The D Tour podcast is proudly sponsored by Macs Adventure

Macs Adventure specialise in self guided walking and cycling holidays for independent, active people who don't want to be part of the crowd or restricted by set dates and schedules.

Harriet's D Tour continues as she completes the last few days of her Cornish adventure and heads towards Devon.

Harriet is taking on the 900 mile walk from Land's End to John O'Groats on her own, but she's making friends along the way. We'll hear how these new connections as well as established friendships are helping her.

We'll also hear from Deb Bunt and Peter Berry who became friends after a chance meeting in a cycle shop and how their friendship has lead to them writing a book "The Slow Puncture" about Peter's life with Dementia. Becoming a published author was one of Deb's life long dreams.

And we'll also discover how animals and pets can be essential companions too, as Tamsin and Anthony from Collacott Farm share how horses teach humans how to live in the present.

You can listen to Harriet's playlist on Spotify. Each week she's adding songs to match her mood on her epic walk!

If you like what we are doing and want to support the Dementia Adventure Support Fund please donate

Dementia Adventure has been at the forefront of providing fully supported, small group short breaks for people living with dementia and their carers for 15 years. Our supported breaks offer more than just respite; they provide meaningful, purpose-driven experiences that significantly enhance the quality of life for both people living with dementia and their caregivers. 

[SINGING] If they could see me now, the friends I've left behind, walking through fields with cows crossing the cliff so high…

Welcome to the D Tour, a special podcast series where I share my incredible journey - walking 900 miles from Land's End to John O' Groats to raise funds for Dementia Adventure.

They encourage you to go at your own pace while they support you with all the routes and logistics for a worry free adventure.

[SEA SOUNDS]

I just love that murmuring of the sea. I've really come to love it so much. In fact, there's a little bench here. I'm going to sit down. Even though I've just started.

I think this is a really important thing to do for myself when I'm doing a lot of walking and walking long distances, to remember sometimes just to sit down and to take in the view and to smell the smells, feel the feels, see the sights and just actually take in where you are. Let it sink in.

We're also incredibly lucky to have a local sponsor for this episode, Collacott Farm. Collacott Farm, truly Devon on earth, is nestled in the beautiful north Devon Hills. If you can't visit them, at least visit their website at www.collacott.uk and absorb the stunning landscapes and their philosophy of creativity, compassion and something this podcast is all about, connection. We'll hear more from them later in this podcast.I'm now entering into the second week of my journey and by the end of this week I'll be in my second county and embarking on a new trail. But I've got a few miles ahead of me before that happens.

Yesterday was a very long day. It was a spectacular walk. I would highly recommend if you're coming to the north coast, the area between Boscastle and Port Isaac is stunning. It's so beautiful. It's very wild, it's very rugged. If you like walking when you know there's not too many people there, etc. It's perfect. The only thing is, I think in my day yesterday I climbed 1470 2 metres and I descended 1449 metres, something like that.

So it is a lot of up and down and I was very, very tired. So I'm walking really slowly. But it's just interesting how as I walk, I'm just naturally getting into the rhythm and loving being outside. And now I've come to a slight, not really a problem, but I've come to a gate which will take me across a path to the south coast path. And in front of the gate are four gorgeous little bullocks. I've always been afraid of cows, but I've walked through so many fields of cows in the past ten days just because I'm really not going to find another route. And so let's see how this goes. So that was fine.

I just walked straight past these lovely little bullocks and then lots of big cows and it was so fine and they were so sweet and I didn't look at them. I don't know if that's a thing with cows, but as I was walking through the field, I thought of this song. If they could see me now, the friends I've left behind. I'm walking through fields with cloud. Cows, clouds. Let me do that again. If they could see me now, the friends I've left behind walking through fields with cows crossing the cliff so high. Yeah, because those are two of my fears. Cows and heights. And I think in the past ten days, yeah, I mean, I've just had to walk these paths and I've had to cross through the cows. And maybe that's the thing with fear, you know, when you're actually, when you have to do the thing, you realise maybe it wasn't so scary after all. I think that's why being outdoors and having outdoors challenges can really build up our confidence. I've certainly found that myself.

