WHITE PEAK WALK

At last! A day out walking and away from the Anquet nonsense. It’s what this blog is all about really.
Phil picked me up at the crack of dawn and we made Ashbourne in plenty of time to stock up with breakfast pasties before carrying on to Hartington.

Huge thanks go to Phil – he organised the trip, got us there & back, planned the route, did all the map reading, found us a great little pub for lunch, (lovely parsnip soup & rare beef sandwiches with horseradish all washed down with two nice pints) – And paid for it all as I had left my walking wallet on the desk at home.

On top of all that he also played Dr Kildare with a very attractive young lady’s blisters in the pub and donated half his first aid kit to look after her well-being. I am not sure how examining her chest helped with her feet, but Phil explained his newly acquired holistic approach and that seemed to calm her boyfriend down. Eventually. An all round great bloke is our Phil.

So ten lovely miles down and then up to Shining Tor and back along little gushing streams in beautiful gorges. We got back to the car just as it was getting dark – perfect timing.

MORE GEAR AND A CRY FOR HELP

Reading one of the new blogs on the TGO Challenge, I see that Weird Darren in his entertaining blog has been taking quite a tough look at all his kit for the Challenge. (See 'Great Places to Visit' on my links list) It seems that Darren is really going for it and is looking to get his pack weight down to a pretty impressive 10kg.

He has been looking at packs and he went along to Bob Cartwright’s emporium (See Gear Links) ‘Backpackinglight’ to help him choose. He has come away with a whole shopping list for Christmas!

Well, my pack arrived today, all the way from Durango, Colorado. It has come in a plethora of grey and dark grey – it is a sleek beauty! (Just like my frame will be, come the beginning of March, honest!) On that note I see that Darren has started his diet – all power to you Darren! I will start my efforts on 1st January…

I have still been struggling on with plotting my route on my new Anquet Maps, albeit very slowly and with considerable problems along the way. It seems like I am in constant contact with Anquet by email and phone to try to get to the bottom of the problems. I just cannot seem to get it to work consistently without something else going wrong at every turn.

This is very strange, as I have been a user of the old version of Anquet for about five years or so, with no apparent problems. This new version has got me totally stumped! As soon as I bought it I needed to upgrade it to a newer version (strange in itself) to get the thing to print. The next problem was in editing a route in any way at all – I won’t bore you all with the details, but Anquet have been trying to help but I seem to be taking two steps forward & then three back.

I suppose a lot of it must be my own technological lack of prowess, but what really does amaze me is the virtually complete lack of instructions that come with the product. It is a bit like buying a car without ever having seen one before and being expected to know how to drive the thing.

If anyone out there has the latest version of Anquet and lives within a reasonable distance, is there any chance I can come along with the laptop so you can teach me how to drive the thing? It is really getting me down as my route planning is appallingly slow as I am using Anquet to sort it out.

I find it amazing that I am in the position of asking for help like this, but if I don’t I am sure that this state of affairs will continue ad-infinitum.

Thank you!

WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT

A few pictures - if only to remind me what it's all about! - These are from previous TGO Challenges. 'Crackerjack!' pencils to those who can identify where they are! And Phil - you are not eligible :)

You can click on them to make them slightly larger.

FRESH AIR

A day in London. Wonderful. You start the day on the station platform in the dark and cold with all the grey faced commuters, your coffee in a polystyrene cup. The train is dirty and cramped and no-one talks to each other. You pile off at Kings Cross thankful to be breathing fresher air and then plunge into the labyrinth of the underground system.

Nine hours later you repeat the process in reverse, the commuters looking even more haggard, and arrive home in the dark & cold.

Over my working life I lived like that on and off for a total of four years. The one thing I never can get over; when you get home, you change out of your suit and shirt & tie and notice that your shirt collar is black. That is the inside of your shirt collar, sitting passivley against your neck. What on earth does the inside of your lungs look like - which have been sucking in this filth all day?

