Anticipation/Experience/Memories: are they really 40/40/20?

 

I'm at my Mum and Dad's for a few days (escaping a possible COVID exposure my brother-in-law had) and my parents play the radio a lot.  I overheard a comment this morning by the DJ just before I left for my daily walk.  The comment said something along the lines of: A holiday is 40%/40%/20% - 40% anticipation (which, for my walking holidays, includes planning, booking and training), 40% experiencing it, and 20% recalling memories of it.

While I was out for my walk, I thought about this statement, and mentally pulled it to pieces, as I usually do.  For a start, I feel there are 6 stages in total: planning, booking, training, anticipating, experiencing, and remembering.  Some of these stages overlap.  Anticipation would start before any other stage (when the spark of the holiday idea is formed), would be combined with other aspects (e.g. it is impossible to do the planning without anticipating things), and would continue into the experience itself, because in my case each holiday is made up of many long distance walks and I will be anticipating some still to come in  the holiday while I am experiencing others.  Training could start at any time in the sequence, and technically continues into the experience itself, either intentionally (I often book 3 or 4 nights in Shropshire near the start of a holiday so I can do day walks to improve my stamina and strength) and I also leave the more challenging walks til later in the holiday so that the early walks prepare me for the later ones.  Remembering would also begin during a holiday as I walk later long distance walks in the itinerary I would begin to reminisce about walks I've completed earlier in the holiday (or this could be as simple as thinking back on a day's experiences when relaxing in the evening).

If the percentages related to the amount of time spent on each of the three activities the DJ mentioned, I totally disagree, as this would be weighted heavily to the memory end.  For me personally, a holiday would be approximately 32%/16%/52% as I spend about 6 months or more planning (which, for me, is a lot of the anticipation), somewhere between 4 weeks to 3 months experiencing the holiday, and the rest of my life remembering the holiday (not constantly, of course, but certainly the many times remembering add up over time).

If the percentages related to the amount of enjoyment, I again disagree.  For me enjoyment would be closer to 20%/60%/20%.  If my anticipation/planning/preparing equaled or exceeded the experience itself, there would be no point going on the actual holiday - I could just look at different walks online, watch walking programs/videos, read books or blogs about walks, make itineraries that would never actually be used (I actually do this as I plan holidays way in advance and they either never eventuate, or I completely change the itinerary when I get within 6 months of the holiday and am more serious about planning and booking), and train on local trails continuously.

Another way of looking at it is breaking those percentages into distance traveled directly related to the holiday, although that probably only relates to training and the experience itself, and the longer the actual holiday distance is, the less percentage-wise the training would be.  That is, if I cover 300km during the training period, that could prepare me well for a 600km holiday just as easily as it prepares me well for a 1500km holiday.

To sum it up, here's a table showing approximate percentages across the 6 activities I count as being part of the walking holiday experience.  Of course, taking into account what I say above, there is some fluidity with percentages as they might relate to more than one activity (e.g. a training percentage of 8% could actually be 6% solely spent on training, and 2% spent on training while anticipating).

 

Time

Enjoyment

Distance

Anticipating

8%

5%

0%

Planning

8%

5%

0%

Booking

8%

5%

0%

Training

8%

5%

20-33%

Experiencing

16%

60%

67-80%

Remembering

52%

20%

0%

 

A final bit about remembering.  I often think of the walks I've done while going to sleep at night.  If I can't sleep, I will attempt to remember the sights I saw, and areas I walked through, during each stage of one of my walks.  Recall of a walk is sporadic, in that I'll remember some parts of the walk and where they fit into each stage clearly, some parts I will remember but not what stage it belongs to, some parts I will have a memory of but not the walk it belongs to, and there are large day stages I don't recall anything about at all.  I'm glad I not only started this blog (and kept it current), but that I also have the journals I wrote and the photos I took while actually doing each walk.  I have been guilty of writing less, and taking very little in the way of photos, on many of the latter walks I've done, so I will try and put more effort into doing better in any future LDWs.

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