Anybody involved in the modern world of big business will know that companies spend a lot of time defining their „purpose“. It‘s not a bad idea as it helps employees with a myriad of different priorities at least an idea of why the company thinks it has a right to exist. When I started working, the openly declared goals of companies was to increase shareholder value. Now that we seem to be collectively ashamed of capitalism, the explanations needed to become more „nuanced“.

The search for a purpose has also spilled over into our private lives. You’ve read it before. The tearful heat-winner on Britain‘s got Talent spouting „if you have a purpose and believe in yourself, nothing is impossible“. Unfortunately it is also entirely possible that they‘ll lose in the next round and wind up 5 years later singing in the „Journey to the Stars“ review on the Hull to Rotterdam P&O Ferry.

Talking of which, I have just been on said ferry, returning from a trip to my home county of Yorkshire. The musical entertainment was, as ever, a bit „Phoenix Nights“ but we still enjoyed the crossing and even had a little chat to the singer, which got me thinking about purpose again. He was not the example in the paragraph above. In fact, I think he was pretty happy with his „life choices“ – and a nice bloke to boot, even if he did sound a bit like Kermit. Anyway, I‘ll get back to purpose at the end of the blog.

We had a great time in Yorkshire. Alongside helping Mum sort out some stuff around the house, we had lots of time with family and friends to catch up, enjoy a drink together and tell each other old stories. Ariane and I also went on a couple of longer walks in the Yorkshire Dales, culminating in our tackling of the Three Peaks.

The Yorkshire Three Peaks is a famous circuit for hill-walkers and takes in the county‘s three highest peaks of Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen-y-ghent. It‘s a hard day out with just under 40km of hilly walking. We wanted to do it as a test for the 12-day Coast-to-Coast walk we are planning in June. We had new rucksacks and walking socks to test and just wanted to know if we were up to such a day. Our friend, Rick, didn‘t really approve of our plan calling it the M25 (large Motorway around London) of the Yorkshire Dales because it‘s so busy and boring. But he did tell us that if we did insist on giving it a try we should start with Ingleborough as our first peak because we would not want to be coming down its horrible steep descent at the end of a long day. This sounded like good advice, and we took it.

On the day in question, we got up early and were on the road just after 6am and heading out from the carpark in Horton-in-Ribblesdale at about 7:30. Our rucksacks were loaded with food, warm clothing, spare socks and even special plasters for blisters. Following Rick‘s advice we set off up Ingleborough first – easier to go up the worst bit when we were fresh, than come down after a hard day. It started quite gently and for the next 2 hours it got gradually steeper until we went up some nice carved steps over a few rocks to the summit. We were feeling fit and making good time. I was surprised at how easy it was and wondered if Rick had been worrying too much about our ability in the mountains. I looked at our average speed on my Apple watch and thought it was excellent, and now we had an easy downhill bit we‘d make up more time.

I wasn‘t feeling quite so confident 5 minutes later as we stood at the top of a cliff with a waterfall in the middle of it. Apparently, that’s where our path went. Our speedy descent turned into a nervous teeter over the rocks as we carefully and very slowly picked our way down. Nevertheless, we got down without incident and I just thought Rick must have forgotten this bit. The wind dropped, the sky brightened soon we were marching on a lovely grassy path towards the next peak, Whernside. This was a pleasant walk up through sheep-filled meadows and we were rewarded with a beautiful view out to the West – we could even see the sun reflecting off the Irish Sea.

It was lunchtime and we‘d already bagged two of the three peaks. The sun was out and we tucked into our lunch in a sheltered spot. We also took the opportunity to charge our Apple watches which had used a surprising amount of their battery. Even though we were enjoying a beautiful walk in one of Britain‘s most scenic areas, we were keeping an eye on our watches as we knew they were saving every step and heartbeat on „Strava“ – the fitness app that we both use to record runs and sport in general. Strava awards you „fitness points“ depending on the length and severity of your activity and I was looking forward to banking lots of points from this walk.

