Where We Are Now: The Art of Negotiated Movement
By David Jones
The walk usually starts badly.
Jayne is already at the gate, moving with the momentum of a woman who has a personal vendetta against standing still. I am still adjusting my camera strap, wrestling with a lens cap, and trying to remember whether I actually turned the oven off.
Toby, meanwhile, has something in his mouth that definitely wasn’t there thirty seconds ago.
“What’s he got?” Jayne asks, without breaking her stride.
“I’m not sure,” I say.
“Is it alive?”
“Not anymore.”
This is where we are now.
We Agreed to Walk Together
Last May Changed the Rules
Jayne retired last May, which immediately exposed a catastrophic flaw in my long-held belief that mornings are for preparation. Apparently, in Jayne’s new world, mornings are for leaving.
She has embraced retirement with a level of enthusiasm usually reserved for professional athletes.
“I’ve got my boots on,” she announces.
“Yes,” I reply, still wandering the house looking for my hat like a confused ghost.
“We’re going.”
“Right.”
Toby sides with her every time. It’s two against one: the night-shift zombie versus the High-Velocity Pensioner and her furry accomplice.
The Pace Problem
Retirement suits Jayne. She walks with Intent — the sort of purposeful stride that suggests she knows exactly where she’s going, even when we’re both fundamentally lost.
I, on the other hand, walk at a pace dictated entirely by the sun. If the light does something interesting, I stop.
This is the primary friction point of our marriage.
“You stopped five minutes ago,” she calls back from thirty yards ahead.
“Yes.”
“It’s the same field, David.”
“No, it isn’t. The shadows have shifted four inches.”
Toby does not care about shadows.
Toby has discovered something dead.
Apparently, it’s different now.
The Dog Incidents
This happens more than a reasonable person would think.
On one memorable beach walk, Toby rolled in a dead conger eel with such commitment it felt like a religious experience. Another time, he consumed a dead bird with enough confidence to make me wonder whether he’d been watching survivalist documentaries.
“Do not let him—” Jayne starts.
“I’m not letting him,” I reply, watching him absolutely let himself.
Fair.
How the Blogs Actually Happen
The blogs come from this. Not from Grand Himalayan Expeditions, but from the negotiations of a Monday afternoon. The pauses. The disagreements. The dog incidents we’ll never fully recover from.
And crucially — the pubs.
Because in 2026, as in every year before it, the walk isn’t finished until there’s a pint involved.
At some point — usually when the light has gone and my knees are starting to remind me of my birth certificate — Jayne will say, “We could stop.”
This is not a suggestion.
It’s a destination.
We noticed too late
Post-Walk Analysis
Inside the pub comes the debrief.
Bad navigational decisions are laughed about.
The Good Light is acknowledged (reluctantly, by Jayne).
The dog smell is ignored until the fire makes it impossible.
The writing happens later, once everyone is clean and Toby no longer smells like something the Atlantic rejected. It’s never about the whole walk — just the bits that stuck. The moments that made us sigh, laugh, or briefly question why we didn’t just get a goldfish.
The coast had other ideas.
So where are we now?
Still walking.
Still shooting loads.
Still stopping at inconvenient moments.
Travelling more. Letting days unfold. Accepting that a good walk ends somewhere warm, with a pint, and a dog who has absolutely no regrets about that eel.
If you’re looking for pristine adventures and heroic narratives, you’ve probably come to the wrong place.
But if you recognise:
lking with someone who doesn’t walk like you
loving a dog who cannot be trusted in long grass
judging a day partly by the quality of the pub at the end
then you’ll fit in just fine.
We’ll be the ones arguing quietly in the field.
The dog will be the one rolling in something dreadful.
And the pub, as ever, is non-negotiable.
This was the plan/