A lucky break - Phil has just emailed me and we are off for a walk on Thursday. Another early start - we live miles from anywhere with a decent bog on the top of a hill, but this time we won't be crammed like sardines on a train, and when we get there there will be miles of good walking, a cracking pub or two and a whole planet of fresh clean air.

STUFF HAPPENS

This weekend I was going to get all sorts of stuff sorted and still have time for a walk.

Friday: The evening started well - I managed to delete six days of plotted route on the new version of Anquet maps. Number one son was supposed to come round in the evening on his way to the Peak District to collect a map. He didn’t show up, and as yet has not made an appearance, let alone a reason for his no-show. I did sort out my corroding poles from last weekend’s wet weather (how does all that corrosion happen?)

Saturday: At last the cherry tree in the garden had shed all its leaves, and the two birches were well on their way. The Field Maple’s had been down for ages and were turning to a wonderful mahogany colour. They were all lying there and needed to be raked up and put in the green bins. Number two son needed my old desk and a spare office chair from the garage at his place and we then needed a trip together to Cambridge to select a new downstairs loo, hand basin, taps, flooring & tiles as well as doing lunch at Don’s. So, I delivered the desk and chair, though there was no sign of the said son, so the trip to view bathrooms was off. Lunch at Don’s with Lynnie was good.

I did manage to pick up a new pair of black wind resistant Polartec gloves with sticky palms so I can adjust my poles (they are black too!) when it is cold and wet. Then there was the matter of putting right the accidental deletion of the six days of route on the new Anquet maps. (Why are they so much more difficult to use than the old version?)

Sunday had a lunchtime drinks do in the next village planned and then an old Challenger friend and his new lady to lunch. He has great taste in wine, so that was the rest of the afternoon written off. They were great company and after they left I found myself welded to the settee with an old man’s afternoon snooze.

So, there’s still no time for a walk. Tomorrow is a day in London on a course and Tuesday is working in Cambridge.

I have just got to get out more.

FOURTEEN WEEKS

Given a notional start date of 1st March, I have fourteen weeks to get into some sort of shape for this walk. The route planning is coming on okay, and this determines my setting off day as I have to meet the start date for the Rab TGO Challenge on the west coast of Scotland.

But, fourteen weeks is all there is left to get into some sort of shape.

I say ‘some sort of shape’ as the first week of the actual walk should knock me into proper fitness. The shape I am talking about is the shape that stops you from picking up injuries. The human body doesn’t like big changes. This old body of mine currently enjoys sitting on the same bit of the settee most nights watching the telly with a nice bottle of red. Indeed, the settee is getting to like it too – it has moulded itself to my bottom and invites me to take up residence. I know the dishwasher calls too, but the settee always wins out.

My body is like the settee. Sort of comfortable, well padded, a bit worn here and there, with a few worrying lumpy bits, corners knocked about a bit.

So how do I drag it from this domestic bliss and transform it into a lean mean walking machine?

There is nothing like a walk. And this body has done nothing like a walk since last May’s Challenge. Well, to be truthful, when I decided that the Big One was ‘on’ I did drag it round the local walk a few times. In the last three months all I have managed to walk is seventy three miles. ‘Seventy Three Miles?’ I hear you say? You might be questioning the seventy three miles in a way as to say – ‘why only seventy three miles? Now that’s what any nice person would have thought. However there are one or two out there whose thoughts went something like ‘Seventy three miles? You know it is seventy three miles? How do you know it is seventy three miles?’

There’s the rub. There are those of us out there who know we have walked seventy three miles in the new boots and those who just don’t care! How can you not care? These uncaring people also do not know where they are in the year. As I write this, this fine evening, I know we are in the darkest 56 days of the year. Doesn’t this matter to you at all??? And when I say the last three months, I mean since 26th August, so not quite three months…

But, back to the point of all this. Seventy three miles might not seem like a lot of training for a one thousand six hundred mile continuous walk, (written like that it sounds so much longer than 1,600 miles) but I reckon for now it isn’t too bad. Okay, there’s work to do. The point is, what I think I need to do is to get the soft tissue and the firmer stuff (bones?) used to the idea of walking with half a house on my back so it is not a huge shock to it all. Racing off like a hare for those three months past would have been like shouting and screaming at the soft bits and might well have frightened the living daylights out of them. Bimbling along like my tortoise has just been having a quiet chat with the softies, encouraging them to come out of their slumber and also to have a word with the hard boys to see if the would like to come along too.

