Having been back from the Cape Wrath trail for almost a month, I still can't believe the reaction I have received from doing the walk. All I did was walk, it was a long way but I just put one foot in front of the other, the same way I have been doing my whole life.
I wanted to write down my experiences of the walk so I have a memory bank to go back to. I know my experiences will start to fade in time and I want to preserve them in words as well as pictures, but as with everything to do with this walk, writing down my experience might someday prove to be the starting point for another diabetic adventurer, who then sets off on their own epic adventure.
But to write about my Cape Wrath walk I first need to talk about why I decided to do it in the first place.
First things first, I have always been happiest out in the world. I am not a person who copes well with being cooped up inside for too long. I need to feel the wind on my face and the sun on my back. I've always had a wanderlust that has made me want to explore the world around me. I want to see and climb and experience everything I can. I love to travel and I especially love to travel slowly, allowing myself the time to see everything the world has to offer.
But this side of me is countered by an opposite set of desires. I want certainty, security and routine. I want to know what is coming next and to have a solid plan for everything. These conflicting desires work against each other, my need for routine countering my desire to explore. I often find myself stuck between both these sides of my personality and I will swing from one side to the other. If I have been comfortable in a routine for too long the need to explore takes over, similarly if I spend too much time away from the certainty of my normal life I find my wanderlust expires and I long to get back to the routine of work. I need both adventure and security and the challenge for me is getting the balance right.
I have also struggled for a long time with confidence. I'm very good and thinking about what might go wrong and one of my biggest fears is that I will let this lack of confidence get in the way of doing the things that will make me happiest. I have pushed past these doubts before and when I do I find myself not only happier but more relaxed and open to new things. Something I learnt while travelling Europe on my own in 2019.
Long-distance walking has always scared me a little, there is so much that has the potential to go wrong for a diabetic. I could have a really bad hypo (low blood sugars) and pass out, I could run out of reserve carbs and hypo and pass out, I could fail to eat right and run out of energy, my blood sugars could run badly high, I could yoyo between being too high and hypo the whole time because I don't get my insulin right, I could get ill with a tummy bug and my blood sugars could go badly wrong and I would need rescuing or my carb requirements could drastically change and I run out of food causing a hypo. All these things are possible, they are not irrational fears but something I contend with every time I head out into the hills, but I have built the experience to know how to look after myself on single days out and so the fears have abated.
Before I did the Cape Wrath Trail the longest I had been out for was 3 days on my ML assessment. I found that my insulin requirements changed the longer I was out and that I didn't eat enough. I also hypoed a few times and found it all pretty tough. I don't sleep well when camping and worried about how sleep deprivation would affect me. All this meant that the idea of multi-day hikes was a pretty scary one.
But I liked the idea of doing them. I wanted to be out in the wild for longer periods and I have always fancied the idea of expeditions. In 2023 I watched a film about a girl who sailed around the world and realised my life had become too safe and easy. I wanted to do something to push myself out of my comfort zone. April 2024 would mark 10 years since my diabetes diagnosis. In that time I had learnt to live with the disease, learnt I have a very rare and little-known version of it and figured out how to look after myself in the mountains and allow myself to have a career in the outdoors.
I have always wanted to be the type of diabetic who can truly say that diabetes hasn't stopped them, but how could I be that if my fear of multi-day hiking and the possibility of what might go wrong was strong enough to stop me from trying?
My solution to this was simple, to mark 10 years as a diabetic I would walk the Cape Wrath Trail and prove to myself that with planning diabetes doesn't stop me.
Comments