That has really made me think about the music that has captured the essence of my journey this week. Each week I'm choosing a couple of songs or pieces of music that are building up a playlist of music that connects me with my travels. This week I've chosen a very, very old fashioned song, but it's a song that I love singing as I walk and you can kind of make up the words as you go along or make up your own version. So the song is Papa's Gonna Buy Me A Mockingbird. So hopefully you will remember this song from your childhood. And the second song I've chosen is another song that really is a throwback to my youth. But it's got a great walking theme to it and it's Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side. And again, this is a great song to walk to because it's got this lovely lilting rhythm. So when I'm a bit tired, I can put this song on and it lifts me a little and helps me walk down the road.

Another thing that's been really fantastic for me so far on the path are the people that I've met. Obviously, there's lots of people, you know, that you just passed and you're "Hi!" "Hi" 'Have a good day" etc. But there are a few people that I've met and had really long chats with and I've really connected with. And there was one lovely gentleman who is a long distance walker and he was great actually, because he showed me an alternative route on a nasty day. And we just talked and talked and talked for 2 hours and we never met each other before. Just talking about walking, in fact, mainly just talking about walking.But. And then, you know, I've just met people that I've, you know, had sort of five minute conversations with. But you know, these moments of connection bring me such a lift and such joy. If I'm enjoying the walk before now I walk off with a spring in my step when I've had a really nice connection with someone. So it really, really makes a big difference to my day. So I wonder who I'll meet today.

It's those chance meetings, those moments in time that can change everything. They can restore hope and meaning and in some instances change the course of our lives. Do you remember that film Sliding Doors? When Deb Bunt met Peter Berry, the course of their lives changed. It was a friendship that was meant to be. I met Peter when I was preparing for this journey. You may remember him talking about riding a Penny Farthing in episode one of this series of the D Tour. Peter was diagnosed with young onset dementia when he was 50, which led to an understandable period of deep depression for him.

His friend Deb worked for years with families and young people involved in the criminal justice system in London. However, her ambition that hadn't yet come to fruition was to be a published author. Here is a very warm conversation between the two of them as they talk about the chance encounter that has led to six years of friendship, profound support for Peter and his wife, and the long sought ambition of being a published author realised for Deb.

Peter and I have been friends for six years. I moved up from London to sunny Suffolk and he was one of the first people that I came across and a friendship from sort of early, tentative steps grew quite quickly to where we are today. So six years, Peter. Six long years.

Long, long years. And how I've suffered. Oh, all in a very good way. No, it's great. It's. er, I wouldn't say a weird friendship, a different friendship, strange friendship. It's as though I've known Debs, I suppose, for my entire life. She knows a lot more about me than I know about her. But I suppose the friendship for me is based on a feeling as opposed to knowledge, if that makes sense. I feel that she is a good friend and, well, she's just. She's become like a sister to me. Absolutely brilliant.

I think the friendship, given what Peter has just said, is based on the here and now. So it doesn't matter he knows little about me. The friendship is almost like how Peter experiences life just in the moment. So it doesn't matter that he doesn't know much about my past. He knows who I am now in this moment. And we have a banter, we have a laugh, and that's all that matters.

And I also think that because friends like Deb are not, as shall we say, attached to somebody with memory issues. So for argument's sake, they can be with somebody. They can repeat themselves a few times, they can fill in the gaps, they can be their external memory, stick their plug in and save for x amount of hours, and then they can leave it and go to their partners and whatever. So they can then, I suppose, remove themselves away from it. Whereas people who live with people with memory problems, all the while, it's a different frustrationI suppose, Debs walks beside this condition, whereas my wife walks hand in hand with it, if that makes sense. I've got a dementia monster that I get away from and I have that opportunity to do that with cycling and also being with Debs. But my wife has a dementia monster and that's me, and she needs to get away and do her thing.