So next month I shall be doing a little bit more. I promise.

OUTDOOR PEOPLE

Wonderful people, outdoor people!

The good men at Osprey (Thanks Rob) have sorted it out and I am so much happier now!

Rob put a call in to Pine Needle Mountaineering, Durango, Colorado and early this evening I had an email and phone call with them and I am delighted to say that a brand new Osprey Atmos (large size) in the grey colourway is now winging its way to our shores! Keith at PNM – Cheers!

It should be here in a week or so (the cheapest way of sending it was chosen) and so my thanks go out to everyone who has helped bring this about – Rob from Osprey, Peter Lumley and Chris Townsend (moral support & badgering) Fishers of Keswick who did a load of work trying to track one down in the UK for me, plus all the good people on Outdoors Magic TGO forum.

So a man in black will finally get his rucksack to match (with the very pretty Sue Ryder Logo that will be affixed to the lid)

If the whole world worked like this, there would be no starving people, no wars no drought no…….etc etc

Wonderful people, outdoor people!

OSPREY UPDATE

I have had a few helpful suggestions where to get my grey Osprey Atmos, but unfortunately they all turned into dead ends. But thank you everyone for trying to help.

Then the nice chap from Osprey, Rob Wiley, emailed me, to assure me that Osprey does not operate a restrictive trade policy on US retailers supplying European customers directly. He kindly offered me a medium in the grey that he does have in stock but unfortunately that will be just too small for me.

He very kindly rang me this evening and I related my tale of woe. He said that he would get in touch with the owner of Pine Needle Mountaineering of Durango, Colorado with a view to me being able to actually buy my pack. So Keith – if you are reading this, be a shiny star and let me buy my pack from you?

In the wings I have Chris Townsend (TGO Ace Gear Tester) all raring to see what he can do, in case this does not work.

Post script: Did I mention my black cloth mini gaiters, my black Marmot windproof knickers, black & grey watch, grey titanium pots & stove, black Downmat 7 Short, Black sleeping bag? Light Blue Tent - Ooo Err!

BOOTS, SHOES, HATS, GLOVES & BAGS and OSPREY

Here is a quick précis of some of the gear chosen.

Boots: Scarpa Nepal (a pretty combination of grey & black)
Camp & Hotel shoes: Innov-8 Mudrocs (a dashing combination of black & grey)
Hat: Lowe Alpine Mountain Cap (in exquisite mid black)
Gloves: Polartec (black)

To go with this ensemble I have a black Paramo Velez jacket, black Polartec Haglof tights, black & grey Icebreaker tops. My PDA is dark grey, My portable keyboard is black, my phone is black. My chargers are black. I like black.

And then the hunt for the rucsac started. I have narrowed it down to an Osprey Atmos (Large). It has a capacity of a tiny 53 litres. This means that I have to take the minimum of gear and have a more comfy 16 weeks.

Now girls, what colour shall I choose? The choice is between a nice grey & red one, and an even more fabulous grey and dark grey one!

So, all I have to do is track down the grey and dark grey one.

There were none in Cambridge. None in the whole of Keswick and I heard from Fisher’s in Keswick today that there were none in England, but I could have a blue one if I waited a bit…

Nothing for it but the internet.

I tracked down Osprey’s website and plucked out an American dealer, who had one in stock, and so I placed an order with them for the exact thing I wanted, only to get an email back saying that I ‘should deal with Snow & Rock’ in England as they were not allowed by Osprey to sell in to the UK.

I reckon this is restraint of trade.

I then tried EVERY website of dealers in the UK shown on Osprey’s website, looking for a grey/ dark grey one. There were none. I have written to Osprey in the UK to ask them what they can do.

