Stop Press: We Went For A Walk!

After a month of studiously turning my muscles to lard, and with it in the forefront of my mind that it’s just a few weeks until we set off to walk 180 miles across England, I had allocated today as a walking day.

It was a bit short-sighted given that in these parts it is a Bank Holiday weekend. Worse still (in terms of the numbers of people) it was a sunny day. The horrors of sunny-weekend quantities of people put me off a jaunt into the Peaks or the Lakes but being determined to get a bit of fresh air and exercise, we were going to go walking today even if it was a jaunt over the local fields.

In the end, and unsurprisingly, the Chase won as the location and laziness (mental rather than physical) led me not to look at a map but to decide instead that we would just walk one of our ‘training circuits’.

Arriving there the fact that we were one of only three cars in the car park immediately struck us. This was the middle of a sunny Saturday, for goodness sake!

The popularity of the pay-to-park areas has always astounded me, considering the close availability of free parking areas but, even so, I would have expected a good handful of cars there on such a sunny weekend.

The other thing that struck us was the ‘Emergency Path Closure’ sign that told us that a handful of the paths that we had intended to use were the subject of an emergency closure due to the need to spray herbicide to control the bracken.

An emergency need to spray bracken?!

Bracken has a long time been a problem on The Chase. It grows in spring each year and each year spraying attempts to control it. Being such a regular problem, quite how it suddenly became a surprise this year and warranted an emergency closure, I do not know.

Thoughts turned to having to dig out the map and plan a different route, but then I thought to look at the date on the notice and realised that being dated 1 August and with a duration of 21 days, we were okay to proceed.

(I was going to rant about the herbicide spraying activity we found later and one single notice out of many that was dated 22 August, and the possible danger to members of the public due to failure to post proper notices, but it would have been quite a rant, so I'll stick to the subject instead.)

The skies were blue as we set out, the ground was muddy (it’s been a bit wet of late, hasn’t it?)

and surprisingly even the paths within half a mile of each of the parking areas we passed were quiet. Even Stepping Stones, where we stopped for a snackette after positively route marching our way there, was almost devoid of people.

Quiet and pretty - and in the Midlands!

Finally reaching the Visitor Centre, where I was banking on getting a bit of lunch, we found out where the masses were. They weren’t at the seaside as we suspected, but rather flocking to a single half of a square mile area in the vicinity of the building that houses a café and an information room (both of which were pretty empty today, so they didn’t account for all of the people who had opted to pay to park here).

Tea and food revived my flagging energy, but no sooner had I finished chewing my last mouthful than Mick was hustling me out of the door.

Unexpected and unwelcome visitors in the Ladies (note: when deciding to take a photo when enclosed in a toilet cubicle of busy toilet facilities, turning the flash off will reduce enquiring looks from others when you emerge)

Within thirty paces from the Visitor Centre we passed through a fence, and suddenly we were back by ourselves. It was spooky how it was like Newquay beach in summer on one side, and yet no-one had strayed to the other side.

Onwards we went, under now very cloudy skies, until a short time later we took a left.

Five minutes later I decided that it wasn’t the left that I’d intended to take, but another couple of turns rectified that and before we knew it we were paddling through another ford (opting not to wait for the stepping stones to be vacated by a family who seemed to be having lots of fun using them). Minutes later we were passing the fishing pools, which weren’t being shown to their best advantage today.

A picture taken on a different day (in a different year) showed one of these pools at its best

Mick then decided to put on an even faster sprint than he’d been keeping up thus far. My legs refused to follow suit, although a certain stubbornness did see me keep up as we made our way up the final hill of the walk.

A near killer dog incident (i.e. we passed a dog that looked like it should have been a killer but turned out to be innocuous) saw us into the home straight and just over four hours after we set out, we were back at the car.

We had covered 11.5 miles and stopped for more food than was reasonable for the distance, but most importantly we had had a good walk on a lovely day.

LEJOG: THAT house

Back in January, Alan Sloman, trawling through his LEJOG photos, noticed that one of his bore a remarkable similarity to pictures he’d seen on the LEJOG websites of both Mark Moxon* and Dave Greenwood**.

You’ll find the three photos here, and if you were to read the comments you’ll even see that Alan gave a big clue as to the whereabouts of this house when he gave a grid reference.

I didn’t read the comments at the time and thus when we set out from Land’s End I just had the vague thought that I hoped that our route would take us past this house and that if it did I would recognise it, like it and thus take my own photo.

It was on Day 12 (by which time I was thinking that we weren’t going to pass it), just after we had enjoyed our shoe-off break on the lovely green in the lovely village of Thorverton, that we passed over the brow of a hill and I made the exclamation of ‘It’s that house; even the car is beside it!’.

And so here is my photo to join the collection that Alan put together:


It really is a very pleasing view, isn’t it?

Whether I would have thought to have captured the scene in the absence of Alan’s blog post, I do not know. I’d like to think that I would have, as the views from that section of the Exe Valley Way are stunning in the sunshine so the camera was in great use that day.

(*Mark's ebook, 'When I Walk I Bounce' is well worth a read, if LEJOG walking interests you.
**I followed 'Imsodave' as he walked it and sat in awe at the mileages he was going - particularly given the time of year - I really must read his account again)

LEJOG: The Songs

I’m sure that it’s quite normal when out walking, pack on your back, to have a song going in your head.

Whilst having a such a song is pleasantly diverting when you’re walking along (particularly the dull flat sections), the nightmare scenario is getting a song trapped in your head that just won’t go away. It’s there first thing in the morning, it’s there as you’re doing the camp chores, it’s there when you’re packing away, it’s there when you’re walking; worse, it may even be there when you’re asleep, ready to jump at you if you wake up for a micro-second in the night.

And to make matters even worse, some of the songs we had cerebrally stuck were dreadful (although perhaps not as bad as my all-time worst experience of walking for three days in the Lakes with the Sheila’s Wheels ad in my head)!

Mick was mainly to blame for the song choice. Once he was fed up with a tune, he’d sing it to me until finally I became infected with it ( I did get him back with the Kellerman’s End of Season song, which was one of the most annoying of the trip).

Just for a giggle, here’s a selection of the songs that we sang. Make of it what you will, but don’t ponder too much on what it may say about us!

Two Little Boys (sung in full at least once per day; we also had a bit of a Rolf day involving Jake the Peg, Tie Me Kangaroo and Court of King Caractacus)

Monday I Touched Her on the Ankle

Diddly diddly diddly diddly dah di dah di dah

Monty Python Theme

My Packs Too Heavy, My Boots Too Tight, My tits are swinging…

Lloyd George Knew My Father (entirely the fault of a chap we met just north of Hadrian's Wall; as we walked away he suggested that it was a good walking tune and we were immediately plagued by it for days)

Robbie/Elvis Confusion (Monday morning when I wake up I look like kiss but without the make up … in the ghetto, in the ghetto (that one was entirely me and I don't know how it came about))

Little White Bull

My Grandfather’s Clock (right up there in the top three annoying songs)

German Marching Band Tune

Make It Through The Night (often in Elvis Style-ee)

Any Dream (if only we knew more than two lines…)

Truly Scrumptious (likewise)

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria (likewise; must brush up on songs from the musicals before the next big walk)

All I Want Is A Room Somewhere

I Don’t Want to Join the Army

Leaving Kytak and Aint Coming Back

Oh Sir Jasper!

Show Me The Way To Go Home (Indicate the Way to my Abode!)

Kellerman’s End of Season Song from Dirty Dancing (the one they all sing on stage at the end of the film, not ‘I’ve Had The Time of My Life’, which would have been far less annoying)

Vindaloo


And my all time favourite song-related moment, which really did make me laugh, was when we ended a day and Mick moaned that he’d had a particular song plaguing him all day. When Santa Got Stuck Up The Chimney was the entirely seasonally-inappropriate culprit. Try as he might, he didn’t manage to pass that one on to me.

Plans and Tickets

So far this year I have walked just shy of 1500 miles, which has been spread out over the months as shown in the graph above.