So it's important to have good friends. I don't know, a really good buddy, I suppose, in this journey. And it's not about supporting me, it's about supporting the condition in general, which means that it ripples out to so many other areas, not just a straight up and down. He's my friend, she's my friend, they're my friend. That's it. It's so much more. So much more of a colourful place. And also it makes my condition a lot more bearable to have somebody who I think understands it and has learnt about memory very quickly, I think it's fair as to say.

And I would also add, it's not just about the friendship being supportive to Peter, the friendship has created a whole new life for me, a whole new me. This is a much better version of who I used to be. And what Peter's friendship has enabled me to do is to have the books published, to overcome my nerves about talking in public, about having belief in myself, about having my own sense of purpose. That's what the friendship has provided and it's a journey that I never thought I'd be going on either. The other thing about this friendship is there's a great deal of trust involved because here I am. I turned up from London, from south London. You know what they're like in south London, in it blood, innit? Yeah.

And I've come into the Berry's lives and, you know, I wasn't DBS-ed, I wasn't vetted. And yet somehow Peter has an intuitive. And yet somehow, intuitively, Peter can trust me. And I don't know where that trust comes from. What sort of emotional trigger creates that trust, given he doesn't know much about me? So I often wonder about this friendship, and it is a pure friendship because it is in the moment, as I said, and I've never had a friendship like that. I've never known anyone quite like Peter either. That's true. But, yeah, it is an amazing relationship.

I think for me personally, after the diagnosis and going through a year of depression, it was as though nothing would ever be any good again. And I think that having the challenges and cycling like I did and trying to find a purpose in my life, but I never really, I suppose, hunted down a friend like Debs, it just somehow happened and it's. It. I still can't really believe that from them early, darker days after the diagnosis to where we are now, I can't. I would never ever been able to imagine that A) I would have met somebody like Debs, we would have had a book out, that life would have been as good as it is now for me, my wife, Debs and the people around us. And I was extremely lucky just to have this chance meeting with Debs. And it just evolved somehow and it's as though, in a weird way, it was meant to be, and I'm not a believer in that sort of thing, but, yeah, it was just meant to be, I think somehow.

So, as I said, we'd moved up from London to Suffolk. We have no link with Suffolk at all. It was a very, as is my won't, it was a very random destination and I was wandering around our local town a little bit morosely, thinking, I need a friend, popped into the local cycling shop and Peter was there. So it was a very lucky chance meeting and it just evolved from there.

I don't remember, actually much about the meeting. As Deb has said, it was in a cycle shop, but I don't remember much about it. But I do know that at the time my wife was working, Theresa was working, I think, three days a week, I believe, and she was having. She was struggling with the thought that I was at home a lot and I suppose getting a bit mislaid on my bike and all the rest of it. So I think Theresa was quite, I suppose, happy, if that's the right word. She was a lot better in her own mind that I'd met somebody that I could cycle with. But it gave Theresa a sense of. Well, I suppose it just gave her. What's the word?

Yeah, relief, I suppose, that she could carry on working and do her normal stuff. So it sort of. In the early days, it ticked those sort of boxes. And then I think from then on, it just grew very, very quickly, as I think, well, I suppose I'm quite an easy person to get on with, but so is Debs, or I've found. So, anyway, so, yeah, it just worked.

It's funny because a lot of people don't find me that easy to get on with. So it shows what a good judge of character he is, really.

Either that or my bad memory is an advantage.

So I always wanted to be a writer. Never had much luck, wrote a couple of short stories, had a couple of minor publications. But when I started to listen to Peter and really listen to what he had to say, and you can hear how descriptive he is about his condition. He was my muse, he was my subject matter. And he had a really incredible year about five years ago. Well, every year is incredible, but there were lots of activities he was doing and I thought, I'm just going to jot them down, see if we can string them together, make it like a memoir and have my perception of dementia, how that's been challenged, how Peter describes the condition and just sort of show how the friendship evolved. Both Theresa and Peter gave me permission, really, to write about something very personal or very painful. And Peter trusts me to do it justice. And hopefully I have.