I actually want a black one as I am having the pack embroidered with Sue Ryder Care’s Logo (see it at the top of this blog) and I don’t want it being messed up with a red fabric.

I have emailed Osprey asking if they will consider selling me what they make.

So far, I am singularly unimpressed with the whole affair.

IN AND OUT OF SHAPE

Watendlath is a little gem. It seems have been built at the same time as creation itself. Time here isn't measured in hours and days, but in generations. The buildings are part of the geology; the dry-stone walls are home to centuries of lichens.

Saturday morning saw the four of us pulling our boots on in the car park at Watendlath. Unhappily, the tea room seemed to be shut for the winter, and so there was nothing for it but to head up the hill.

The little tarn was steel grey and the wind ripped across its surface scattering spray against the shingle beach. It was bright with an icy wind, and the streams bounced down the fell-side as we splashed across them making our way uphill.

A short while later we regrouped at the last wall and headed off across the open fell, squelching along in the bright silver winter sunshine. The bog water was icy cold and we were always in it over the toes of our boots. To the south, Great Gable was smothered in a dark brown purpled cloud mass and occasionally we saw her through a torn window, plastered in a dusting of snow. To our west, Robinson soared like a knife, black behind the orange ridge.

Our fellside was a riot of colour – the vibrant reds of the marsh grasses, the fluorescent greens of the mosses, the iron greys of the rock outcrops. The sky to the east & north was a chaotic frieze - shafts of sunlight lancing through blue/black towering castles of cloud, sometimes shredded with watery blue tears.

We bounced up towards the ridge line and fence and there, spread out across our world, was the ghostly bulk of the Helvellyn chain. We sat in the snow eating our packed lunches as another wall of soft hail swept over us, the paper lunch bags slowly disintegrating in the snow on our laps.

Packing up quickly, we turned and faced the wall of hail and headed off back down a greasy path, back down to cosy little Watendlath, our fingers aching with the cold in our sopping gloves, our faces grit-blasted.

Sitting in the pub that afternoon, it all made total sense to each of us. The exhilaration, the colours and smells of the moorland, the drama of the skies and the magical qualities of landscape constantly changing in a wild Cumbrian day. This was real life. No matter how out of shape we are, with just a little effort, everything fits.

CRUSHED NUTS SIR?

This last week has been an uncomfortable one. It started with a wonderful Saturday evening with two great friends round for dinner. Lynnie excelled in the kitchen so we enjoyed great food and fine wines!

Leaning back in the comfy chairs afterwards we started going through the Malts and sampled fine ‘Rasta’ malts and a nice old Ardbeg or few.

At two in the morning, Beryl was fast asleep, Lynnie had gone to bed and it was time for the guests to go! Great hugs and kisses on the doorstep with Beryl and a great bear-hug with Lager - a great bear of a man!

Next morning I had a rare stuffy head and the usual gouty ache all over, so I took a lunchtime stroll round my local stomp – the Hemingford Round to clear my head and loosen up the joints.

But on Monday morning I was still feeling rough and still slightly sore. ‘Must have given the kidneys a proper hammering’ I thought.

Tuesday was no better.

By Wednesday lunchtime I was in real pain – so I took a trip to the Docs who got me into A&E straight away. By 6:00pm I was strapped in to an ECG machine, bloods taken, blood pressure, pulse rate all monitored and then down to have a chest X-Ray. I had been prodded and poked by two very nice young ladies and a large Doctor.

‘Nothing broken – a crushing injury. Don’t go cuddling big bears again’ Take these pills for a few days.

I was back home by 10:00pm still massively sore but drugged up to the eye-balls. Our NHS is quite wonderful. Today has been all nice and warm, sitting at home plotting my route.

I think I am in need of a bit of fresh air again, so I am off to the Lakes for the Over the Hill Club AGM with Phil. Treat me gently boys! I am fragile.

ROUTE PLANNING

There are currently three hundred walkers poring over their maps trying to trace a golden thread across the highlands of Scotland. They are all planning their routes for their two week holiday on the Rab TGO Challenge 2007.

