Sixty by Sixty

A while back my Sister, Gina on her blog Fan my Flame decided to do Sixty things by Sixty, not a bucket list as such (because I guess she had no intention of kicking the bucket at sixty)! But a list of different things she wanted to do, places she wanted to visit and general experiences that she had always wanted to do. The idea being to complete them before the end of her sixtieth year.

So with my 58^th Birthday approaching in October, I thought why not do the same. But what to include in my own sixty by sixty? A few Ideas came from Gina’s list and there were a number of things I already had in mind to do but how to come up with a full sixty (and possibly a few in reserve in case some became impossible to achieve, either through cost, unavailability or zombie apocalypse… it pays to plan for all eventualities).

A search through the numerous online bucket lists made me realise that the general public must be an unimaginative lot if they hadn’t done most of the things already:

Most of the UK ones seem to be about visiting places and the same places crop up again and again:

Visit the Lake District… yep been there, done that (dozens of times in fact)

Visit Westminster Abbey, St Pauls, The changing of the Guard, Tower Bridge etc. Yep done all them!

And of course “Visit the Tower of London”. Sorry but I can beat that, I have actually been locked in overnight after a serious drinking session in the Yeoman Warders Bar and spent the night in the Curator of the Crown Jewels apartment on the top floor of the White Tower… OK it did help that my friend just happened to be the Curators  son!

Out of the Visit England’s list of the 101 places to visit and do before you go abroad I had done well over half e.g.

• Eat a Cornish Pasty in Cornwall (Several times including this year)
• Eat a full English Breakfast (Are there really people in Britain who have never done this)?
• Drink Gin in a Gin Distillery (Bombay Sapphire on the way to the last Cornish Pasty session)
• Taste Grasmere Gingerbread (Yes, in Grasmere of course)
• Punt on the Cam (only last month, although I had first done it 30 years ago and yes I’ve done Oxford too).
• Visit Windsor Castle, Bath, Stonehenge, Lincoln Cathedral, Bletchley Park, York Minster; sorry but  all ticked off already!

OK there were a couple of things I saw that I did want to include such as ride the Settle – Carlisle line on a Steam Train, something I’ve fancied doing for years and visit St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, another place I’ve never managed to get to.

And of course many of the Adventurous/Extreme/Crazy stuff, I’d already done:

Bungy Jump

Rock Climbing

Abseil off something really big (Malham Cove in my case, 300 feet)

Go Caving

Stand on top of Snowdon/Ben Nevis/Scafell Pike

Ride a Motorbike (really?)

So some careful research is required and suggestions will be gratefully received….

The list so far is on the right… watch this space.