There’s something quite obviously missing: there are no miles in August.

With my time being spent plumbing, plastering, painting and cursing, I’ve not managed to get myself out for any fresh air and exercise. My shoulders have forgotten what it is to wear a backpack and those finely honed muscles that I build up during April through July have turned back to lard.

If I can’t get out for a walk, then I thought that I should at least make myself feel better by making arrangements for the next couple of walks.

Making myself feel better involved the hugely stressful activity of trying to find cheap tickets on thetrainline (why, oh why can they not make it easier?). With many hours lost in the activity (and a few glitches like when thetrainline decided that I really wanted tickets on the 11.21 train, not the 9.21 – I kept going back and reselecting the earlier train, but it was quite adamant that I wanted the later one; grrr – good job I was paying attention because I’m sure they would have insisted it was my error had I not noticed until later) I finally have tickets.

Mid-September will see us travelling up to St. Bees (£13.50 each) and the following day we will start ambling across the country. Our itinerary involves 12 days of walking, but with there being no cheap train tickets available on the 13th day, we’ve decided that we’ll fritter away a day somewhere, returning home two weeks after we left (£14.50 each).

We’ll then relax, eat bad food and once again lose some of that hard-won muscle until the middle of October, when we’ll head up to Milngavie (£19 each) to start the West Highland Way. All being well we’ll arrive in Fort William a week later, but we’ve allowed ourselves another three days up there before making the (extraordinarily long and winding) journey home (the £24 each price tag seeming pretty good value for such a long journey).

Being on such a roll with sorting out tickets, I then bought plane tickets to get us to Tenerife in November. That doesn’t really warrant a mention on here though. An ascent of Teide won’t feature. That will be the holiday during which I sit in a chair with a book in my hand.

Over A Month Too Late

For most of the three-month duration of our walk, lunch usually involved either cheese or fish. Edam, in particular, proved to be well suited to backpacking – keeping well without getting sweaty or making my pack smell like old socks.

It didn’t take many days of cheese/bread or cheese/crackers for me to observe that every shop that sells cheese should also be obligated to sell individual servings of pickle. Every now and then we managed to purloin a blister pack of marmite to spice things up and many times we obtained sachets of brown sauce which, although not ideal, did the job acceptably. But it was pickle after which we really hankered, yet it only seemed to be available in family sized quantities in glass jars – far too heavy for our purposes.

I’m almost ashamed to say that in one moment of desperation for something other than plain cheese, I was so wasteful as to buy an entire jar (in the general store in Cannich, I seem to recall) just to make one set of sandwiches and throw the rest away.

In all my rants about how cheese vendors should sell blister packs of Branston (and most people to whom I directed this rant agreed with me, but maybe they were just a bit scared by some mad woman ranting about pickle), I didn’t really think that such a thing existed.

It’s now over a month after the event, but there I was browsing a supermarket today (and buying lots of interesting cheeses from the cheese counter – the time lapse has meant that I can face cheese at lunchtime again now) when what should I find but mini-jars of pickle.

Not entirely ideal, being in glass jars (in the manner of jams on hotel breakfast tables), but wouldn’t it be nice (grasping at straws in a blindly hopeful sort of way) if all of the little shops caught on to the idea?

The LEJOG Awards

In the last few days of our LEJOG jaunt* we amused ourselves for a couple of evenings playing ‘best XXX’ and ‘worst XXX’.

The result was the LEJOG Awards. Our votes were as follows:

Best campsite
(taking into account value for money, location and facilities):
Me: Cheddar Bridge (£7 for two per night, excellent facilities, well kept and with a river right by the pitch)
Mick: Hadrian’s Wall C&CC (close to best facilities of any campsite, good location, cheap breakfast, good layout; lost out for me due to the poor state of the grass (or lack thereof))

Best value campsite
Central Caravans, Watten (£5 for two, including use of the washing machine and kettle)

Worst Campsite
(value for money doesn’t come into this category; this is purely those that we disliked):
Tanpits Cider Farm just outside Taunton (cheapest campsite we stayed on, but horribly unclean facilities amongst other complaints);
tied with:
Tyne Willows Caravan Park in Alston (expensive, dreadful facilities and entered via a scrapyard, to name a few complaints).

Worst Value Campsite
Border Forest Caravan Park, Byrness (£14 and not even any soap or hand drying facilities – and it was the midgiest experience of the whole trip!);
tied with
Tyne Willows, Alston (£10, with hideously bad facilities)

Best Wildcamp
The other side of the river from Culra Lodge. Magical place to wake up. See the second photo here.

Worst Wildcamp
None was bad, but on a comparative basis, the one by Broomy Law had nothing to recommend it and the one after Cauldstane Slap was blighted by midges.

Best Bothy Night
Loch Choire (okay, it really was an unfair category as we only had one Bothy Night, but it was good enough to warrant an award)

Best View
Coming upon Loch Ericht. See first photo here.

Best non-camping accommodation
Warren’s Farm, Yeoford

(A handful of others deserved commendations too - like Weavers at Trevescan, Hafren House in Welshpool, Kinrara at Whaley Bridge and Allanfauld Farm at Kilsyth)

Best Value non-camping accommodation:
Warren’s Farm, Yeoford
(Highly commended: Allanfauld Farm, Kilsyth)

Worst non-camping accommodation
The White Lion at Weston
(a very shoddy, very dated room, at an above-budget price, took an age to track down a member of staff to check us in and it was the only place that agreed to an early breakfast and then served us only cereal and toast).

Worst value non-camping accommodation
Oykel Bridge Hotel (in close contest with Langdon Beck YHA)

Best Meal
Cross Keys, Kippen. Really, if you’re in the area, go and try it (highly commended: Kinlochewe Hotel and G&A, Melrose)

Worst Meal
The extreme error of smooth oatcakes and peanut butter for three lunches during a string of wild-camps. It makes me shudder just to think of it.

Best Day
Can’t choose. Almost all were good and with all of the different ingredients that made up a good day we couldn’t say that any one good day was better than another.

Worst Day
(a few days had a bad point or two, but this is the one that really stood out in our minds – plus it was the day on which I lost my compass, which of the few things I lost on the way was the most expensive to replace)

Maelor Way.

(*Can you believe it was over a month ago already? Where does the time go?)

Our LEJOG Blog - A More Readable Version

Although the Blog was a great way to share a journal of our LEJOG trip as we went along, it’s not really very friendly for anyone wanting to read about our adventure retrospectively (being in reverse order and hidden amongst my other witterings).

My longer-term intention is to migrate all of the LEJOG stuff to a separate website (but a bit of a learning curve will have to happen first and it’s not top of my list of things to do, so it could take a while).

In the meantime, I thought I’d do something a bit simpler but still more reader-friendly.

So, I’m re-ordering the LEJOG posts into chronological order and putting them into a series of Word documents, which in turn I will put on Google Documents.

I’m not changing any of the content for this version – it’s exactly as I blogged it at the time (although I may throw some photos in, in due course).

Here’s the first two chunks:

Mick & Gayle’s LEJOG Blog – April 2008

Mick & Gayle's LEJOG Blog - May 2008

I’ll put up links to May, June and July when I’ve re-jigged the order, formatted and uploaded them.

The Pocketmail as a Mobile Blogging Device

Peewiglet posted a comment on my original posting about my mobile blogging device, asking whether the Pocketmail worked well for me on our LEJOG trip.

Once again, I found myself writing an essay in response, so I thought that I may as well just expand it and write a little bit of a review:

The bottom line is that for me on this trip, the Pocketmail worked fantastically well. It really did turn out to be my ideal device.

Once I got used to the keyboard (as there are fewer keys than on a standard keyboard many symbols require the use of a ‘2nd’ key) I could type pretty fast on it – even when sitting hunched over in the tent (Mick’s back did come in handy for use as a table when I wanted to use one!).