All over the world, maps are strewn over sitting room floors; all the edges folded back to try to make the maps as seamless as possible, just so the plotter can take in the sheer size of the country in one hit. One of the hardest parts of the planning is just choosing the approximate line of the walk so that the detailed planning can begin.

There must be three hundred different ways of doing this each year, but eventually, after weeks of effort, three hundred walkers arrive at their final golden lines.

That’s for a walk of about 200 miles.

Okay, so I am getting a bit quicker these days laying out the route for the Challenge, but this LEJOG route is some 1600 miles long. Now, of course it isn’t eight times as difficult planning it, as I have chosen to incorporate some National Trails into it – the Offa’s Dyke Path and the Pennine Way. This has taken a lot of the difficulty out of lining the rough route in, as I have to start at Land’s End, have to cross the Severn Bridge, and have to get from Prestatyn at the top end of Offa’s Dyke over to Edale at the bottom of the Pennine Way, etc. So I only have to choose the route within those parameters.

I have also elected to make a few personal choices that affect route planning too:
No ferries
No transport of any kind between Land’s End and John O’Groats – that means no lifts at the end of a day to deliver me to a friend’s house and subsequent delivery to my pick up point in the morning. (I do not want the rhythm of the walk affected by high speed transport)

So, the route has to be plotted (I am using Anquet’s 1/50,000 electronic maps on my computer) so that the walk can be broken down into daily chunks and a programme arrived at, which allows for a day off a week.

It is only when I have been plotting it all on screen that it dawned on me just how big this walk actually is. – Yes I know it is four months. I know it is just over 1600 miles. But you only realise how big it is when you plot the thing onto the electronic map. It is a whopper! It is taking an age to just plot it!

One of the well used routes for a LEJOG has been devised by a chap called Andrew McCloy. His route is 1,147 miles long. Mark Moxon describes the length of the walk quite succinctly : 'Take an empty pint bottle, and add one-and-a-half teaspoons of water to the bottle each day; when the bottle is full, then that's how long it takes to walk from Land's End to John O'Groats.'

By that reckoning, my walk will be about one teaspoonful of water a day.

TROUBLES IN GLEN GAELOCHT

Happily wandering through Glen Gaelocht one sunny morning, the hobbit Low Handley was sitting on a rock, wondering which way to go.

‘I know!’ thought Low Handley to himself, 'I will ask those jolly nice people of Glen Gaelocht. They helped me last year when I needed it’

So off he toddled in his nice new plimpsoles (very comfy for the little hobbit) and announced to the happy villagers that he was temporarily mislaid and that the batteries in his GPS had all run out, and that his paper maps had got all soggy when he was re-hydrating his porrage that morning.

Unluckily for little Low Handley, the big bad Baron, Baron Keel deMersy was in town that day and he started to tease the poor little hobbit. He tweaked his poor little hobbit nose this way and that, and the little hobbit started to squeak with alarm!

Then things got worse for the little hobbit. The Baron’s henchman, the Legendary Sven Testaruth stepped in and smote the poor little hobbit a nasty blow!

Fortunately for the little hobbit, a Good Samaritan was strolling past and he saw all this commotion. Now the Samaritan was not of the Baron’s world or even of the mighty Sven's! He was a New Man – a walker, well versed in the dark ways of T’internet, wit & sarcasm. He fought a fierce battle with the Baron and little Low Handy hopped off smartish while the going was good, bloodied, but unbowed…

The wicked Baron slunk back to his castle and plotted his wicked revenge! He sent a message to The High Sherriff of Glen Gaelocht, the wise old Grim Hoster.

Now, Grim had many winters beneath his fine grey beard. He was wise and wonderful and had lived in Glen Galeocht since time began. “The time for teasing little hobbits is over!” he announced and Glen Gaelocht rejoiced, and slipped back into the Shangri-La of past-times.

But wicked, wicked Baron Keel deMersy held council with all the Lieutenants of Glen Gaelocht, and he sent burning flashes of fire crashing down into the peaceful Glen, which scorched the good earth wherever they landed. Villagers dived for cover as the fireballs smashed this way & that. The Glen was in turmoil! Castles crumbled to their foundations and the once happy valley was left smouldering under his wrath.

