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Cycling past Stourhead
Gardens, Wiltshire
in May |
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Two or three times a year I like to hire a cottage, throw my bike in the back of the car and head off to the West Country: to Somerset, Devon or Dorset - or all three. I find it therapeutic - to truly 'get away from it all', cycling around little country lanes miles from anywhere - 'Far from the madding crowd', literally. Or far from the cat's cradle that my brain has been tangled into over the past few years, resulting in Chronic or Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (which you can find out more about here,
on my other blog).
It's not easy to do this. One of the characteristics of my C-PTSD (with a comorbidity of Depression), is that I find it hard to concentrate on anything for too long. For example I used to be an avid reader, devouring books as if they were going out of fashion. Nowadays it's hard to keep me focused from the first few sentences.