2025
I never know how long to make these things. So much happens in a year and then it gets to like 19:45 on New Year’s Eve, which is the time that it is right now, and I’ve got a bulleted list and a basketful of memories and a dread at how I’m going to make this clever or significant or remotely useful to me years hence.
The only thing for it is to start typing and see where we get to. So here we go: a farewell to 2025.
Winter
I suspect that I could live out a thousand lifetimes in the North East of England and never really internalise how dark it gets here. We live in town! With streetlights and yobbos and dogwalkers with head torches, but everyday the sky fades from black to dark grey around 9:00 and then fades back to black at like 15:30. I live in the interstices between lamps. One day we’ll move out to the countryside and I’ll go fully nocturnal. But not in 2025, and probably not in 2026 either.
Sam and I started off 2025 in the dark: a trip up to Flittingford for a chilly night with Ghyll. We popped out of the bothy at the late hour of 18:30 to find a full aurora blazing over the pines. An auspicious start to the year. Then Ghyll ate some human poo that a previous resident ungenerously left just on the other side of the sheepfold.


Back on the home front I knuckled down and finished a couple of projects around the house: tiles in the back room, a slow-draining kitchen sink. Rode my bike to Durham to get the train down into the office a couple times. The dark is not so bad when you have a 2000-lumen headlight on your bicycle.
In the evenings I binge-watched videos about how large language models worked and idly submitted job applications hither and yon. Submitting job applications that you don’t care about that much feels like work but in retrospect I don’t think it is. Or at least it wasn’t work to me. I didn’t hear back with a positive result from a single one.



This coincided with a spell of cold weather and a snow that stuck for a couple of weeks, which notwithstanding the frozen fishing pond and a nice run across a white, unspoilt Cross Fell, was actually a lot less exciting than you’d think. Sam and I went out onto the fishing pond to do a Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on the ice, and then a couple of months later they put up a big metal barrier to prevent dogwalkers and Michel Gondry fans from bespoiling their peace.
In truth morale was pretty low in the Charles & Sam household.
Spring
The reward for our longsuffering came in the form of my sister and her husband flying out here for a week’s crash-course in Northern England. Shortly before their arrival, a spell of unnaturally nice spring weather moved in, melting the snow and cutting through the ice on the locked-up fishing pond and driving away the damp with a clean dry wind.

Erika and Austin’s visit was a dream. The weather held out and we spent hours outside in the sun touring around the country. We climbed Helvellyn on a clear day and ate Twix overlooking Red Tarn and counted lucky stars. We got a Greggs and stood around in front of the Greggs passing the lukewarm pasties between us. I remember the absurdity fondly, but I have mentally blocked the experience of the pasties themselves.



With the travellers safely aboard a plane back to warmer climes, Sam and I set out on a sprint through April: replacing a couple of sensors on the Fabia, helping to open a new bothy up in Kielder, a software development certification, a christening. I tried to cram in some last-minute training ahead of the Boston Marathon (not that one) down in Lincolnshire. A personal best by 20 minutes or so — but still short of my 4-hour goal. But we did stay in a lovely pub and visited a Wendy’s in the historic cathedral town of Lincoln on the way back. On balance a good trip.
At the end of April, we trod back up to the summit of Great Knoutberry to marshal for the 61st Fellsman. A couple of runners recognised me from the previous year.
Summer
The first weekend in May I was out in the Lake District for a recce on leg 4 of the Bob Graham ahead of a friend’s Round in June. The day started overcast, but around noon the clouds rolled away and the sun burst in and then settled in for like 3 months straight. I hadn’t spent much time running in the Lake District — far away, crammed with 4-ton BMW SUVs, lots of climbing — but this weekend out started to reveal to me what stringy middle aged fell runners have known all along.



