{"id":139,"date":"2021-06-30T16:21:42","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T15:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/?p=139"},"modified":"2021-06-30T16:21:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T15:21:42","slug":"today-i-climbed-a-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/2021\/06\/30\/today-i-climbed-a-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Today I climbed a mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month our post is written by Kathleen Davies, one of our Early Childhood students. Thank you Kathleen; although you wrote it in Spring, we are sure that students and tutors alike will be able to relate to your metaphor as we approach the end of the academic year.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I walked up a mountain today. A really big one that had a summit stone at the top. I didn\u2019t plan to; I only knew I wanted to go for a walk. What I had planned to do was a walk around a lake. Since Welsh government have lifted our \u2018stay at home\u2019 rule to \u2018stay local\u2019 I was able to visit a beauty spot nearby which is used by dog walkers and mountain bikers. It was a lovely spring morning; the ducks were happily swimming on the clear water in pairs. The lake was beautiful but smaller than I remembered. Then I spotted a yellow arrow showing a walking route and thought I\u2019d take myself off in that direction to stretch my walk a bit further, I had the time.<\/p>\n

Along the way there was a map board that showed the steep ascent route up the mountain. It just so happens that I\u2019ve always wanted to go up there. At the top there are the remains of a medieval hill fort and you can see the form of it from all around in the local area where I live. It looks like a mound on the top of the mountain. I have looked up at it many times and thought about scaling it myself but just never had, though I knew people who had walked it. I should probably say, I\u2019m not talking mountaineering here, it\u2019s an accessible hike, which is just as well as I didn\u2019t plan it.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have my walking shoes on but I was wearing trainers so I thought that what I would do was to just start out and see how I went, I could turn around and come back the same way whenever I wanted. It was a steep climb on rough terrain, a mud track with loose rocks. I started to get a bit wary half way up as it was so quiet all around and I could see a wooded section ahead, but then a cyclist zoomed past on the road above my head and said hello as he went so that helped put me at ease. As I continued, I passed a few more fellow walkers, cyclists and runners who all shared a cordial hello. After the year we\u2019ve had (let\u2019s never mention 2020 again) it really cheered up my day.<\/p>\n

I made it to what had looked like the top, (why is there always more top) and another friendly board enticing me to complete the last section, a \u201cvery steep\u201d 1.2km more to reach the medieval hill fort. I knew I would have to do it, though I didn\u2019t want to. The views from there were lovely as it was. I could really just go home and complete it another day. Also \u2013 road \u2013 other people were driving up to this point. Why hadn\u2019t I just done that?! I began the last steep ascent; the board wasn\u2019t over egging it at all. A man appeared over the crest of the hill and picking his way past me he said \u201cit\u2019s even windier at the top!\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway, I made it to the top, the views of the valley all around were glorious. I could see all of the place I grew up in all the way down to the Severn estuary and the Severn bridge. The sun was breaking through the clouds in a really magnificent \u2018you\u2019ve just climbed a mountain\u2019 sort of way. I took a load of photos and then walked up the steps right to the tippy top of the hill fort mound. And just as I reached the top, over from the other side came two walkers. We couldn\u2019t even hear each other over the wind so I did a polite wave and descended the other side where I noticed a car park no more than say, 50m away!<\/p>\n

I know comparing any sort of personal journey to climbing a mountain is the most over-baked thing ever, but getting home to catch up on some OU work, which so happened to be my reflective learning journal, I couldn\u2019t help but see the parallels. You might not know what it takes to get there, but you\u2019ll never find out unless you try, and you\u2019ll feel awesome when you do it! Now every time I see that mound at the top of the mountain, I can say I\u2019ve been up there and I know what it feels like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month our post is written by Kathleen Davies, one of our Early Childhood students. Thank you Kathleen; although you wrote it in Spring, we are sure that students and tutors alike will be able to relate to your metaphor … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/EarlyChildhood\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}