There are so many aspects of Deb and Peter's conversation that deeply resonate with me. Their shifting perspectives, the renewed sense of hope and the profound mutual respect they've cultivated. These all speak to the power of meaningful connection. Their friendship, built on trust, intuition, and being present in the moment, has created a bond that is both valued and enduring. And all of this blossomed from a serendipitous meeting in a cycle shop, proof that even the most unexpected encounters can lead to life changing connections.

So I've nearly finished my walk. I was just walking from Widdicombe Bay to Bude, and I was just walking up on the path and suddenly someone was waving at me. And I looked behind me because I was like, who's waving at me? I don't know anyone here. And then a voice was like,

"Harriet! Harriet!"

And it was a lovely girl called Anna, who is over here from Germany and is doing a cycle tour of Cornwall. And I met her on my very first night here. We camped next door to each other on the campsite. And what a complete coincidence to have met her sitting on a bench overlooking the bay at Widdicombe. And so we've just had a lovely conversation for about an hour or so about this and that, what it's like travelling and the thoughts you have and the good bits, the bad bits and all that sort of stuff. And I'm just so happy to have seen her. We've swapped numbers, which is lovely.

Yeah, so these are the connections that you make when you're walking, when you're camping, because you have the time to speak to people. And actually, when you're travelling by yourself, I think you have the opportunity to meet many more people because obviously, if you're travelling with a friend or with your family, you're kind of a self-contained unit, but which is great, too. But one of the lovely things that I do find about travelling by myself is that I'm very open to meeting new people. And often there are other solo travellers who, you know, are looking for a chat and a connection. So it's wonderful to, to meet people, not necessarily just solo travellers, but it might be family groups. I've spoken to so many people since I've been here, but that's just really lovely to see Anna again, especially as I'm almost leaving Cornwall and I met her on the very first day that I arrived in Cornwall. So that kind of seems neat and complete. So, just so wonderful to make these connections as we walk our path.

It can be harder as you get older to have the motivation to make new connections. But we all know that companionship and shared experiences stop us from feeling lonely and give us a sense of belonging and purpose. I spoke to Donna about this. Donna is the manager of the Cornish Govenek Community Hub that provides a wide range of community activities, warm meals, support services and clubs for the older generation. This is part of the Age UK network. They pride themselves on always giving a warm welcome, which I think is just a special focus, like a wonderful pair of open arms. In fact, the name Govenek itself is the cornish word for hope.

Sometimes we have carers coming in that don't always recognize themselves as being a full time carer, because it's what they do. It's usually a husband or a wife or a partner in some way, and it is just, you know, their day to day, what they've always done. We try and encourage people to come along to the carers group. It's got an amazing amount of knowledge for the people that attend there already. They've all been through something, whether it's dementia or caring, in a different role. But you know, people glean an awful lot of help and information from just chatting to like minded people.

And do you do specific activities in the caregivers group or is it just, you know, really kind of sitting down with a cup of tea and just chatting?

So the carers group runs for about 2 hours I believe. It starts off with a half hour sort of download, if you like. Once everybody gets into a room, then they're quite happy chatting, have a cup of tea, coffee, and literally do just sort of download to each other. And then we have an activity. So we've had a mindful art group, we've had reflexology, we've had neck and shoulder massages. It's a chance for them to take a step out of the daily living that they do do. And as you say, just have that time for themselves.

Well, that's exactly what I'm doing. Stepping out of daily living for a while, taking time for myself. And it really is the best medicine.

Just one more thing I wanted to add to that little story about meeting Anna and having a lovely chat on the bench overlooking the sea, is that I was feeling quite tired before I met her. And now after our lovely chat and after the lovely surprise of meeting her, I've just been filled with so much more energy. And it just goes to show how important social interaction is, how it gives vibrancy to our emotions and our spirit and our body. Because all of these things are connected. Our emotions, our spirit and our body are all connected. So when we feel happy, we tend to have more energy. And when we feel sad, we can often feel lethargic. Sorry to be breathing heavily, but I'm climbing up a hill. [LAUGHTER]

So, yeah, meeting Anna was a real proof of that, proof of how a positive, fun, joyful interaction, a joyful connection can really bring so much into our lives. And I'm walking into Bude with a very happy spring in my step. It's day 13 of the D Tour and I've got half a day off, which is wonderful. It gives me the opportunity to sit here and talk with Anne McKiernan, who is the coordinator for Barnstable Memory Cafe. So, Anne, can you tell me about what you do?