To send the messages, you pull out a little microphone on the back of the device, hold the whole thing up to a telephone (pretty much any telephone will do), dial the Pocketmail access number (it’s an 0870 number) and press the transmit button. The device then ‘chatters’ away for a minute or two (it feels more like two when you’re sitting there waiting for it to finish, but I’m sure that it wasn’t really quite that long).

What I did find was that I needed at least a constant ‘2 bar’ signal on my mobile for the transmission to work, but if neither Mick nor I had a good enough signal, then a payphone would work (albeit it was more expensive, but don’t get me started on the cost of payphones these days).

Sending the messages didn’t turn out to be as expensive as I thought it may have been. When I took the trouble to find out the cost of the occasional post, it was about 30-40p per post from my mobile (that’s not actually a useful fact is it, as it depends on your tariff and how much you write in your emails; I did waffle a bit).

Even better, the first set of batteries (two AAs) lasted seven weeks (the second set remain unexhausted). The battery life, and the fact that it ran off standard batteries, was one of the most important points for me (along with being touch-typeable), and seven weeks was well beyond my expectations, particularly considering the amount I was using it.

Now the downsides:
I can see that the Pocketmail isn’t a device that would appeal to everyone.

The big limitation, when compared with modern phones, is that it only sends/receives text-only emails (so it’s only good as a blogging device if your blog accepts posts via email). There's no web access, no ability to send photos, no ability to format text and no bells and whistles (of course, if it did have those features then you’d lose on the battery life).

The other problem (for me, with my shallow pockets and tight nature) is that it has a £10-ish/month service charge. For a three month trip, I was more than happy to pay that because I could use it with my existing Pay-As-You-Go mobile and it didn’t require me to change my mobile to a battery-eating one, nor to fork out for a contract phone that I would be stuck with for 12 months or more. However, I won’t be paying out the service charge indefinitely, because I just don’t mobile-blog enough to warrant it.

I will keep the service going for our next couple of trips (C2C in September and WHW in October), then I will terminate it.

For my own mobile-blogging requirements, I would happily re-activate and use the device for future big trips, although I fear that the Pocketmail will be obsolete by the time we next come to do an epic walk, which means that I’ll be seeking a different mobile blogging device. I’m sure that that will be a compromise: I can’t believe that there’s anything else there that is as lightweight, has such good battery power, is touch-typeable and doesn’t require a long contract tie-in.

LEJOG Reflections: Route and Bouncy Shoes

If I was to do it again, what would I do differently? It’s a question that quite a few people have asked.

On the subject of the route, I’m quite definite as to what I would do differently, based on experience.

We used Land’s End as our starting point and John O’Groats as our end point because that’s what people do. It’s the established points that everyone recognises as being a journey through the length of Britain.

Because I also wanted to visit Lizard (and Dunnet) it meant that we headed south from Land’s End and then cut up through the middle of Cornwall and Devon.

The reality of that route was that there was too much walking on tarmac, along little lanes (lovely lanes, admittedly, but they are roads no matter how lovely they are). For a week or so we spent more time than not on tarmac. There just weren’t enough footpaths running north-south in the right areas of those counties.

So, if I was to be planning this walk afresh, I would ignore the conventional LEJOG start and end points – although I would still visit all of the same extreme points. The walk would be from Lizard to John O’Groats via Land’s End and Dunnet. That route would have allowed us to have taken the coast path north and avoided many miles of tarmac. It’s a subtle difference, but it would have made for a happier underfoot experience in Week 2 (although my leg muscles and lungs may not have thanked me for the ascent and descent on that coast path!).

Linked to route, is the subject of shoes. I set out with two different pairs of trail-runners (only because I didn’t have sufficient faith in either pair individually). Until the week before we went I had intended to take one pair of trail-runners and one pair of road-runners. I can’t remember why I changed my mind, but it was a mistake.

If I was to walk the same route again, with all of that tarmac in Cornwall and Devon, then I would most definitely take a pair of road-runners and a pair of trail-runners. The benefit of bounciness underfoot would have made up for the extra weight in the pack for the week or so of roads.

I’m happy to say that beyond the first couple of weeks I was more than happy with the route* (bar that 2km track in Rannoch Forest – but that could be easily have been avoided had we known what we were to be faced with). I was also happy with my boot selection, but that’s a subject for another day and another post.

(*Just to clarify: I wasn’t unhappy with the route in those first couple of weeks; it had an awful lot to recommend it and I’m not sorry that we took that line, even though hindsight tells me that a different way would have been preferable. Another person who doesn’t have such an aversion to tarmac would find it a delight.)

The Next Big Walk?

It’s an easy leap to make.

You’re listening to the Cape Wrath Podcasts and thinking that you’d like to go and walk that walk.

You’re looking at the weather map and focussing on the bottom right and top left hand corners.

Then you make the leap.

Last weekend I got the road atlas out and just to amuse myself for an hour or so I started looking at route possibilities.

At first glance it's looking like this:

- St Margaret’s
- North Downs Way from Dover to Canterbury
- Somehow up to London
- Grand Union Canal-ish route to Brum
- Over to Penkridge on canals
- Staffs Way to Uxbridge
- Somehow over to Peak District
- Combination of Pennine Bridleway and Pennine Way to Horton
- Over to Cumbria
- North through Cumbria to Carlisle
- Somehow up through the Borders and onwards to East of Glasgow
- A route east of the WHW to Fort William
- The Cape Wrath Trail

Don't get excited (or concerned, in the case of my sister). It's not something that we'll be dashing off to do any time soon.

But, maybe one day…

Poorliness and Presents

Summer colds are horrible. It’s just not the right time of year for such poorliness. The cold didn’t know that it was the wrong season, and my goodness, did I feel grotty for the eight days (yes, eight whole days) that it afflicted me.

I’m happy to say that it finally bid a retreat just in time for my birthday. Yes, another year has passed; my age has crept up another notch.

There’s usually a very strong outdoors theme in my birthday wish-list, and this year was no exception. However, whereas usually I use such occasions as an opportunity to get frivolous gear (i.e. stuff that I want but, strictly, don’t need and therefore struggle to justify buying for myself) the only items on my wish-list were books.

So, with my outdoorsy-books obsession fed for a while longer, I now have:

- Two Josie Dew books.
I discovered her by accident last year when Ma-in-Law dragged me into a cheap book shop and even though cycling has never appealed to me as a past time, I’m hooked on her adventures, so I’m now on a mission to read everything she’s written.
- GR5 Guidebook from Cicerone.
I’m trying to work out if I can fit both that and the TGOC into next year whilst also back working full time!.
- North to the Cape Guidebook from Cicerone.
Another one on the to-do list.
- Down Under by Bill Bryson.
The excellent B&B in which we stayed in Welshpool had a copy of this on its bookshelf and I read the first couple of chapters. Reluctantly, I put it back on the shelf before we left; now I can finish it.
- National Trails Book from Cicerone. I bought a copy for a friend last year and had book envy, so put it on my wish-list. Due to a bit of a lack of co-ordination (entirely my fault) I ended up with two copies – one has been returned to Amazon and replaced with:
- Two Chris Townsend Books – The Rockies one and the Alaska one.

I also have a little bit of present-money to fritter away, and can you believe that I can’t think of any outdoor gear that I want to buy with it? So I may just be a bit girly and buy some new earrings instead (after all, since Cannich on our walk I’ve been sharing two earrings between four holes, so it’s about time I replaced those I lost on the way).

The Efficiencies of the Bushbuddy

On my posting below on the subject of LEJOG Cost, Martin asked what appeared to be a simple question about the Bushbuddy.

I found myself writing something of an essay in response, so rather than hiding it in the comments, I thought I'd give it a post of its own:

Q.On fuel you must have saved a bit of money with the bush buddy stove,from burning twigs etc and if so is it worth having on a long trip?

Our theory on using the Bushbuddy, as well as saving on fuel, took into consideration that it would save us from having to carry so much gas (thus saving weight) and from the trouble of resupplying gas so frequently.