For my birthday the government very generously gifted me British Citizenship, at a ceremony in Durham. Okay so it wasn’t a gift so much as an elaborate and financially taxing series of self-abasements before a succession of conservative governments. The point is that I earned the right to be here. So endeth a long & arduous trek from Guy Who Doesn’t Know What Maftin Means to Guy Who Makes Jokes About Frank Spencer. After the ceremony we all went into the adjoining cafe for a cream tea. Some things about this country are not at all what Americans would think, but some things absolutely are.
A couple weeks later I made the frankly questionable decision to go out and see Richard Dawson at the Sage on a Saturday night ahead of the 6am start to the Keswick Mountain Festival 50k on the other side of the country. Dawson put on a brilliant show, and what’s better is that I actually got to relive the show over and over in a nightmarish fugue state as I hobbled the length of Buttermere and Crummock Water under a blistering sun. I finished in a perhaps less-than-spectacular time but I didn’t blow up or injure myself and finished strong. Proud of myself / never doing that again.
A couple more shows midsummer: Boys From the Blackstuff in Newcastle; the Slam of the North poetry slam in Durham.
Then back out onto the fells to support my friend David’s second attempt at the Bob Graham. I’d originally planned to run only a single leg but decided to continue on with him for the final leg when I realised that there was a chance of witnessing something superhuman. David didn’t disappoint. On the long smelly drive home, I wondered dimly to myself whether I could do that sort of thing one day.


Instead, I ran the Swaledale Marathon, a gorgeous 23-mile route through the Yorkshire Dales. Well-pleased with myself here: I timed it well and finished strong. Go figure, a summer of trekking up and down the Lake District fells actually hammered some fitness into this scrawny ol frame of mine.
As June wound down, Sam & I cashed in our PTO for the long-planned Cally2Ammy (that’s Calais → Amsterdam) cycling trip along the south coast of the North Sea. I wrote lots about it at the time but suffice it to say that Belgium is a wonderful country.


We were back home only briefly before a trip down to London for a bit of sightseeing. Blagged our way into the House of Commons, scoped out the Globe (not the original) and the Tower of London (the original). Saw Nye with Michael Sheen, which was (and remains) my Highlight of the Year in terms of shows, and also saw The Fifth Step with Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman, which it’s fun to see famous people but the show itself was… only ok.



Rounded out the summer of running with half of a “23 Before Tea” round — including a daring ascent of Jack’s Rake. Another classic Lakeland experience to check off the list.

During the weekdays Sam and I got into the habit of going for a pint at the Swan & Three Cygnets in Durham, sitting in the beer garden while Ghyll climbed all over the tables; or otherwise we wandered down to the field at the Welfare Park to throw the ball around and tucker out the manic little feller. The routine of it made me feel like I’m in the right place.

Autumn
Soon the days begin to shorten and a nip in the air crept in with the sunsets. Sam and I headed out for a couple of walk/runs along the Teesdale Way, which Sam and Ghyll are walking together (and I am sort of… sherpa-ing?). Sam also schlepped up to Northumberland to walk a couple days of St. Oswald’s Way. Ghyll tuckered out after a day and a half.

Throughout the autumn I sort of cut back on running — whether I’d burnt myself out over the summer or found that I just had nothing to look forward to, I started struggling to get myself out of bed during the week. I did schedule in a couple more adventures before the winter set in: back in the Lake District I supported David’s Joss Naylor (leg 2), and ran The Way of Love with a friend from Striders and his brother, and then very late in the season I undertook a foolhardy go at leg 2 + 3 of the Bob Graham Round, which got filed along with the Keswick Mountain Festival under POM/NDTA.
Sam and I moved from the Swan & Three Cygnets to the Holy Grale for our evening pint; it has a wonderful local atmosphere and a set of board games that we dug into after one too many high-proof bombshells. When we weren’t down the pub, I picked the guitar back up for a bit of noodling; I’m not practicing for anything but I find that playing music helps me disconnect from the stress of the present.

And the present was stressful! A longrunning project at work came to a head, and I found myself still at the computer cracking away at code later and later in the day, more and more often. My hands started shaking at random points and I couldn’t stop them; I started having gratuitous stress dreams.
A visit from my mom and brother offered me a week and a half’s respite; the time with family was sorely needed. We spent some time down in London doing touristy things and then got on the train to zip back up north and take the dog out for a walk in the last of the changing leaves. And we drank a lot of beer, which is maybe not great for my physiology but was very nice in the moment.


