Going to bed while the sun is coming up is always going to provide a rather disorientating following few days, especially on the back of a 22hr day that involves swapping continents to get back here to Wales after our last glass of Moroccan mountain mint tea.

I manged to sleep a little, but only until about 9am. Clare was heading out to meet a friend for a swim, so I joined them for a mid-morning dunk before returning back to bed, feeling part exhilarated and part exhausted.

My brain was in a bit of a fog, so couldn’t get much more done than unpack and get the desert mountain dust out of my kit.

Slow walks from The Cottage were all I managed, between sleep, drink and food.

Until Saturday, where we’d been invited to a local festival that our neighbour organises. Usually I’m still away on expedition when it’s on, but this year I was home – in body if not completely firing on all cylinders. To be honest I was in a bit of daze the entire day and not feeling on top festival form, but I did get a nice (sitting down!) music lesson from John who taught me how to play one of the Capoeira bow instruments.

Although it was a hazy afternoon, I did get to see some great musicians playing, bumped into lots of friends and got asked to do a bit of filming for a friends band as well.

I spent almost the entire following day sorting expedition paperwork, budgets, reports, feedback, staffing and all the other less glamorous parts of expedition life. I was happy for the rest and it was good to get some of it ‘squared away’ so that my brain could get the next one lined up without distraction! Over the last few weeks, I’ve been responsible for overseeing groups of students Caving in Ireland, Sea Kayaking in Scotland and two teams on wilderness canoe journeys in Sweden. Once they are all safely back, we head out on some Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expeditions and other local explorations, so it’s a busy time of year!