Well, I run Barnstable memory Cafe, which meets twice a month on the first and third Fridays in the big room on the top of Barnstable library. I've got about 25, 35, 40 members, depending on the time of the year. Some people come on their own, some people come with their partner or loved one or their mum or their dad. And it's very much a big, happy friendship group. And we have a lot of laugh, a lot of fun, and people make an awful lot of really good friends.

It sounds like you've created a fantastic community.

It really is. It really is. In fact, it's so lovely that we've even got people whose loved ones have either died or have gone into care who still come because they've made such good friends there and they have such a blast that, you know, they don't want stop. And the key to it is a lot of what we do is living in the now at the cafe, we're living in that moment. We're doing something together with someone in that moment. We've got two other memory cafes and all of our cafes are similar but different. So music is a major part of the Bideford musical memory cafe that we run. When I first started working for Barnstable Memory Cafe, at that point, it was the self funding project under Citizens Advice.

So I had to raise all the money and run the cafe. And I also ran another cafe in South Molton. South Molton is a little market town and it's quite a closed community. At least it was 10-15 years ago. And I had an experience there that really changed my thoughts. And the experience was a retired GP, Richard, who's amazing, went off and did a course on storytelling and reading poetry. And so I, of course, invited him to come to our Christmas party because at Christmas time I organise a four hour cafe rather than a two, and we all bring buffet and I get food in and we do a bring and share and we play games and have fun. So Richard came and he was reading poetry and, you know, he'd chosen some lovely stuff and people were joining in. And then he said, now I'm going to, and he's very quietly spoken, I'm going to sing the next poem. And amongst the cafe members, there was one lady who used to come with her partner and her sister and brother in law. And this lady used to be a great singer years ago. She loved music, but she was far down her dementia pathway and she didn't walk very well. She used to sit with her eyes closed, so you couldn't really have much of a conversation with her.

But I knew her well and she loved coming. And he started to sing. The owl in the pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat. And as he carried on to, we realised suddenly that there were two voices and no one moved. It was. It was just spellbinding, he realised, and he leant forward slightly towards her. She had her eyes closed and she was singing with him. He had reached down into that moment and she sang the whole thing with him with her eyes closed.

That literally gives me goosebumps. Yeah, because I think the way you've told it, you can. You can almost see the kind of the communication reaching into her, can't you? And I think it says something about music. Music is such a basic, basic human instinct.

And when I saw what happened with that woman, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Her sister was sobbing, because it was that connection. He had hooked her. And at that moment with that song, she was in the now with him. She. It may be a memory, but she was vocalising. So the idea of the memory cafe really is to empower the person with dementia to do things, some things for themselves in the now, whether it's colouring or whether it's. Play a cutthroat game of snakes and ladders, even if you can't remember what you're doing.

I mean, I had one lovely man. Oh, he's great. One of the volunteers. I had a young volunteer who was playing snap with him, believe it or not, and he couldn't remember what they were doing. So she'd turn over a card and he'd turn over a card and it'd be the same and she'd go, "Oh, look".

And he'd go, "yeah what do you do?" "Err"

"What do you say?" "Errr"

"Snap!" "Snap!" That's right, snap!"

And they did it every time. But he was hysterically laughing. He had such a good time because it didn't matter in the now. It doesn't matter.

Thank you so much...

It's been great meeting you. And I just want to say good luck with the rest of your walk. I nearly turned up with some foot cream, wondering if you'd need it.

