18/07/2025
🚶♂️💜 Josh has sent an update from the trail, sharing what your support means to him and here’s the Just Giving link:
🔗 https://www.justgiving.com/team/hendon-hall?utm_medium=TE
“On last year's trek from London to Scotland, I was afforded the opportunity to remove myself from many of the things I use to define myself. My home, my belongings, my relationships. In the grand scheme of things, I wasn't away for that long. However, returning home and sleeping under a roof, in a bed, felt quite alienating. It occurred to me how quickly I'd adapted to this new way of being, and how little I really needed to feel peaceful. It made me wonder who I truly was at the centre of it all. Was there a more 'solid' truth to who I am beyond the affectations and influences I'd accumulated?
A year later (here in Switzerland), in an effort to live with 'whoever I am' a little more closely, I decided to take certain measures to remove distraction from my simply 'being' in the environment. For instance, I made the decision to never use headphones, as this usually allows me to block out a significant percentage of my experience; solely living through fictionalised moments, dreamt up by my own imaginings. Switzerland is also a place that feels entirely built around the idea of 'outdoorsmanship'- so the hiker is truly catered for. There are so many pathways through forests, mountains, and fields, that (if I didn't need to restock my food) I could easily traverse the whole country without ever entering a single town. All this adds up to an adventure that truly facilitates living in the space where you meet your surroundings. Where you take in the awe that surrounds you, and bodily feel nature's effect on you.
Having been afforded this remarkable privilege, and having spent three weeks wandering some of the greatest landscapes I've ever witnessed, drinking from fresh mountain streams, laying in the grass as I watch eagles spead over tree-tops, breathing in the air from the highest altitudes in Europe- I've come to realise, that even if there is some genuine, bona fide, authentic self at the base of all these various masks I wear- that does not diminish the worth and validity of those who have influenced me, and the way that they have shaped me. I miss home, I respect the people who I work with, I love my family, and I am with a woman who has blessed me with the courage to march out into the world in the way that I have. If all I ever was, was the result of these influences, then what a tremendously lucky existence that is.*