Part of our theory worked well. We must have saved fuel. We used 8 x 250 gas canisters in total (actually, we used 9 canisters, but as we threw two of those away when still half full (because we'd received new ones and didn't want the extra weight) for the purposes of fuel efficiency we used 8). We know from past experience that cooking two cups of tea and one evening meal per day each, a 250 canister will last for 5 days. So, theoretically we should have got through 12 cans on this trip (60 camping nights).

However, we also had porridge for breakfast on probably between a third and a half of our camping days - and I'll not bore you with my sums here - but that amounts to an extra canister, and some days we frivilously drank more cups of tea (because with the Bushbuddy we didn't need to conserve fuel), so let's call that 2 canisters.

So, I reckon that we saved 6 cans of gas by using the Bushbuddy. I buy my gas at £2 per 250 can, so that was only a saving of £12 - however, had we bought them as we went along then (aside from the extra effort and miles that would have involved) I expect it would have been around £22.

The bit of the theory that didn't work so well, at least on the second half of the trip, was the weight saving from not carrying so much gas. With the vagaries of the weather (I draw the line at using the BB in wet weather), the knowledge that we would struggle to buy gas as we went and the intervals between resupply, we found ourselves with two canisters most of the time - one full, one in use - which was purely on a 'just in case' basis. With a bit more careful thought on the subject of resupply, we needn't have carried so much gas so much of the time and could have better realised the weight saving.

Because of the weather over the last three weeks, the BB had almost no use towards the end, so I did find myself carrying the extra weight for no good reason, and it's not the sort of item that you can just throw into a jiffy bag to send home. I just had to remind myself, when I heaved my heavy pack with five days food in it onto my back, that we'd had good use from the device earlier in the trip!

At £55 (which I think is what mine cost) you'd struggle to justify it on cost alone unless you were doing lots of long trips, but with the other considerations (plus the fun of having a real fire (not to mention the 'fun' of getting your hands and trousers covered in soot*, if you're as careless as am I), I definitely consider it worthwhile for the meagre 150g weight.

(*Actually, to us the mess generated by the Bushbuddy is the big downside of it. I often got myself filthy using it (my carelessness, rather than it being an inherently messy device) and Mick had the job of trying to scrub the outside of the pots clean, which in turn covered his hands in soot; that soot only comes off the hands using soap and water, which is a bit of a faff when you're out in the wilds.)

LEJOG: Cost

How much does it cost to walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats?

Well that very much depends upon how you go about it and how long you take over it. But, I can now say how much it cost us.

Before we set off I came up with a ‘budget*’ that suggested that it would cost us about £4,250. That allowed us two B&Bs per week, two meals out per week; at all other times the budget assumed that we were on campsites and buying groceries.

The reality was that we stayed in fewer B&Bs than budgeted, but ate out a lot more and drank much more beer than planned (the budget was obviously flawed in the latter respect – this was a holiday after all!). Fortunately the eating and drinking out was outweighed by the generous amount I had allowed on a daily basis for food, even though I had not appreciated before we set off how much we would find ourselves eating, nor how expensive it is to shop on a daily basis in little village stores.

Having gathered up my notebooks and completed another spreadsheet, I can now say that the trip cost £3,450.

Not bad for a three month trip for two people, I’d say!

If you take off the estimated amount that we saved by not being at home (i.e. savings on utilities, running a car, weekly food shopping etc.), then the real cost of the trip reduces to £2,225. A positive bargain for three months of good fun!

A few notes about the calculated cost:
1) It doesn’t take into account the cost of the 100 dehydrated meals that we pre-prepared, because the ingredients either came out of the store cupboard or were bought as part of the weekly groceries and so the cost was not separately identifiable. Looking at some example meals, I reckon the average cost per meal (including the dehydrating process) was between £1 and £1.25 (note that all of my meals were veggie, and dried pulses are very cheap indeed, which is how we achieved a low average cost). Of course, if we hadn’t dehydrated the meals before we went then the cost of food would have been a few hundred pounds higher.

2) It doesn’t take into account the cost of any gear, either bought on the way or beforehand, as I didn’t consider kit to be a cost of this trip specifically. Most kit was pre-existing; the kit we bought for this trip will mainly be good for other trips too.

3) It doesn’t include the cost of posting used maps home (don’t know why I didn’t write that down, but I consistently omitted it)

4) We did get a few beds for free, mainly thanks to friends and family (and thanks to Adrian & Deborah who put us up even though they’d never met us before). Obviously in the absence of such kindness the costs would have been higher.

5) It does include the postage of the re-supply parcels.

6) It does include the cost of gas canisters.

Because I’m quite sad (no, really!), all of the costs were categorised, so I can come up with some facts and figures as to how much was spent on what (although I’ll resist sharing the graphs with you!):

- I budgeted £60 per B&B night; we averaged £59.

- I budgeted £9 per camping night; we averaged £6.50 (helped by 16 nights wild camping, which brought the average down somewhat; take the free nights out of the equation and the average campsite cost was £9.15). The most expensive campsite was £15; the cheapest was £4 (both of which were good examples of the axiom ‘you get what you pay for’).

- Food and drink (which category includes eating out, beer, tea and cakes, and groceries) averaged just over £19 per day.

- The cheapest pint of Lime and Soda that we bought cost just 25p (at a rather well-to-do sort of a pub and on a very hot day when Mick had run out of water; it was the best pint of pop of the whole trip!); the most expensive pint of Lime and Soda was £2. The most common price was £1.20.

- It cost £200 more to get back from John O’Groats than it cost us to get to Land’s End. That would have been a lot less had we been able to book our return travel a couple of months in advance. Thanks go out to CPM Group Limited of Frome, who kindly paid for our train tickets home.

Finally, note that all of the above figures are for two people. It doesn’t follow that it would cost half the amount for one person (so save money and go with a friend).

(* I use the word budget in a loose sense here; our choice of accommodation and eating out was guided by the budget, but we weren’t going to sacrifice the enjoyment of the trip for a few pounds here or there.)

LEJOG: Average Distances

Of course, I couldn’t just close the spreadsheet once I’d worked out our total mileage. I did a few sums to look at the average daily distances that we walked.

Overall we walked on 80 days, covering 1240 miles, so on the simplest level we covered an average of just over 15 miles per day. But that’s a skewed figure, because in lieu of taking rest days, we had some short days (the shortest being just under 4.25 miles).

So, to give a truer figure, I categorised our walking days into ‘full’ and ‘half’ days. A bit of an arbitrary categorisation, with the definition of ‘full’ being over 10 miles, and half being 10 miles or under.

Working on that basis, we averaged around 16.5 miles per day on a full day and around 7.5 miles per day on a half day.

Mick not only did some rather more complicated sums, but he also did some pretty pictures to illustrate. The graph above shows our five day running average mileage for the duration (Miles are up the side, the day number is across the bottom; you can spot where the short and the rest days fell!).

LEJOG: The Distance

The route that I plotted to take us from Land’s End to John O’Groats, via the Lizard and Dunnet Head, was 1252 miles long.

Some of that route, when viewed on paper rather than on a 17” screen, didn’t make sense and some of it wasn’t feasible. Sometimes the route looked perfectly good on paper, but when we got there we found from the lie of the land that we could cut off a corner and omit some road walking. Barely a day passed when we didn’t make some modification.

I’ve just finished plotting the route that we actually walked.

The final ‘official’ mileage of 1240 wasn’t wildly different from the plan.

That of course is based on measuring OS maps using Anquet Mapping. I’m convinced that we actually walked further. Some of those paths alongside lochs are shown as very straight indeed. In reality they are not. Likewise where we went over pathless passes, we undoubtedly meandered more than I can reflect with a line on a map.

That’s not to mention the couple of occasions (in places where the navigation couldn’t have been easier or more obvious) we put our minds in neutral and found ourselves walking 180 degrees in the wrong direction – but I don’t think that we can really count those aberrations as part of our overall mileage!

Podcast Bob

Since the very first Backpackinglight Podcast (now The Outdoors Station Podcasts) I listened to, I’ve been a fan.

