A 100,000 Thank-You's

Some time during the Christmas period, my blog went past the 100,000 mark in terms of ‘hits’ – people visiting the site. My youngest daughter tells me that this is a rather modest achievement when compared to other social media sites, but I’m grateful.

A 100,000 thank-you’s to all those that have visited, read, commented and posted.

I started out on 6^th December 2006. I was 51 years old and the blog address reflects this: Mountain50. 

The title of the blog, Mountain Climbing for Beginners, comes from a preach I did at the time, at KingsGate Church in Peterborough. It reflects my favourite Old Testament character, Caleb. At 85 years old, he climbed a mountain and defeated what seemed an impossible enemy that had held back the children of Israel for 40 years.  (Joshua 14: 12, 15: 14). As I grow older, I want to be a Caleb- still taking mountains in this life at 85.

As I write this, I am entering my 65^th year. I used to work in pensions, so the age of 65 has always been important to me- traditionally the UK’s ‘normal retirement age.’ In fact I left the pensions industry a few years ago now and have moved on to more book writing, working with Mission24 and other charities and with our amazing church, Chroma.

Looking at those that read the blog- I have some diagnostics on there – it tells me that my many friends around the world look in on me- India, New Zealand, Slovakia, United States, Canada, Argentina, Ghana, South Africa, Eswatini and more. Some are more puzzling- quite a lot from Russia. Are they real people or the famous Russian ‘bots’ checking in?

My most read blogs continue to be the ones on sacrifice, Laminin and being an introvert. My most controversial are the political ones- I’m an unrepentant Blairite and await some reasonable leadership to arise in the Labour party!

Anyway. Thank you. Thanks for reading this. And thanks for being among the many. A 100,000 thank-you’s.