Mercifully, our little hobbit had scampered off in his plimpsoles and the Baron was left standing there, omnipotent, all alone in his ruined castle.

MARK MOXON

When I was doing preliminary research on LEJOG, by typing in a few magic words on Google I was repeatedly referred to one chap's website - Mark Moxon, Travel Writer.

I have never, ever found a more complete resource on LEJOG as this website. It has been a colossal help to me. Mark covers the walk he completed day by day, with photographs and helpful information for future Lejoggers. He lists absolutely everything a Lejogger could possibly want to know, in an informative and witty style. The website is also a technical tour de force - Mark is an absolute techie genius.

However, for those wanting to explore further than the shores of our own Kingdom, Mark is also an incredible resource. He has travelled all over the world and you can download his own eBooks at no charge!

If you have a question you want to put to him, he has a guestbook where you can drop him a line and unfailingly, he will get back to you with friendly, helpful advice.

In short, the guy is a National Treasure.

You can find Mark's website by clicking on this link: http://www.landsendjohnogroats.info/

I find myself visiting and revisiting his amazing site as my planning progresses. Anyone planning a similar venture will find likewise. Go and visit his site - Enjoy!

FEEDING THE BELLY

There was a wonderful advert on the TV a year or so back (Reebok, I think) of a huge, grey belly chasing a chap all over the city, with a great voice-over of 'Belly's going to get you, belly's going to get you.' That advert has stuck in my mind.

I have spent six months earlier this year working largely away from home down in the Thames Valley. This meant living in hotels and eating in hotel dining rooms. After a short while we settled on one particular hotel, principally because their menu & wine list was quite excellent given the limit we had set ourselves on cost per night.

I blame that excellent establishment for the present state of my belly. It has ballooned to an incredible size, and is a wonderful shade of pale grey. Urgh! My normal target weight for the start of the TGO Challenge is 11stone 11 lbs. This means that I have to lose 10 lbs of belly fat between now and the beginning of March. What is the point of buying all this lightweight expensive gear if I have the equivalent of 5 bags of sugar strapped to my waist? To add to this woe, Christmas is coming, with loads more wine and puddings and rich gravies and ooooh, I love Christmas. My wife is an excellent cook and we are at home for Christmas with a houseful of family, so I just know the temptations will overcome me. The crash-diet will have to start in January.

Once on the walk, keeping the weight down will not be a problem at all - I usually lose a couple of pounds a week when walking - worrying really, if I am walking for sixteen weeks!

So - it will be important to get the calories in whilst on the walk. I am a keen proponent of dehydrating my meals - I have been doing this (or more accurately, Lynnie has been doing this) for the last nine years, but the idea of asking Lynnie to cook & prepare some sixty or seventy evening meals and posting them off to me at various locations spread over the length of the nation does not appeal!

This means that I am going to be quite reliant on pub grub and the occasional hotel restaurant, as well as preparing my meals with ingredients bought en-route.

So - it will be one pot cooking - all in my Titanium kettle. I shall have to cut out some recipes from her cookery book library to ensure I have a healthy varied diet.

(I wonder if Gordon Ramsey and Raymond Blanc cover one pot cooking?) I am off to Richard Corrigan's restaurant in Soho in December - I will ask him for some advice.

ENROUTE BLOGGING

As you know I am taking with me a lightweight computer with all the necessary bits & pieces to blog on the walk. The equipment list I need to do this is set out below:

Palm PDA with 2Gb expansion card in aluminium case.

Palm Wireless Folding keyboard (2 x AAA battery powered)

Palm Charger

Palm Sync cable in case I need to download it on to a PC enroute.

Mobile phone (for when no WiFi connection)

Mobile phone charger

The Palm keyboard is a little miracle of engineering, and looks like this, folded out:

Folded up, it looks like this:

The PDA (Palm TX) sits on it like this:

Another view:
All folded up it looks like this together:

The PDA needs to go in an aluminium case for protection, so the bundle looks like this!