In my opinion, you just can’t beat Podcast Bob for listening material when lying in a sleeping bag in the wilds or when out running.

I arrived back from our little walk knowing that I would have some listening to catch up on and thinking that it would force me to get back into the running routine.

I’m afraid to say that I failed to resist temptation. I didn’t use the Podcasts to bribe myself into going for a run, but rather overdosed with a couple of days of listening whilst wielding a paint brush.

In particular, I listened to the Cape Wrath series. Here's the player thingy for Part 1; you'll find Parts 2 to 5 on the Audio Podcast Page at The Outdoors Station:

The
Cape Wrath Trail - Pt 1





Download
MP3 File

I now want to go and walk the Cape Wrath trail (or at least a good chunk of it, up to Cape Wrath). I even came up with a plan to fit it in this year, but Mick put his foot down and pointed out that we already have enough scheduled in.

If you’re not familiar with what The Outdoors Station has to offer, then I recommend that you pop over for a look and a listen. And I challenge you to listen to the Cape Wrath Series and not want to go and walk it!

(Oh, and if you look carefully you may find a Podcast that I recorded with Bob the week before last; I can’t possibly recommend that one because I’m a harsh critic of myself in the medium of recorded speech; I much prefer the written word for conveying my own thoughts – but it’s there if you want to listen to it.)

Two Weeks

Looking rather pleased to be at JOG

Photo* courtesy of Luke Unsworth

Can you believe that it's only two weeks ago that we reached the end of our walk? It seems like half a lifetime ago.

Roll on the next trip!

(* It's rather a good photo, I think, having caught us completely unawares. It's worth clicking on it to see the bigger version)

Dartmoor Goes Awry

Actually, that heading is perhaps a bit misleading. I imagine that Dartmoor today is exactly as it should be. It was just our day that went awry.

Just a couple of hours after I posted yesterday’s report, I awoke to find Mick writhing in pain and looking somewhat less than well.

After a couple of trips out of the tent, we spent the rest of the night with the doors unzipped so as to disturb less our neighbours and Mick spent a poorly night. We assume it was food/water/unclean implements poisoning.

So, instead of a lazy start to the day and a pleasant amble back across the moor to our starting point, we had very little sleep and at 4.45am, as the day was getting light, I figured I may just as well go and get the car, park it at the nearest road and evacuate Mick to the nearest hotel with en-suite bathroom.

It’s not the ideal circumstances in which to be out walking at that hour of day, but it was a mighty fine morning for it. The sky was clear, the moon was still up and a heavy mist clung to the fields below me, with the higher ground poking out. I did break stride to take a photo, but it just doesn’t do the spectacle justice. A sea of cloud over the fields

Given the circumstances, I didn’t take the scenic route. I went to the nearest road, power walked along it for a mile or so and then picked up the disused railway line – at the very same point where we had picked it up during our LEJOG. I had said, those three months ago, that I’d like to return to Dartmoor. What I didn’t expect, after an excellent day yesterday sampling the place, was to be repeating part of the LEJOG route early this morning.

The notable thing about the railway track was that it was quiet, and I don’t mean an absence of people (I would have been very taken aback to have met anyone there at 5.30 on a Sunday morning!). There wasn’t even any bird song. Rabbits did abound, but that only gave me a visual diversion.

I covered the 5.5 miles or so in very good time and just before 7am, as heads were starting to poke out of other tents, I arrived back to pack away and to bundle an even poorlier looking Mick out of the tent.

We didn’t book into the local Travelodge as planned. Mick insisted that he would be fine to make the 3 hour journey back north, and admittedly early on a Sunday morning is one of the better times to contend with the motorways. My brake pedal was not used between joining the A30 and leaving the M5, about 170 miles later.

I’m pleased to say that he’s all better now, and we’ve both caught up on that sleep we missed last night.

An unfortunate end to our weekend away, but we agreed that even with the less-than-ideal weather, yesterday was a very good and very enjoyable day, and that it was good to catch up with John Hee, Aktoman, Darren, Alan Sloman and Litehiker and to meet Martin and Martin.

Boggy Yomps on Dartmoor

We've sat down for over a week now. It felt like time to get out walking again, and what better excuse was needed than to join a planned meet up of some of the Outdoor Bloggers.

It didn't start too well. We arrived at the car park in the rain, which made me reach for the contact lenses even though our walk in to the proposed camping spot was short. That's when I found out that I only had lenses for my (stronger) right eye with me. It was a bit of a dizzy and lopsided walk in.

The tent village was already set up when we arrived; our tent swelled it to a tent town and later arrivals made it a tent city.

Today didn't dawn with any improvemment in the weather. Heavy showers were passing through and it wasn't looking a happy walking day.

Luck was with us. By the time Mick and I were packed away the skies were clearing and the day was showing promise.

Four of us set out at the same time, but in different directions, only to meet again half an hour later, from which point we spent the day together, variously in short periods of sunshine and equally brief periods of showers.

We'd just all donned full waterproofs with hats and gloves when we were passed by a couple wearing cropped trousers and vest tops. We had to wonder if there was a warmer microclimate a hundred yards to our right!

The route we followed had been designed by Mr. Sloman. It was an interesting route. Bogs features quite prominently, along with knee length grass hiding big holes. Quite an adventure really. I was rather pleased to be feeling quite fit at the moment, else it could have been hard work!

By the time the tent city reformed at a different location (with further swollen numbers, 9 tents tonight) the day was brightening up - indeed it even became sunny as we all wandered around being very sad, oohing and aaahing at other people's gear.

We've now retired to a pub to consider the day's activities over a pint of beer. A fine way to end a good day of walking.

(Post Script: I would have added some photos of the walk itself, except that I really excelled in taking poor photos on this particular day, so just the two of the tent cities will have to suffice.)

LEJOG - Re-Living the Journey

Even though I’d printed my own maps on A4 paper, which seemed at the time to be a disposable entity, when it came to the walk I couldn’t bear to throw those pages away. They’d taken me an absolute age to print and cost a small fortune in ink, so I decided instead to post them home in batches and to justify the keeping of them I annotated them with our actual route where it deviated from the plan.

 

I’m now just going through the process of re-plotting the route. It’s not a necessary exercise, but I want to know the measured mileage of the route we actually walked, rather than what we planned to walk, and in the absence of an internet connection to keep me occupied in an evening, it’s keeping me out of trouble.

 

It is an exercise that’s turning out to have an unexpected benefit: I get to re-live the journey over again.

 

I’m surprised at how many of the days I remember in quite some detail now I look at the maps again. I’m sure that detail will soon fade.

 

So, just now I’m on Day 12 and see the name of ‘Thorverton’. It immediately conjures up the picture of a gorgeous sunny day and a village street with stone-cobbled ‘pavements’ (I think there may have even been a stream running down the side of the road – or perhaps I’m making that bit up), and of a village post office that has been relegated to a portacabin in a car park.

 

At the east side of the village there’s an immaculate triangle of a village green, with a stream running along one side and a convenient bench upon which weary walkers may rest.

 

It was a ‘shoe off’ break on that green, combined with a fruit snack, but I resisted bathing my feet in the stream!

 

Just up the road was a family who enquired whether we were walking the Exe Valley Way and with whom we chatted for a while.

 

Oh, I could go on… Happy days!

Shoes, Books and Shopping

After seven days of sitting around doing nothing, this morning we were to be found ambling along a canal into Wolverhampton (which is where we’re temporarily living). It wasn’t simply a matter of getting out walking for the fun of it; we were on our way to the train station to pop over to Cotswold Outdoor in Birmingham for new footwear.

Last time we took the route of this canal (in March this year) the notable thing about it was that it looked unused. As with so many of the canals we encountered on our jaunt through Britain, it had no boats, moored nor moving. Today, being a glorious sunny day (and my goodness, it’s noticeably warmer down here than we’ve been experiencing in Scotland in recent weeks), both of the first two locks we passed had boats in them, heading uphill towards the city. Bet they were both in for a shock when they got one lock further up to find the canal behind empty of water – particularly as there’s no turning point. However, I digress.

