Eleven

Time marches on.

A few days back the blog passed its eleventh birthday.

TGO Challenge 2016: Dornie to Lunan Bay: Home Page

A HUGE PLACE: CLICK TO ENLARGE

This post pulls together all the blog posts for Phil's and my 2016 TGO Challenge, from sending off the application form, training walks for a modicum of fitness (a hopeless cause) and designing our route to the walk itself.

You can click on each post (it’s in chronological order) and the blog post will open in a new window.

PREPARING FOR THE TGO CHALLENGE:

• We're successful in the draw           A walk in the woods
• What to wear?                                 Valentines Day Daunder
• A local leg-stretch                           The Fat Lady Sings
• A Dartmoor stroll, Part 1                  Panthers, Bears & Moor Part I
• A Dartmoor stroll, Part II                  Panthers, Bears & Moor, Part II
• A Dartmoor stroll, Part III                 Panthers, Bears & Moor, Part III
• A Dartmoor stroll, Part IV                 Panthers, Bears & Moor, Part IV
• Our Challenge Route Sheet            Route: Dornie to Lunan Bay
• The PreWalkDaunder crew             2016 PreWalkDaunder Mugshots
• The PreWalkDaunder. Part I            PreWalkDaunder: Part I
• The PreWalkDaunder. Part II           PreWalkDaunder: Part II
• The PreWalkDaunder. Part III          PreWalkDaunder: Part III

THE TGO CHALLENGE BLOG POSTS:

• The Journey to Scotland         TGO Challenge 2016. Part I: Transitioning
• Day 1                                      TGO Challenge 2016: Day 1: A perfect route?
• Day 2                                      TGO Challenge 2016: Day 2: Gaorsaic, Gniomaidh & Affric
• Day 3 & Day 4                        TGOC 2016, Days 3&4: Loch Affric to Drumnadrochit
• Day 5 & Day 6                        TGOC 2016, Days 5&6: Loch Ness & The Monadh Liath
• Day 7, Day 8, & Day 9            TGOC 2-16, Days 7, 8 & 9: Kingussie to Braemar
• Day 10                                    TGOC 2016, Day 10: Braemar to Lochallater Lodge
• Day 11 & Day 12                     TGOC 2016, Days 11 & 12: Loch Callater to Waterhead
• Day 13 & Day 14                     TGOC 2016, Days 13 & 14: Waterhead to Lunan Bay
• The Challenge Dinner             TGO Challenge 2016: The Park Hotel Challenge Dinner

I’ve had fun putting this together. I hope you enjoy it as well.

NOTE: If you are thinking of applying for the Challenge for the first time and would like to know a little more about it, or have anything you would like to ask, please feel free to get in touch. You can get hold of me by using the Contact Form at the bottom of this blog's right hand column.

Postscript: This blogpost marks the tenth anniversary of this blog. And it only seems like a lifetime.

Happy Birthday, Blog

CLICK TO ENLARGE & SHARPEN. GOOGLE ANALYTICS  STARTS AT JULY 2007 - A YEAR AFTER THE START OF THE BLOG

• Nine years old today. Born 17th October 2006
• 1,099 blog posts
• 11,132 comments made by the congregation (and my replies).
• Most read post? Not a gear post. TGO Challenger 2013 Home page with 10,842 hits
• According to Blogger (bottom RHS of the blog) 767,732 page views since just July 2010 .

The blog's been a bit quieter since my kidney transplant (June 2013) but it's still a bit of fun that I enjoy immensely. The main reason for this is down to you, the reader, for joining in with your comments. You'll see from the bottom chart that two thirds of the readers are repeat offenders and the remaining third are new to the blog, obviously arriving here and disappearing fast, realising their ghastly mistake.

Happy Birthday, Blog

 

 

• Eight years old today. Born 17th October 2006
• One thousand and sixty one blog posts
• Ten thousand, one hundred and twenty one comments.
• Most read post? No, not a gear post. TGO Challenger 2013 Home page with 10,714 hits
• According to sitemeter.com, there has been 322,699 unique visitors to the blog
• and 553,502 page views over the eight years.
• But Blogger Stats puts page views at 605,790 but this doesn’t include the 1st year’s views.
• So, I would guess that page views are averaging about 6,000 – 7,000 per month

It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you for reading and joining in. It’s a blog and I enjoy your contributions.

Now we are six

Indeed. The blog is six years old on the 17th October. Doesn’t time fly?

There appears to be a hard core of members of this particular congregation who I cannot quite shake off. I’ve done my bit to lose you, banging on about wind farms quite a bit recently, but you are very forgiving and keep coming back. It must be the free communion wine and biscuits.

I’ve had Sitemeter track the number of visitors since more or less the start of the blog and this is how you, in the pews at the back, have been idling your time away over the last six years:

 

Of course, there are those in the front pews who will want a little more information, a breakdown of these numbers. Unfortunately, ‘Sitemeter’ isn’t that hot and only stores a year’s worth of stats and so I have had to resort to Google Analytics for the next two graphical representations. However, I only have the last five years of information as Analytics wasn't around for the first year when I started blogging.

So, here’s the weekly graph for the last five years:

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

And here’s the monthly stats for the last five years:

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

And here’s the monthly page views for the last five years:

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

Of course, there are outdoor blogs out there that dwarf this effort; They are gigantic, and quite rightly so as they are full of interesting escapades. However, I like to think of our little gathering as more of a select, hand-picked bunch, who don’t mind the occasional frank exchange, and who don’t mind having their opinions challenged once in a while. I don’t really do “nice” very well.

So, a big ‘thank you’ to the loyal congregation for your last six years of patience with my ramblings.