During my early twenties I fell out of love with hiking and the great outdoors and did what most young people do, which is to head out on Friday and Saturday nights and spend more time in cities than I did in the countryside. 

But luckily in my mid/late twenties I found that I needed something more in my life and I realised I needed to fill it with Adventures. 

During this period I was also struggling mentally after a bad break up (we've all been there!) and it dawned on me life is not how they painted it out to be when you are at school, which is get a job for life, buy a house (I did do this but that went very wrong, another story for another time), marry in your twenties and have kids and live happily ever after! If only school taught your real life lessons hey! I knew I didn't actually want some of these things but there was that sense failure because well most of them by my late twenties I hadn't achieved at all. 

So as a way of an escape and to reconnect with myself I started hiking again and getting outdoors (this was around 2017/2018) Instagram and the hiking community wasn't really a thing yet nor was I active on Instagram at that time. So I searched for hiking groups, in my localish area on google and found one in the Peak District, I joined quite a few of their walks but I was still struggling to find people my own age who also liked hiking. So, with a couple I met on this walking group who were also a little younger, we set up a 20 -30s (I'd be too old for this now, which is quite funny) walking group on the meet up app, and that really took off! I stepped away from it after a year or two, but during that period I had finally made friends that also loved hiking and we had some amazing days out in The Peak District and trips to Scotland and Wales. 

I also went on plenty of solo hikes, or days out to local National Trust Properties and found myself again, found happiness and a realisation that I did not need to conform to social norms.