Over to Birmingham we went, and contrary to my usual practice of trying on every piece of footwear in the shop, I was quick in my choice, buying the second pair I tried. They weren’t stocking the Salomon XA Pro XCR, which is what I had intended to buy (in a half size bigger than the toe-eating pair with which I set out from Land’s End). I came away with the Salomon Elios Mid XCR – hardly a comparable shoe to the XA Pro, but I fancied giving them a try.

Mick was equally precise in his selection. They were catering better for boys in the XA range, so he was able to get a straight replacement for the pair that he wore out quite comprehensively during April and May. Pity about the colour of the replacements; I preferred the garish green of his old ones.

He also came away with a pair of Keen Hybrids (a cross between a sandal and a shoe).

Already flinching from the thought of how much this little lot was going to come to, I managed to make it from the shoe dept (right at the back of the store) to the till without being distracted by any other goodies.

The plan then was to go straight back to the station.

Is it possible to walk past a big branch of Waterstones without falling inside? Do they have some form of person magnet?

Having accidentally stumbled inside of this immense store, I headed straight for the travel section, my mind thinking towards a copy of North to the Cape and a few other Cicerone titles. Alas, despite it being the biggest bookshop I’ve been in, they let me down. Not a single title that I wanted.

Mick heaved a sigh of relief. I won’t be plotting any more walks this week.

A Final Weigh In

Before unpacking my bag (just to sort through a few things and wash a few things, before packing it all back up to go away next weekend) I thought I'd weigh it. Whereas most people may find themselves ditching items as they make their way on a long walk, I found myself adding little bits and pieces.

The final weight, without any food or water, but with half the tent (I finally decided to shoulder my fair weight and took half the tent (the light half!) from Peebles) and with an almost full gas canister, was 7.5kg.

That's ridiculous isn't it? To think that I've lived for three months out of a bag weighing less than your average person's bag weighs to go for a weekend city break!

Of course, food and water added significantly. Particularly during the final two or three weeks. My left shoulder is just thinking about whether to forgive me.

Home Again, Home Again...

Having slowly wended our way home (even more slowly than intended due to a ‘failed freight train’ ahead of us yesterday), via friends in Elgin for a few days, I finally hit my own sofa in the middle of today.

I am now sitting on my own sofa with a rather nice glass of red wine in my hand. I drank some very nice beer indeed during our walking adventure. I drank some truly dreadful red wine. It’s been nice this last week to discover that nice wine does still exist. But I digress.

Tonight I will sleep in my own bed for the first time in two months. Tomorrow I will sleep in it for a second consecutive night. I’m still hankering after sleeping in the same bed for three consecutive nights, but I’m going to have to wait a while - our house became occupied by Eldest Stepson, girlfriend and child in our absence so we’re off to stay elsewhere as of Monday. That will leave me without an internet connection (or at least without a reliable and legal one) for a while longer.

In the last few hours of sofa-bliss, the photos have been downloaded and I’ve been through them a few times. I am a dreadful photographer. Quite why I am in charge of the camera when I have not a single artistic bone in my body, I know not. I really have taken a lot of very poor photos.

However, there are some that do reflect well the intended view. I was particularly pleased with this one, which Mick and I both voted the best view of the trip.

This one of our best pitch isn’t bad either.

I will start working on the photos to post some soon.

What else has happened in the last week?

Well this beard which was untrimmed during the 3 month jaunt was promptly removed upon arrival in Elgin: (It was a self-photo taken by me, which explains why it's from a funny angle and the forced expression!)

Mick now looks about 12 rather than 62.

We weighed ourselves. At the time of finishing Mick was 1 stone lighter than when we started. I was the same weight (a good thing, but I’m definitely thinner – I’ve never been so muscular; I even have muscles in my arms, which have always been a particularly pathetic part of my physique). We reckon that had we been able to weigh ourselves a week earlier we would both have been lighter; we really did put a lot of dedication into eating massive amounts in that last week, mainly thanks to some B&Bs and eating establishments.

We’ve also been rejoicing the joys of a change of clothes and clean underwear. The very first thing we did on arriving in Elgin was to pop to Asda for a new outfit (a shopping trip that due to a lack of long sleeved attire in the store saw me buying an Age 11-12 school jumper; I refused Mick’s request to buy the short skirt to go with it!).

As if being clean shaven and having clean clothes on isn’t exciting enough, tonight I cooked fresh vegetables. It involved a knife and a chopping board. From the depths of my mind I recalled how to use both. It was a joy.

All of that is great. But I’ve not been for a walk for five days now. I’m ready for the next outing. Not a long one, just a short trip out …

…but I am looking at that weather map and focussing on the south-east corner and the north-west corner. Mick’s not biting…

…yet.

Who Was It?

As we were waiting for the bus out of John O'Groats this morning the photograph man left his signpost and came over to ask if the other three people had found us yesterday afternoon - three people who went and asked him whether we had arrived.

As I described yesterday, Steve came and found us, and he must have been one of the three.

But there was apparently another couple asking after us.

We have no idea who that might have been.

Who was it? We'd really like to know.

The Day After - Duncansby Head

(The following was typed on the Pocketmail this morning whilst waiting for a bus to take us from JOG to Inverness. It's a long old way north is JOG, isn't it? Three hours on a non-stop bus. Phew. It'd take a while to walk that far wouldn't it...)

At 6.45 this morning we were stood by the lighthouse on Duncansby Head - in dense fog.

As we approached we could hear the sea but couldn't see it and knew that there was a lighthouse but had no idea whether we were 100 yards away or half a mile.

It finally appeared out of the gloom. We took photos and our journey was over.

Around we turned to walk back to JOG and suddenly the fog lifted - not far but enough to be able to make out some of the nearer cliffs.

So, am I pleased that it's over?

Not in the sense that I was itching to stop walking. Had our route been longer we would happily have carried on walking.

However, I am pleased to have finished what we set out to do and I am quite happy to stop walking now that we've done that (no considerations of walking home!).

Would I do it again? In principle, I absolutely would. It has been a fantastic experience of which I have positively enjoyed almost all.

But for now I shall enjoy living a more normal life for a while.

The next significant outing will be Coast to Coast in September - much shorter but still something to which to look forward.

Over the next few weeks I will put together further thoughts and reflections on the trip and the gear.

I hope you've enjoyed the daily blog of the trip and a big thank you goes out to everyone who has donated to Macmillan Cancer Support in recognition of our efforts - I have been overwhelmed by the generosity. (And for anyone who hasn't but wants to add a few pounds to the pot, then it's really easy via Justgiving; just click on the link on the right.)

Day 84 - Dunnet to John O'Groats

7 July
Distance: about 20 miles

It was an early alarm and an early hour as I stuck my head between the curtains hoping for sunshine. It was raining.

By twenty to nine we were standing on Dunnet Head, taking a self-photo (there was no-one else around at that hour to take one for us). If the distances on the road signs are to be believed, we kept up an incredible speed to the Head. We didn't quite believe the road signs.

My focus by this point was purely on getting to JOG. Mick kept telling me that I was marching away, but being so close I didn't want to dally.

We didn't pause for second breakfast or elevenses, but did make the time to pop into the hotel at Mey for tea and biscuits (which cost the same as our extensive breakfast yesterday morning), then it was back onto the road (soon turning onto a minor one for traffic avoidance) for the last 7 miles.

About five miles out, the sky started to show signs of brightening. An island started appearing out of the gloom off the coast. Twenty minutes later it was bright enough to see that there were houses on that island. It looked like I could get my wish for a sunny walk-in afer all.

With my knees and Mick's feet aching from the constant fast road walking we paused for lunch with a couple of miles to go. I really hope that that's the last time in a long time that I have a lunch that involves oatcakes, cheese or sardines!

When the 'end point' at JOG comes into view it is hardly an overwhelming sight. A collection of buildings that look less than attractive. The views off-shore are undeniably good (and the weather was decidedly fine by now) but that was the case further up the coast too.

