Love Bites: Blisters and Tent Face

Last night was so cold I slept in a rain poncho. Already wearing every piece of clothing I'd brought for the month-long walk, the cheap yellow plastic beckoned from the rucksack. Covering my head and torso, the poncho fast became a wet bag of slightly less cold air. I registered the risks of sleeping with essentially a happier version of a bin bag covering my face, before drifting into a dream about finding a sports bag full of blankets.

Dawn arrived through the tent walls. I looked in a mirror and thought, “There you are.” It really looked like me. Puffy face, stiff limbs from a twiggy floor sleep, clothes rumpled. My family call it 'tent face' – when you've finally got away to the Great Outdoors, and wake up feeling like you've been hit by a bus, in a good way.

A few days ago, in the hills, I complimented a Peruvian-Italian hiker's keffiyeh. After hearing I live in Edinburgh, she grabbed my forearm and declared, "I've walked the Water of Leith." Each week back home, a friend and I walk until the familiar foot ache arrives, often criss-crossing the Water of Leith, searching for free library bookboxes. He collects them like Pokémon. But life's been so raw lately that I craved fuller exhaustion.

Days on this trip in northern Spain follow the same core recipe: walking on popped blisters;  morning humid air and white clouds surrounding pine trees; invisible birds high up in chorus. Today, in my error of looking up, a rock pushes into my sole where a blister sits underneath barefoot shoes, three pairs of socks and a Compeed plaster. Trying hard sometimes leaves me sore, but I love when the physical matches the mental like this, and I sink into it like a bath.