Adventuring

Prior to an organised ‘ultra run’ there’s normally a race briefing and it was the Brecon to Cardiff event by ‘Run, Walk, Crawl’ that captured my attention, there was a gentle reminder that a ‘tidy’ pace would be required to cover the required distance (43miles) in the allocated time and that this was an adventure not a walk! After a long sunny day last Sunday I was very grateful to have completed this adventure and having wonderful people such as Ruth Norway cheering me on in person I managed to bank some fabulous memories!

It got me thinking about the importance of adventuring in life. One of my occasional treats on a Saturday afternoon is touring our local Hertfordshire charity shops where I picked up a great Jamie Oliver cookbook focusing on recipes from his travels to Spain, Italy, Sweden, Morocco, Greece and France. I’m looking forward to dipping into culinary adventures prior to sleeping! A couple of paragraphs is generally all I need before heading off into the land of nod!

Wonderful Jane Galloway of ‘Quiet the Hive’ a few weeks ago recommended ‘Simple Abundance’ a day book of comfort and joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach. It’s a lovely book to enjoy with my morning coffee. On 25th February she highlights that most women she knows have one priority… ‘to make it through the day’. I suspect many of us can connect with that, and yet pausing to acknowledge, recognise and reordering priorities can help strengthen our purpose and perhaps take a moment for adventuring either physically or mentally.

In order for children to adventure through life we need to provide them with the best foundations possible and I was delighted to hear Sadiq Khan announce that London would provide school meals for all primary school children, I’m excited by the impact this will have in reducing stigma and providing nutrition to aid learning. If we could only get a school nurse in every school and a school governor leading for health and well-being we’d be on the right track to build sustainable health and wellbeing into our schools.

North London this week had a call that highlighted yet again the numbers of children requiring dental extraction and a conversation with a paediatrician reinforced the amount of time spent explaining fever and fever management to families in busy EDs, the importance of health visiting and growing this workforce was reinforced yet again!

In order to adventure we all need a bit of support, a briefing, a cheerleader, let’s keep making sure we’re helping children adventure through their lives.

Right I’m off on my adventure of the morning ‘the Baldock Beast’!