Nevertheless, JOG was where we were headed and before we knew it we were there. Across the car park we walked, having spotted the all important finish-line sign post.

Just then a car pulled up alongside. A window opened and Mick was asked if he knew where the finish was. He was about to answer when he realised that this was someone he knew.

My cousin and her husband and my aunt and Maurice had decided, way back when, to take a holiday in Scotland this week with the hope that they could come and surprise us. We were indeed surprised (very very pleasantly so) and they could not have timed their arrival better.

Photos were taken at the sign-post (timed at this end so that the arms were there and so was the man with the letters) then off we went to find celebratory drinks.

The JOG hotel is no more so we were back down the road to the Sea View just a quarter of a mile away.

We were just supping a bottle of bubbly when appeared a chap who asked if we were Gayle and Mick who had just walked from Land's End.

We soon learned that this was Steve. He originally hales from half a mile up the road from Land's End, but now lives up here. It was his sister's B&B in which we stayed the night before we set out and having heard from her about our journey has followed the Blog and came to meet us. It was one final really nice surprise meeting, so thank you Steve for coming over.

He also left us with another £20 for the Macmillan fundraising.

We should now be in the tent as we were meant to be camping tonight. That plan went awry when Mick went to the bar and accidentally ordered a double room with the pint of beer. Hey ho. I suppose I'll just have to put up with another comfy bed...

Our journey is not entirely over. Tomorrow we will get up early and make the jaunt over to Duncansby Head, just for completeness. Having carried my bag every step of the way from Land's End to John O'Groats via Lizard and Dunnet Head, my left shoulder will rejoice at an unencumbered stroll tomorrow.

Once we've completed those couple of miles I will give my overall thoughts of the journey. I will also see if I can finally bully Mick into using the Blogging Device and saying a few words too.

Blogging Delays

There's a blogging conspiracy going on in John O'Groats.

We finished the walk, I finally typed the blog post and then couldn't post it.

It turned out to be the only point on the whole route where no telephone would work to send the posts. Full signals on both mobiles wouldn't get them through and not even a pay phone (which has been the fall-back in other places) would work.

So, sorry for the delay to anyone who has been waiting to read about our last day and a bit.

I'm now on a real computer (first time in 2 months!) and am about to re-type my posts. It could take a while. I'm so used to the Pocketmail keyboard that I'm now struggling with a proper sized one!

Day 84 - Mission accomplished!

Mick and Gayle arrived at John O' Groats at 2.40pm today.
Gayle will post later once they're done celebrating (and when they've got a decent phone signal).

Day 83 - West of Watten to Dunnet

6 July
Distance: 17.5 miles
No. of killer wee dugs: 1
No. of overly frisky cows: lots of herds, fortunately all the other side of fences.

There is a rule that says that the earlier we want to get away, the longer it takes us to get through our morning ritual and get on the road. Today we proved that the opposite is also true.

Today our schedule was dictated by the fact that the shop in Watten, which we needed to visit, doesn't open until 10am on a Sunday, as a result of which we had arranged breakfast at the Brown Trout Hotel for 9am.

That meant that we didn't need to leave the campsite until 8am, which gave us a bit of a lie-in.

Predictably, with time on our side, we were ready to go in record time. Then, despite trying our best to dawdle along the road, we kept up too fast a pace. We found ourselves in Watten at just ten past eight.

The hospitality at the hotel was fantastic. We explained that we were in no rush and they happily let us take a very leisurely breakfast, staying in their dining room until 10am. During that time we had orange juice and cereal and toast and tea and a huge cooked breakfast and more toast (we were quite hungry, even though we'd already had first breakfast at 7am) and more tea, followed by more tea. And the charge for this huge breakfast? Well, let's just say that I've paid more for a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits. We left very happy indeed.

Much of the day was unremarkable once we got back on the road. The early mist turned to drizzle, slowly getting us wetter and wetter until we changed our windproofs for waterproofs. A while later I had to concede that waterproof trousers were required. Then it started to rain in earnest and out came the overmittens. This was not what the forecast said we would get.

On we sped, along various little lanes requiring minimal navigation and with little of interest except for herds of cows so frisky and stampeding that they had me quite nervous even though they were on the other side of (very flimsy looking, low) fences.

Then we approached Reaster and our day took a surreal turn for a short while.

First there was the ramshackle collection of buildings, with a large collection of old pony-traps, in various states of decay, lining the road. It was here that we were accosted by two friendly dugs and one wee killer dug.

Around the next corner, we were overtaken by an old-fashioned open-topped London Bus. This wasn't a main road we were on; it wasn't a B-road. It was an obscure little lane. The bus seemed somewhat out of place.

Then we went around another bend and towards us was walking an old woman. She was wearing wellington boots, a plastic rain hat, a mackintosh and under the mackintosh she apparently had on a nightie, even though it was 1pm and she was walking up a remote lane in the rain.

At best she looked eccentric, and maybe she was, but she also turned out to be a very nice woman indeed.

She stopped us to ask where we were walking from and to and we had a good chat with her. When she learned what we were doing she turned around and walked back with us to her house where she told us to wait by the gate. Off she trotted and a few moments later came back with £6 for Macmillan and a big bar of chocolate for us. She then shook us by the hand, wished us well and we continued along smiling at another random encounter with kindness - and at the surrealness of the previous half an hour.

At Greenland (really, check the map, we weren't in the wrong country!), in spite of the mist and rain, we got a glimpse of the sea. The sea off the north coast of Scotland. That was a very pleasing moment.

After about 15 or so miles of tarmac, we exercised those liberal access rights that apply in Scotland and cut across the Links of Dunnet, exactly as I had assumed in my route plotting that we could. The path marked on the map was not evident beyond the first hundred yards or so, but the going was easy - and it was very pleasant to get some softer ground under my boots.

Across this ground I had a chat on the phone with Vic. She's helped us out with lots of Googling as we've made our way north and I had one more request. Having missed out on our planned B&B in Watten last night and given the weather, we thought that it would be nice to have a bed tonight instead (getting soft, you see, now we're near the end). Vic duly Googled and having walked half a mile or so into tomorrow's route, we're now at the Northern Sands Hotel in Dunnet.

Yes, we have hit the north coast.

We still have a distance to go on our route, but I think that technically we can now claim to have walked "end-to-end".

Tomorrow we will make an early start for our final push for both Dunnet Head and John O'Groats.

Day 82 - Before Dalnawillan Lodge to Outside Watten

5 July
Distance: about 18 miles
Distance to go: 38 miles
No. of people seen out walking in last 7 days: 0

The road goes ever on and on...

That's how it felt a couple of miles into this morning. The landscape had become completely flat featureless moorland, with the middle-distance and beyond obscured by low cloud and a mist, so the only notable thing we could see was the estate dirt-access road stretching out in a straight line ahead of us, seemingly forever.

Now, I'm quite a fan of bleak moorland, but being so flat and featureless this tested even my usual enthusiasm for such wide open spaces.

Finally reaching the end of the estate track, we deviated from our plotted route. Looking at the map last night we decided that the riverside route was probably more trouble than it was worth when we could just take the minor road that ran alongside it. I'm all for road avoidance, but this bit seemed to just be making our lives more difficult than necessary for no appreciable scenery or terrain gain.

However, I did decide, on the spur of the moment that we should cut off a small corner of the transition from the road back to the route by traipsing across country.

After the wet grass and heather we encountered on the way, not to mention the odd bog (plenty of those around here!) we reached the track with our trousers drenched to mid-thigh and our boots letting in water.

The yomp had also warmed me up. From yesterday's short shirt sleeves and trouser vents open, this morning I was wearing long-sleeves under two jackets and hat and gloves. Once on the track I stopped to remove a jacket and mentioned a bar of chocolate (hungry day today).

Left to my own devices I probably would have had the chocolate on the move, but Mick got out his sit mat and sat down - and it turned out to be a very good thing that he did.