It's funny because I'm a little bit paranoid about my feet and I actually don't. I know people have different ideas about, you know, how you should treat your feet when you're walking, but I don't put any cream on them because I want them to develop the calluses and the stuff, you know. But. Yeah, but. Thank you very much. But I think at some point I would like a foot massage. Not from you, Anne.

No, no. I have many skills, but that is not one of them.

So I'm just sitting outside my tent and in the morning, before I set off, and this is what I can hear.

[SOUNDS OF BIRDS] It's so nice to spend the entire day surrounded by these natural sounds.

I am now in Devon, so we've left Cornwall behind and this couldn't be more different because Cornwall was all about the blue of the sea and the black rock and the grey rock, and it was that kind of colour scape and the white clouds, whereas where I'm walking now is a beautiful, lush woodland and it's just so many different kinds of green. `so we've got fir trees, we've got birch trees, we've got ferns, grasses, brambles, all sorts of greens and different shapes. You know, it's really verdant and lush and beautiful. So it feels so different to be walking in this terrain and I'm walking on a grassy path, so no more of that rock that is so common in Cornwall. But today I'm walking from Barnstable to Warren Farm, which is in Exmoor. So I'm sure once I get to Exmoor, the landscape will change once again. And a lovely feature of my walk today and yesterday has been that I've had some company.

It's moments like these when you take the time to sit and appreciate nature with a friend, that invite us to slow down, reconnect with each other and with ourselves and recognize more about the world around us. There's so much that we can learn in these moments. I believe that the countryside is a great teacher in this way. Tamsin and Anthony at Collacott Farm here in north Devon, express this beautifully. Nestled between the stunning moors of Exmoor and Dartmoor, Collicott Farm serves as both a retreat and a sanctuary where humans and horses come together to create meaningful connections. I particularly appreciate how Anthony reminds us that life isn't solely about human connections. Connection, of course, can take many forms. And animals, our pets especially, can help us live in the present, trust our intuition and savour the simplicity of each moment.

Anthony has cultivated a particularly beautiful connection with horses and possesses a deep understanding of them. The respect, mutual care and friendship he shares with these animals is truly inspiring. As you listen to Tamsin and Anthony, you might find yourself inspired to step back from the rush of everyday life and embrace the peace that comes with truly being in the moment.

We've got two beautiful horses next to us, Sam and Mitzi. So if you hear noises in the background, that's probably them just going to talk a little bit about what we're doing here at Collacott Farm, North Devon. And we're in a little village, or near a little village called King's Nympton, but otherwise we're surrounded by the beautiful rural landscape of Umberleigh. And he's just trying to eat the phone here. It's raining at the moment. We're situated between two beautiful moors, Exmoor and Dartmoor. And I want to introduce you to Anthony, who is the founder of Horse Connection, which is a space where horses and humans can come together. So tell us a bit more about what Horse Connection means.

Horse Connection, for us, is essentially about connecting humans with horses. I had the privilege of growing up with horses as a young boy on a farm in Somerset. And I looked back now and I realise just how much horses helped me to learn about myself. And so in working here as a family, we've observed, I guess, in the first few years, how people engage with Collacott Farm. And what we found was that families, individuals and couples have visited us and stayed with us in our cottages and just found a way of reconnecting with themselves, but also giving them the chance just to relax and restore themselves and just have a break from the pressures and, you know, challenges of everyday life.

So what do you think horses have got to offer specifically, you know, to help people reconnect with themselves? What do horses do?

Well, horses, unlike humans, horses live in the present moment as a prey animal. They rely on their body to sense what is going on around them and in their environment. And it's very important for them. They still have the instincts of, is that human going to eat me? Which is quite, quite a strange concept. In some ways, however, they will focus on keeping themselves safe. And, of course, a horse has evolved over some 56 million years to ensure their safety and their survival. Therefore, they have fine tuned their ability to use their bodily senses to keep them safe. And so they know how to trust their bodies when their bodies are telling them something.