The whole shaboodle together with it's charger and sync cable along with my phone & its charger looks like this!

The all up weight of that lot all together is 795 grams or 1 lb 12 ozs in real money.

Not too bad at all! So with a bit of luck I will be able to blog away most evenings where there is WiFi or a mobile phone signal.

NOTHING NEW...

Single skin tents and going lightweight...There's nothing new you know!

In 1976 Bob Butler & I were on the Pennine Way. We shared a 'Good Companions' 'A' tent, no flysheet. 3/4 length Karrimats each (I still use a remnant of that same mat as my sit-mat.)

Bob used a Karrimor rucksack with an external frame (A 'Totem Pac Senior,' I seem to recall - Isn't it weird that I can remember that, yet yesterday is a struggle!). I used a padded frameless sack with no hip belt as it only weighted about 18 lbs. I think fleece and Gore-tex either hadn't yet been invented or they were out of our price league, so it was woolly jumpers and cotton anoraks and a nylon cagoule for the bad weather. Over trousers were proofed nylon. 'Stop Touts' shortie gaiters.

In my hand I had a cut-up map in a polythene bag.

The archive pictures are care of Bob, who I have walked with on and off for about 35 years now.

In defence of modern gear, we arrived at Hawes Youth Hostel with all our kit completely saturated as we endured solid rain for about five days in succession. But we were happy!

MAPPING SOFTWARE, GENERAL PLANNING

The 1:50,000 mapping arrived at the weekend from Anquet (bought from Mapkiosk at a very reasonable £125) for the whole of Great Britain. I already had an earlier version of their software covering 'Great Britain North' but this was useless without the southern bit. The new version of southern Britain is not compatible with the old northern software, and so I had to bite the bullet & buy the whole thing new.

Last night's job was installing it on the laptop - it took me ages and I lost all my old routes on the old version, which was a bit of a pig!

Anyway, I am now having to learn how to use the new stuff - not so wildly different, but it is tripping me up a bit. This at least will give me enough information to plan the walk, and break it down into daily chunks. This way I can estimate when I will be where, as I have made a few commitments to various people who wish to walk with me over a day or so.

Of course this is also vitally important as I also need to tie this walk into my taking part in the Rab TGO Challenge 2007, which is starting on the West Coast of Scotland on Friday 11th May. All my planning centres on this date! Usually LEJOG walkers start in the balmier days of late April or May in Cornwall, but the TGO Challenge demands that I start at the beginning of March, when it will be colder, darker and windier!

I shall be printing all my routes out onto A4 colour laserjet printed bits of paper, so I shall need to carry something like 100 bits of paper with me over the durationof the walk, printing on both sides of the page! However, that's not the end of it - for some sections, notably the bits in Southern England (up to the Pennine Way) and then through the central belt of Scotland, I am going to need mapping at 1:25,000 otherwise I can see myself getting wonderfully lost! This is because the majority of my walk will be on footpaths and bridleways and I need to be able to see the field boundaries, which are not shown on 1:50's. In hill country it is far easier to see where you are supposed to be, so the 1:50's are fine for that.

Looking at the cost of these larger scale maps it appears that there is no way I can afford the electronic versions - so it looks like I will be buying paper maps and cutting them up - rather than carrying all the bits I don't need. If I do walk off the side of these strip-maps I can then always fall back onto my 1:50's print-outs.

If anyone has the ear of anyone at Anquet, see if you can twist their arm and get me a loan set of their 1:25's? That would be a wonderful bonus as it going to break my heart having to cut up maps! I adore maps - I read them like books and to cut them up seems sacrilegious- but there is no way I can carry tons of paper with me on such a long haul.

RAB TGO CHALLENGE 2007

As I have mentioned earlier, I am incorporating the Rab TGO Challenge 2007 into my LEJOG. This event is always over-subscribed and a draw is made for places.

