#SOCS SATURDAY – Water

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS June 22, 2024

It really is no good if you don’t have enough water when you are on a long hike in the blazing hot sun. Recently I watched or rather listened to a You Tube video of a man doing the Coast to Coast walk in England, which is a walk of over 180 miles. It goes from St Bees on the west coast to Robin Hood’s Bay on the east coast and most people take well over a week to do it, wild camping and sometimes seeking out organised camp sites. Part of the walk is done over moorland that goes on for ever, and is without any shade at all and no places to fill up with water. On the video that I watched, the man got into trouble. He happened to be doing the unshaded stretch during that summer when we got one day with temperatures of 40 degreees centigrade. A record for this country. Somehow or other he found himself without enough water and he ended up in a really bad way and even maybe close to complete collapse. It was frightening to watch, but in the end he made it to a village where he could get some water. I cannot imagine hiking in such a temperatuer, never mind doing it without enough water.

I think often of my grandparents’ farm and of how my grandmother used to have to fetch water from the pumphouse into the farm. I can’t imagine just how hard that was. She had to care for her husband and her two sons, cooking for them, doing their laundry and so much else. They all worked on the farm and so much of what my grandmother had to do involved water. Nowadays we take it for granted in our country that we have a plenitful supply of clean mains water. I often think also of parts of the world where there is no clean water and the children have to drink contaminated water. I heard the other day that ove fiftey per cent of the world does not have access to clean water. It makes me feel so appalled that kids are dying for lack of clean water.

Strangely, my favourite drink of all time is simply water. Whilst most people love a cup of tea or coffee or some other wonder, I would always prefer water. We are so fortunate to have access to this.