I’ve found phone signal on Elba so can upload my blogs now!

If you haven’t already seen, I now have a live tracker thanks to Geotracks. You can see my live location on the home page, or by clicking here.

I woke up in paradise. It feels like I’m in another country, Italy a distant memory. The sun has no mercy here, but the cliffs kept me in the shade all morning. I chatted to a couple on holiday from the north of Italy and a man going free diving. The sea is beautiful here, I was rather envious of his mask and snorkel.

In the next town I stopped and bought a mask, which slowed progress rather a lot, because I couldn’t resist slipping off my boat into the crystal clear waters as I paddled along the rocky coastline, and exploring a world of black sea urchins, huge red anemones, and shoals of colourful fish.

With the strong southerly winds incoming,I need to get off Elba tomorrow. So although I felt knackered, I kept paddling. A breeze on my back helped for the last 20kms. I think I feel tired because my body is adapting to burning fat, after being a carb burning machine for the last 22 years.

Eventually I stopped for the night on another stunning pebbly beach with impressive granite cliffs.

There I met Gabriel and listened to his story – how he’d left Argentina to make a new life, arriving in Denmark without a word of English, moved on to Germany, and then Italy, now working in a restaurant on Elba. I admired his courage for living so adventurously.

Then I told him about my trip and he complemented me greatly, saying what a wonderful journey it is. This surprised me, because at that moment I had in my head the fatigue, loneliness and monotony that is the reality of this adventure at times, and not the wonderful, romantic vision that Gabriel was dreaming of. This reminded me that however good your someone’s life may seem, that’s probably not the reality.

But it also reminded me how lucky I am to be in a position to do a trip like this, because for so many people it wouldn’t be possible. When people talk to me I think people often consider if they could do something like my adventure, and because it would be so difficult for them, they give me more credit than I deserve. I’m not saying it’s easy for me, there are plenty of challenges, but it’s certainly easy for me comparatively.

Diabetes

Two problems with my insulin: 1 – salt is jamming the mechanism inside my insulin pens making it difficult to inject, 2 – my levemir has been damaged by the heat and gone cloudy (just the stuff I keep on me during the day, the stuff in my frio cool bag us still ok).

I’m extremely insulin sensitive which makes life easier, but I have to be careful. I had to eat a bag of sweets yesterday to feed one unit of novorapid I injected. Better to be cautious and run a bit high.