 

It's a lovely trail, with some nice views along the way (and cute fungus colonies!),

but it was getting dark so I only went as far as the bottom of the summit path. 

As I got back to my car, I realised that I was feeling really good. Not just because I'd had a nice walk, but because I'd had a nice walk by myself, in the quiet beauty of the Canberra bush. I remembered how much I loved it!

Over the next couple of weeks I did a couple of other walks; including around Lake Burley Griffin, one of my favourite walks in the Cork Oak Forest (National Arboretum) and the North Mulligan's Flat Circuit. I enjoyed these, but I do like a bit of a challenge. One day after work I went up Mount Painter. It was hard work for my reasonably unfit body, but a good challenge and very satisfying with the view from the top. You can see some of my pictures in the next post. 

By the time I'd walked up a couple more local mountains I knew I was hooked. Every one of them was hard, but I liked the feeling I got afterwards, and I LOVED the view. I'm a sucker for a beautiful landscape and a spectacular vista. So I thought I'd set myself a challenge to visit as many trigs as I could. I started posting pictures on Facebook and got some good interest, so then I thought it was probably worth blogging about. When researching my trig walks, I found that all the information was posted by super-fit hikers, so I thought I'd try to make mine a bit more accessible for the casual, slightly unfit walker, with some realistic information about the nature of the walk. Then maybe more people might get out there are have a look!

So that's how I got here. I hope you can join me for the journey!