The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Wednesday 26 March 2014

How Much?

Whilst playing with the StoCAN* itinerararararary spread-sheet last night, I did a quick tot up of how much I thought the accommodation bill (be it campsites or B&Bs) was going to be. The number up with which I came struck me as being higher than I would have expected, particularly bearing in mind how many nights I have us pencilled in for free camping.

So, instead of doing something fruitful and useful with the next hour (like sewing a foot-box into the quilt), I trawled back through my cost records for all of our UK walks of 10 days or longer (except for the English C2C, for which I haven’t got records to hand) and did a few sums. The walks in question are:

  • Land’s End to John o’Groats – 2008 (12 weeks)
  • TGO Challenge – 2009 (2 weeks)
  • Kent to Cape Wrath – 2010 (8 weeks)
  • East to West – 2011 (6 weeks)
  • TGO Challenge – 2011 (2 weeks)
  • Length of Wales – 2012 (2 weeks)
  • TGO Challenge – 2012 (2 weeks)
  • TGO Challenge – 2013 (2 weeks)

For each of those walks, I looked at both the overall average cost per day (i.e. all costs for the entire trip, divided by the number of walking days in the trip) and the average cost of accommodation per day. The overall average misses out a few things, such as the home dehydrated meals, but should be fairly accurate. The accommodation costs should be entirely accurate.

This is the graph which resulted:

image

All of those numbers are for the two of us, not per person

I’m not sure what conclusions I draw from the result (other than that the TGO Challenge tends to be an expensive affair for us), but thought I’d share the information anyway. It should go without saying that it would be perfectly possible to do those trips with a lower budget – and it would also be very easy indeed to spend much more.

 

(* StoCAN = Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut Walk)

7 comments:

  1. An interesting analysis. I've realised for some time that the Challenge can be an expensive do, perhaps because of an unusually high frequency of eating out and booking in to the odd B&B / hotel.
    My cheapest trip was a section of the SUW where my only extravagance was a pie and a pint at St Mary's Loch!
    JJ

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    Replies
    1. You've hit the nail on the head. We spent an outrageous amount on eating out last year and there really was no good reason for having five beds in two weeks.

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  2. Do these figures take into account annual inflation?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No adjustment has been made for inflation. But, now that you say that my mind has gone off on another bit of analysis I could do...

      ... must resist. There's a job list to be completed before next Monday!

      Delete
    2. Oh....
      Go on...
      You know you want to. You won't be able to stop yourself now it's niggling away at you. :-)

      Delete
  3. Um, in the list at the top, you appear to do two weeks on TGOC 2012 twice...
    (Sorry ;-))

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did spot that but didn't have an internet device with a keyboard to hand at the time. All corrected now.

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