And so what we find in connecting humans with horses, the very process enables humans to focus on the present moment rather than the past, the present and the future, which is what humans tend to focus on. And so in the moment with, effectively, a wild animal as the horse, the human is really concentrating all their efforts in engaging with the horse. And what tends to happen is that the horse, coming from a very loving place and also a curious place, becomes very interested in the human. And we support and coach humans into how they can interact with horses, very much using their bodies to sense what's happening for them and the horse.

So it's very much creating a presence within that human to match what's happening with the horse. Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, what we find is that energy becomes so important when you're working with horses. And in fact, any animal, every animal is doing the same. They're sensing, you know, can I trust this human? And of course, humans are doing that with each other as well. But we aren't always necessarily connected to what our bodies are telling us. We're often in our heads, and our world encourages that. So the beauty of working with horses is that they really are the best example of an animal, that because they're a prey animal, they need to be embodying, and they need to be relying and trusting their body with the information that it's providing them.

So I heard a really rumour tell me if it's true. I think that horses can hear a human heartbeat from fairly nearby, and they also can read our chemical signatures or signals about how we're feeling. So if we're feeling happy or sad, horses are very receptive to this or sensitive to this. Is that true?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, part of their, part of their heightened senses, if you like, of smell, sight and hearing mean that they can indeed hear a heartbeat, because they need to read other animals and humans very quickly to assess, you know, if they're in danger, and that's how they're very much wired to do so. Yeah. And the chemistry is fascinating because if, for example, someone was stressed, then there'd be a cortisol release and the horse would be able to smell that chemical change in a human's body. And so these are all just signals to the horse to tell them something. And you put all that information together with all their senses that gives them, if you like, a measure of, am I safe? Do I trust this human? And, you know, can I go back to grazing? You know, the world we live in today is very much focused outwardly. We're encouraged to look outward for a lot of answers, if you like, to our lives.

And I feel that what horses can do for humans, and humans for horses is create a beautiful connection in the moment, but also encourage us to drop into our bodies and access the information our bodies have to share with us.

And what I'm getting from that is very much. There's a sense of slowing down, of not sort of having it, not being goal oriented, but really just living in the moment, but slowly and savouring those moments that we have.

We live in a very fast world, and we've certainly seen the value people experience here on the farm just doing exactly that. The pace, naturally, in the countryside is slower. There aren't as many distractions. Our wi-fi is a bit ropey. And so, yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for slowing down, and. And horses do encourage us to do that.

So I've just said goodbye to Lucy in the little village of Bratton Fleming, which is a tiny little village that has everything that a walker needs, i.e. a village shop where you can get pasties, banana milk, that was for me, drinks, and information about the bus stop. The village also had a village hall with public toilets that were open and had loo paper, so we were thrilled. And then there was a little bus stop. And just as I left Bratton Fleming, I saw the number 310 bus come towards me and that was the bus that was taking Lucy back to Barnstable where she pick up her car and go back to where she lives in Portsmouth. So that was such a lovely, lovely treat for me to have a friend walk with me and hopefully she will come back and do a bit more of this walk. I think she has been bitten by the bug and we will see some more of her. While I wait for Lucy to return.

The adventure continues in the next episode. I'll be joined by two wonderful dementia experts. Sue Hines works for dementia Adventure and is also a speech and language therapist. Doctor Raja is an old age psychiatrist and author. Sue and Doctor Raja are walking with me on a very special day, my 61st birthday. We'll explore the profound connections between food and memory, the social and emotional impact of sharing meals, and the importance of sustainability in our daily choices. From the sensory pleasures of diverse tastes and smells to the significance of eating together, we'll delve into how food influences our well being and keeps us connected to our past. We'll also reflect on the physical challenges of this journey and how they shape my daily routine.

Don't miss it as we continue to uncover the many layers of connection along the way.

The D Tour podcast is proudly sponsored by Macs Adventure. Macs Adventure specialise in self guided walking and cycling holidays for independent, active people who don't want to be part of the crowd or restricted by set dates and schedules. They encourage you to go at your own pace whilst they support you with all of the routes and logistics for a worry free adventure.