So long 2011 and thank you

I am writing this blog post from our friends house in Wales where we are staying for New Year celebrations. We’ve had leek and potato soup and homemade bread, Felix and Brenda are talking about knitting, books, and canals. Who knows what direction the conversation will turn next, but for certain there will be much more talking and laughing over the next couple of days.

As a project manager I like to think I have a pretty good relationship with time – it kind of comes with the job description. Nevertheless I am always stunned at how quickly a year can pass. It doesn’t seem possible that 2011 can have whizzed by so quickly. In a minute it will be spring and then KAPOW! – the Olympics will be here and we’ll be walking and then it will all be over and I’ll be feeling a bit lost, and then it will be Christmas again and I’ll be wishing I hadn’t put “2012” in this website address!

2012 is a HUGE year for walk2012 of course – it is the year when a group of us finally get to walk the complete route during, and in celebration of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

I am very excited about sharing the route with everyone, and fingers crossed the walk2012 guide will be a useful resource for walkers for many years to come. A huge debt of gratitude is owed to the walkers who have road-tested the guide. Thank you to Colleen who has been a regular commenter on this blog, and has tested out the final stage of the route and offered some good tweaks to the route. Thank you to Victoria, whose adventures in Hampshire were the subject of the last post. Thank you also to Anne, Latimer and Terry, who are also testing out the guide for me.
One of the big surprises of 2011 was the interest in getting the route available online and on mobile phones. I remain massively grateful to Curly for his Android app called Mapcial, which has the walk2012 route on it, and to Phil and the brilliant Social Hiking site.

Felix has been a terrific co-conspirator this year and with her PhD completed it has been lovely to go walking together again. Her photoshop skillz have been invaluable in helping make the walk2012 guide cards look so good (the directions are 100% my fault!) Felix also got me these amazing walk2012-themed cufflinks for Christmas:

The Dorset twitterers are as fantastic as ever and it was a real treat to meet up with everybody in the summer to celebrate Ben’s birthday. 2011 saw the addition of @andrew_writer to the crew when he and his family moved to Weymouth. Andrew is a copywriter, blogger, and one of the BT Storytellers for the London2012 Olympic Games and he and I have been working on the walk2012 story. More in 2012!

I hope you are celebrating the New Year with friends and/or family and/or fancy dress. Alas no fancy dress for us this year, but there is the Pembrokeshire coast …and gin! Wishing you all the very best for the coming year and I look forward to walking with you in the summer.

Cheers!