• About
  • Free Downloads
  • Cape Wrath Trail
  • Get in touch

Outdoors Father

Outdoor Adventures of a Busy Father

  • About
  • Free Downloads
  • Cape Wrath Trail
  • Get in touch
A beatiful sunrise during a weekend outdoors in the Caringorms, Scotland

How to not get bummed from a cancelled weekend outdoors

7th February 2015 by Gilad Nachmani

This weekend I was due to go for two nights and two days of camping, hiking and full outdoors immersion, but I’m not going. A combination of things such as health (my wife’s, not mine), poor planning (all mine this time) and some cold, cold weather (lacking on the gear front) means that my weekend by myself, outdoors, is cancelled. I’ll probably go next week, or the week after, but that got me thinking – how can I pick myself up after this cancelled weekend? I figured there probably only two things that will pick me up and I have used them sometimes, but now I’m going to start make an effort to implement them every time a trip is cancelled (and it will happen a lot).

1. Treat yourself with something nice

No, I don’t mean that sexy thing you had your eye on, or a case of good whiskey, I mean a piece of gear. You planned on going outdoors, play with your gear and enjoy all the perks that it has, so get that “fix”. The treat must match the scale of the trip and you must be honest with yourself. I think that for this trip it will something small as I had a big part in me not going – maybe a good lightweight running cap for the coming summer? I need to keep it on a tight budget.

2. Get the outdoors fix

The outdoor is still there, somewhere. I live in the center of one of the biggest cities in the world (London), but I can be in a decent urban outdoors setting (Epping Forest) in half an hour, so find a spot that works for you – close, easy to get to and still green. Granted, you this little “fix” you won’t get a whole weekend outdoors worth of time, so make it a dense one. When we are outdoors we want 3 things:

  1. See trees/rock/snow/sand or anything natural
  2. Be active and build some sweat
  3. Play with gear (it always goes back to that!)

So the best way is to to go for very, very condense experiences that will allow all three to happen, for example:

  • Trail Running – crank up the activity for an hour or five, use some gear and be out – no pavement pounding!
  • Hike with your kids – it is always more intense with them: you carry them (activity), you have a huge pile of stuff (gear) and they look at the outdoors more closely (you will see lots of leaves, or frogs, or branches or anything else)
  • Do your planned activity, but faster – want to hike 25 miles? Do it in a day. Want to do a multi pitch climb? Do it in 3 hours instead of an over nighter. Just test your limits a little more and see if you can squeeze it in.

Weekends outdoors will be cancelled – it is inevitable, especially if you add kids to the mix. You can get bummed, or you can find a different way to play outdoors, even if it just a quick “fix”. Do you have any ideas or your own tricks to get a little pickup after a cancelled weekend outdoors?      

Share your thoughts:

  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Skills Tagged With: Epping Forest, hike with your kids, outdoor gear, Trail Running

Sign up to get the next post in your inbox

and get access to exclusive guides

Categories

  • Adventures
    • Cape Wrath Trail 2015
    • Cape Wrath Trail 2016
    • The Pennine Way 2015-2016
    • Yam le Yam
  • Gear
  • Ideas
  • Rants and Mumbles
  • Skills
  • Uncategorized
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

© Copyright 2018 Outdoors Father · All Rights Reserved ·

Legal Stuff · Contact · Theme by Jason M Design

Outdoors Father is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program,

an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.