I tried to make a more healthy start to 2015.
That’s why I headed off to Cumbria on New Year’s Day, bombing up the M6 while everyone else was still busily nursing hangovers.
The reason? To join a walking group [pictured above, just outside Loweswater] and test drive a new Mindfulness in the Mountains package from Ramblers Countrywide Holidays.
Back on the banks of Loweswater, meanwhile, the afternoon sun was starting to fade like the gentle ebbing of a new-year hangover.
A pint of the local Sneck Lifter ale at The Fish Inn in Buttermere would spur me on for the final few miles and a supper of beef-stew dumplings and plums in vanilla custard would be slow cooking back at Hassness.
Most of all, I had found a few days of walking and mindfulness offered me a fresh perspective on new year.
I had come to know closeness to Cumbrian nature that inspired the Romantic poets, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge; the meditative power of simply putting one foot in front of another over the fells; and the sheer carpe-diem joy of just loosing yourself in the moment.
Read the full story, Sole searching.