As anyone who has done the Three Peaks will tell you, it‘s not the mountains that tire you out, it‘s the walking between. This was true. Ingleborough and Whernside are quite close, but then it‘s a long slog over to Pen-y-ghent. We made steady time but at some point it turned into a grind. The imposing silhoutte of our final peak didn‘t seem to be getting much closer…

Still, we pressed on and after lots of hills and dales we felt we were on the final ascent of Pen-y-ghent. I had hoped we would make it to the top of the mountain and could have a final bite to eat and charge our watches up there. Unfortunately it didn‘t work out like that. We got onto the a completely exposed set of stone steps below the summit and I saw that my watch was about to conk out. We could see a rain shower approaching from the North so I said we should put on our waterproof gear and also charge the watches right here. I didn‘t want to lose those fitness points!

It turned out not to be a rain shower, which was good news. It was a hailstorm. So there we stood, hoods up, faces turned away from the wind with nowhere to sit or shelter as the hailstones battered our backs. At least the watches were charging. Or so we thought.

After fifteen minutes of this stupidity, the watches didn‘t seem to be charging so we gave up. It was probably below freezing at this point and batteries don‘t like the cold. The worst of the storm had passed, and we pressed on. I felt a bit more stupid when we realised that we‘d actually stopped just short of the beautifully-constructed dry-stone shelter at the top of the hill. If we‘d have walked 2 minutes more we could have sat nicely protected from the elements. Oh well, you live and learn.

We took a quick selfie on the summit of Pen-y-ghent with freezing hands (we had spare socks which we didn‘t need but forgot to pack gloves) and headed off along the summit path looking forward to the „easy descent“ which Rick had promised us. I had been curious about where exactly the path went, because from what we‘d seen it seemed to be heading towards the near vertical cliff at the South end of the mountain. Once again, we were confronted with a nasty rocky descent that we hadn‘t expected. Except this time our legs were tired, knees aching and all the rocks were wet. Twisting an ankle or smashing a knee at this stage of the walk wouldn‘t have been good so we went very gingerly down. I was happy that I was carrying sticks and much effort was made to take the pressure off the legs and knees where possible. If you’ve ever woken up with stiff legs after a hard day of sport, you’ll know the unpleasant feeling of walking down stairs. It was just like that except we didn’t have a handrail to make it better. Still, we made it. After that there was just another half-hour walk out along reasonable tracks and after roughly 11 hours of hiking, eating and pointless battery-charging, we arrived back at the carpark feeling pleased with ourselves for being „Three Peakers“.

We were not far from the hometown of an old friend, Dean Crosby, and he joined us for a quick beer in Settle as we tucked into hamburgers and felt our legs stiffening up. The walk back to the car wasn‘t much fun but we didn‘t feel as bad as we had expected. It was the perfect end to a good day.

The next evening, we met our favourite advice-giver, Rick. I told him that it did seem we went „the wrong way round“ as the only two really nasty sections on the walk were when we were descending and one of them was right at the end… It turns out that Rick had neglected to give us one other bit of very important advice, which was where to start the walk. He should have recommended that we start between Ingleborough and Whernside instead of the classic starting point of Horton. IF we had started where Rick belatedly realised he forgot to tell us, and done Ingleborough first, then our day would have been a lot easier. We’d have then done it all in the opposite direction (anti-clockwise). We‘d have been going up the steep bits with relatively fresh legs and had a lovely extended stroll down grassy Whernside to finish. We had a laugh about it over a drink in the pub, and now we have another story to tell.

Which brings me back to my original point of „What‘s your purpose?“. I had a great time back in England seeing friends and family. We did lots of stuff – hiking, running and even paragliding. But the happiest moments were always when seeing people with whom we shared news, memories and stories. The healthy mixture of catching up on the latest news, but also recycling well-worn stories is always a pleasure. I learned to tell and listen to these stories by being brought up in a time when everyone got together in the pub at least once a week and usually more. At the risk of „grumpy old man syndrome“ I do think it’s a shame that social drinking is on the wane, because people get together less than they used to. The pubs are still there, but gone are the days of a full bar when the bell rings for last orders.

So my purpose and life-advice for anybody who will listen to me (preferably in the pub) is nothing more than putting some effort into making sure that „people like you being around“. In order to find out if people like you being around, you have to be around people of course. We should do more. Everything good comes from that.