Dear ,
For my holiday, I'm going to do another big walk - the next part of the Way of St James. So, for the last few weeks I've been doing training walks. The last one I did was at the weekend.
Now it's autumn, and we are getting a bit of rain. I knew it would probably be wet on the day I walked, but I still wanted to go. On my holiday, I will stick to my walking plan, whether it is raining or not!
When I set out, it was cloudy, but the day was quite warm. I was only walking for about ten minutes when I needed to take my jacket off.
It wasn't long after that when it started to rain. It wasn't too heavy, but I didn't want to get soaked (1). Instead of getting my rain jacket out and putting it on, I got out my umbrella.
It's not the first time I've been walking in fields and forests and used an umbrella. I did it a couple of years ago, when I first started walking the Way of St James.
Why walk with an umbrella instead of wearing a raincoat? Because it's more comfortable. As I said, the day was quite warm. If I had put on my raincoat, I would have got hot very quickly. (I learnt that when I travelled to Indonesia the first time). It would have been really uncomfortable!
Wearing a raincoat looks better. It looks like I have the proper equipment for walking in the forest. An umbrella looks more like something you use in the city. I won't take my umbrella with me when I go to France to walk because I need to be very careful about how much my backpack weighs. Carrying my raincoat and my umbrella is too much.
But for a training walk, when I don't have a full backpack, carrying both things isn't a problem. And on a warm day, using the umbrella was better. I don't care if it looked silly!
What do you think, ? Is it better to have the 'proper' clothing and equipment for being outdoors, or is it better have something comfortable that still does what you need it to?
Stay dry!
Andrea
(1) soaked - get really, really wet, right through all of your clothing.
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