A last show before the winter: Brand New in Leeds. I’d always liked The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me but I’d never been into the band itself — until the show. Jesse Lacey said upfront that he wasn’t going to schmooze and that he planned to cram as many songs in as he could, and he did. Terrific show,
Winter, again
Back at work to heave that longrunning project over the line. GitHub Copilot was made available to us, so I downloaded it with the intention of going full Simon Willison, but then struggled to provide the right context to get it to do what I want. In fact I couldn’t get it to do much more than writing docstrings, in terms of useful shifting of complexity. Consider that my year’s commentary on the usefulness of large language models in production software.
Long nights, bugs discovered too late, poorly-thought-out reactions to those bugs. The project was delivered in the end but it limped through the first couple of weeks ahead of Christmas. Then stress finally caught up with me and I picked up some flu on the train. It climbed into my chest and into my sinuses and down my throat and just stuck there for weeks. (Some say it’s stuck there still!) It’s very difficult to resolve bugs and communicate with stakeholders when your whole immune system is in rebellion.

Even before the sickness, the desire to get up and go for a run pretty much evaporated after The Way of Love back in October. I squeezed out maybe a run or two a week and one-by-one turned off all of my progress metrics on my watch and my phone. It’s a chore and I just don’t have the energy.
A bright note, however: the NHS listed, I applied for, and successfully interviewed for, the role which I think have been performing for the better part of a year now. The paperwork, uh, well the paperwork is still making its way through the system. More to come.
Some vanity lists
A year in review is not complete without a list of some kind, right?
The year in music has been comparatively tame. Last.fm says that my most listened-to album is the soundtrack to the movie The Revenant, which ok it’s a very ambient album and I needed some calming music this year.
A couple of proper standouts, though:
- “End of the Middle” by Richard Dawson - Melodic, a little experimental, dealing deeply with family and regret and belonging, except for the song about Boxing Day and capitalism in the middle, which feels a bit out of place.
- “2” by Foxwarren - Discovered when Joe Cappa did a music video for them. I love Andy Shauf’s voice, and I love the blend of oldtimey film samples and wistful strings.
- “Equus Asinus” and “Equus Caballus” by Men I Trust - Dang I just love this sad Quebecois girl music. Doesn’t reach the highs of “Oncle Jazz” but I like the Panic! At the Disco duality of one more acoustic album and one more electronic one.
The year in books is similarly underwhelming; I didn’t read a ton, and what I did read was not particularly exciting. I reread The Book of Dust trilogy ahead of the release of the final book, which was a little disappointing; I read the first two A Song of Ice and Fire books, which I enjoyed but which I don’t want to invest in because they’ll never be finished; The Yearling was absolutely lovely but not enough to sink teeth into; Postwar was weighty but not exactly exciting. And then a handful of other fiction & nonfiction that didn’t leave much of a mark. Maybe I will read a really good book in 2026?
Twenty twenty-six
2024 sucked; 2025 was pretty good. At least the middle of 2025 was really good. I spent a ton of time outside, Ghyll is finally chilling out, Sam and I spent time doing things instead of just sitting at home on the computer. On the other hand I pretty much lost the last quarter of the year to work and stress, and I need to make a serious effort not to let that happen again in 2026.
I’m purposely trying to keep resolution-lite, but Sam and I have some plans that we need to stick to:
- Cut out a bunch of accumulated cruft from the last four or five years: clothes we never wear, stuff we never use, projects we never finished.
- Discover the country: I’m British now, I need to know what’s out there! We’re going to climb all of the highest points in the historic counties of England.
- No YouTube: I simply cannot resist the YouTube algorithm, especially when I’m stressed out and have no willpower. I am quitting YouTube.com cold turkey; if I want to watch a video I am going to have to jump through some hoops.
I, uh, may have also signed back up for the 2026 Fellsman.


















































