I’ve spent the past week in the Swiss Alps.

I try to spend some time in the mountains a few times a year, I find it makes me relax in a way that not much else does.

Running in the mountains, often to altitudes of above 2,000m, is physically demanding, and forces you to be self-reliant and prepared in a way that going for a 10 mile run around South London simply doesn’t.

The focus that this requires means that doing anything other than getting to the top (or bottom) of the trail is, in that moment, all you can concentrate on.

And there is something about moving through a landscape that is so physically huge and overwhelming, and mostly empty, that temporarily, but definitively, severs your connection with the day-to-day.

All of this feels increasingly essential for my mental wellbeing.

I’d thoroughly recommend it.