The envelopes for the RAB TGO Challenge 2007 have now been opened, and 300 lucky devils received plumptious missives through the post and are now whooping with joy. They are safely in. (Me too. Yippee!) Spare a thought though, for those 70 lost souls who received the dreaded thin envelope - Rejected... Despair sets in fast - but they are now on the standby list and there is always a very real chance of getting back in as long as they are prepared to wait until the bitter end.

TGO2006 was just such a case for Phil & I.

We will all keep our fingers crossed for you. In the mean-time - here are some pictures of this year's walk.

Phil dropping off Muckle Cairn

Corrour Bothy beneath Devils Point

Garbh Coire


Phil climbing into Coire Dhondail, TGO Challenge 2006

Glen Einich, TGO Challenge 2006

Looking south down into Glen Elchaig, TGO Challenge 2006

Trial posting using Picasa 2 (Trying an easier way to get pictures onto the blog) TGO Challenge 2006

BINGE WALKING

The start of 1993: Not a great new year for me. Going for a medical in aid of higher life insurance, I was told I had suicidally high blood pressure and gout. At the time I was 37 years old, was running sixty miles a week and only just holding down a pretty stressful job.

So at least losing my job a few months later was one less thing to worry about...

I needed to get away for a while. I went out the next day, and bought Roger Smith's guide to the West Highland Way. Two days later I was at Milngavie and setting off in the evening on my own little bit of personal therapy.

It was pretty horrible weather and the gear was heavy. But it was like heaven to put Cambridge behind me and just put one foot in front of the other and slowly work my way north, slowly jettisoning the misery of the last few months.

Lots of hardened, rufty-tufty walkers turn their noses up at the waymarked national trails, but for me it was a wonderful way back into walking again. I met quite a few characters on the walk but none stuck in my mind more than a chap I met at the foot of the Devil's Staircase.

I was feeling a bit groggy after a particularly good night aggravating the gout in the back bar at the Kingshouse Hotel on Rannoch Moor. As usual it was cold and raining hard.

Parked just below the start of the staircase was a camper van. A cheery voice from within hailed me: 'Are you on the walk?' I clambered in, and was offered hot soup by this charming gentleman. He asked me where I had started from - seemed an odd question - Milngavie - I replied. He looked puzzled. 'Not on the Challenge, then?'

I had never heard of the Great Outdoors Magazine, let alone the Challenge, but Derek certainly had. He had completed TEN of them - and this was his compulsory year off. Not wishing to miss his annual fix he was travelling around the Highlands offering soup and succour to floundering Challengers. A true hero.

When I got back from Scotland to Cambridge I started taking the magazine.

I was hooked. From 1995 I have walked across Scotland every year on the Challenge. This might seem obsessive, but it does get to you. A chap only gets so much holiday a year and to take half of it not with his wife might seem odd to those not connected with this walk. What makes it worse is that it always clashes with my wife's birthday. One year I did actually manage to persuade Lynnie to come with me - with my friend Phil and his wife Tini - We all got across with not a single blister between us. As the girls walked into the sea at St Cyrus, they burst into tears. Now at least, they understood how it feels every year - so every year Phil & I get our passes to two weeks of Binge Walking.

I say 'Binge' because there is no way I would get away more often - so that is it for the year, apart from the Sunday afternoon pub walks in Suffolk from October, when the application form for the Challenge goes in, to April to try & ease the flabby bodies back into something like shape.

It takes the first week of the walk to get back to walking fitness and then it's almost over!

So - At least with a four month walk I might have fifteen weeks to enjoy it to the maximum. That's if I am not crippled by the effort!

On the two week TGO Challenge I always plan to have a day off halfway through the walk, to recharge the batteries, have a bit of a social (usually in the Fife Arms, Braemar) and to scrub myself clean in as many baths as possible.

Over the last few months, I have been trawling my way through as many Lejog accounts as possible - What strikes me is that the successful Groatsers (Ali Ashton's wonderful expression) all take regular days off to pamper themselves. After all - this will be 16 weeks of my life - 16 weeks of hard earned holiday and I want to enjoy it! So I shall have 16 or so days off, lying in my bed dozing, getting up to wash the smalls and just generally having a holiday.

I am looking forward to them already!