Sitting there trying to make half a chocolate bar each feel filling, we surveyed the map and rather belatedly realised that if we had stayed on the road and modified our route, we could get to the campsite 2.5 miles outside of Watten.

When the Watten accommodation crisis arose we had explored all sorts of options, but had discounted the campsite as a 2.5 miles out-and-back detour was too far at the end of a 21 mile day and we could see no obvious way of cutting across to it from our route.

The reason that I missed the obvious was that it involved wandering off the edge of the map twice (the downside of A4 maps; at least with full size OS maps you're only likely to wander off them once in a day!).

Once we knew we could make it to the campsite within a reasonable mileage the decision easy, even though it involved road walking. In fact, I was positively excited at the thought of a shower and facilities.

It's not that I have an issue with wild-camping. Indeed, in my opinion it has many benefits over campsites. However, my limit is about 3 nights out, after which I like to get a proper wash*. Added to that, we're now in the lowlands, which makes the drinking water issue a bit more tricky.

So, ruing the fact that we'd unnecessarily yomped through wet grass and got ourselves wet, and that we'd walked a bit further than we needed to, we turned left along the track instead of right and went back to the road.

Traffic was not an issue on these roads. We were passed by half a dozen cars on the first stretch of and maybe a dozen on the next.

Then we wandered off the map again, which required a little bit of fingers-crossed that the tiny road would come out where we needed it to.

Fingers were then crossed that the campsite existed, that it took tents and that they had room for us (and that it was where we thought it was; we could just see the tent symbol on the edge of the map, what we didn't know was whether there was an arrow pointing to somewhere on another off-the-map road).

Luck was on our side. After some remarkably fast walking (it was the shower thought that spurred me into almost a trot for the last 8 miles) we arrived to find that the campsite was where we needed it to be. They did squeeze us in. The shower was hot and I was able to use the washing machine (to remove half a peat bog from my trousers) for free.

Even better, a phone call to the Brown Trout Hotel in Watten, which had no room for us tonight, has resulted in an agreement that they will serve us a cooked breakfast in the morning.

All in all, it's been a rather good day!

(* Had I known yesterday that I would be able to shower today, I wouldn't have run naked into the River Thurso for a quick wash down last night. That was one bracing experience!)

Day 81 - Kinbrace to before Dalnawillan Lodge

4 July
Distance: 16 miles
Number of people seen out walking since last Saturday: 0

It was another hard day, this time because of the terrain, but on paper it seems that it should be the last hard terrain day. We have a bit of cross country tomorrow, then the rest is on roads and tracks.

Having left our camping spot this morning it was back across the rickety suspension foot bridge bearing a warning that it was unsafe structure and that use was at our own risk, then along the river bank. The river bank gave varied walking; sometimes the going was good, sometimes it was exceedingly wet. We both hit the road, after a mile and a half or so, with comprehensively wet feet.

When I plotted the last week or ten days of the route I kept commenting on the fact that we would have wet feet. I wasn't wrong! However, I did have a secret weapon in my bag and at second breakfast I changed into my Sealskinz. Bliss!

The climb up Knockfin Heights was broken when we stopped at a good stream to fill up our drinking water (an "aquafaff"), then it was up through heather and tussocky grass onto the huge flat plateau.

The plateau is the home to many peat hags and bogs and after successfully getting ourselves to the trig point we took a bearing and headed off to try to find the correct valley into which to descend.

It was during the bearing following that I decided to take a quick swim in a peat bog.

A bit too far into wet peat I wandered and within a split second my left leg disappeared to the knee. Feeling the other foot fast disappearing there seemed only one thing I could do to save myself from sinking further: I sat down - straight into the bog.

So, not only were both of my feet stuck, one to the knee, the other to the ankle, but I also had a very wet bottom.

It's a good job Mick was there, or I could have been in quite a fix trying to get out. Hoisting me (a giggling me) from under the arms he dragged me out.

For the next hour or so I had the unpleasant experience of walking in wet trousers and wet pants. Thank goodness for Paramo Parameta A fabric - it does dry quickly. However, I am now left with filty trousers complete with very dodgy water marks that make it seem like I've had a bit of an accident...

Having found the correct stream by which to descend, we followed it, although the descent was so gradual it felt like we were still on the plateau.

It seemed that it wasn't my day when about half way down I found a concealed hole with my left leg. It suddenly disappeared down to the knee and I pitched forward, falling flat on my face - and getting the front of my trousers wet. Hey ho.

Miraculously, I made it to the track, which gave us easy walking for the final few miles of the day, without injury.

We've pitched for the night alongside the River Thurso, not far from the estate track. We went through the usual process in pitching, which we adopted some time ago. I lay down on the ground to check for flatness and levelness and Mick marked the area with two walking poles. We then pitched the tent. Usually it works well to ensure that we don't stray in the pitching onto less flat ground. Alas, just to round off my day nicely, I climbed into the tent tonight, after everything else was inside, to find that there's a lump on my side. We can't quite be moved to change the position of the tent, so it looks like I'm in for a less-than-comfy night.

Day 80 - Loch Choire to Kinbrace

3 July
Distance: 18.5 miles
No. of people seen out walking since Saturday: 0

As I woke up this morning I turned to look out of the window of the bothy, which was right next to my head. It was a fine sight: the calm loch reflecting the surrounding hills and an absolutely clear blue sky.

Having the room to manoeuvre and not having to pack the tent away we were away earlier than our usual 7.30, following the grassy track along the side of the loch.

Three miles later we passed by Loch Choire Lodge and for the next four hours we followed its unsurfaced access road. At 11 miles long it's far enough that apparently the Royal Mail is excused from making daily deliveries to the house.

The track could have been tedious from the outset, going on for so long, but for the first half we had the clear views to admire. We also had the interludes of a couple in a car, driving from the lodge to a nearby loch to fish, who stopped for a chat (branding us as mad, but that's a common occurence), then a while later we had an air show put on by some Tornados and a Typhoon.

Such things could not sustain us for the entire distance. The sky had clouded over by the second half of the track and it was depressing to think that we still had a couple of hours of the same surface and similar views to go. Harry Potter helped both of us through the final hour.

By the walk in to Kinbrace we were wondering if 'last half mile' syndrome has become 'last half week' syndrome as both of us were struggling. We did of course make it, and pretty early in the day too (just 3pm), which gives us a good rest ready for another pathless yomp tomorrow.

I'm not entirely happy with where we're camped tonight. The lie of the land means that we couldn't reasonably get out of view of some of the houses in Kinbrace even though we're a good distance away. Hopefully no-one minds a tent sitting up across the other side of the river plateau and we will of course be off first thing in the morning to tackle the rather wet looking Knockfin Heights.

Day 79 - Lairg to Loch Choire

2 July
Distance: 17.75 miles
Number of people seen out walking since Saturday: 0

Sodding flies! What is it about our heads and backpacks that makes them swarm around us whenever we go anywhere in the vicinity of a forest?

There was a lot of forest today. About six miles that felt more like six weeks. And for all of those six long miles we were accompanied by sodding flies. Rarely did one land on either of us, they just flew around and around and around our heads.

This was another forest that gave us a navigational difficulty. "Cross the stream...and head uphill due north through a narrow gap in the trees, now on a visible path" says the Cicerone guide. Except that trees grow wider as well as taller and even though this is a very recent guide there's been time for the trees to grow wide so as to block the entrance to the 'narrow gap'. It took us far longer than was reasonable to locate it (funnily enough exactly where it should have been) having tried a couple of dead ends first. Again, I was rather reluctant to bash through the trees in the absence of finding the right way.

It was a joy to finally leave the pine trees behind, even though that was when the going started getting rather harder.

For much of the next five or so miles there were sometimes vehicle tracks, but they were ruts in very wet ground so not good walking. The walk that didn't look too bad on paper transpired to be a hard-going boggy, tussocky yomp.

My legs were giving out and my mind screaming at me to stop before we reached the summit of our day (after a five mile slow and steady climb). Two things kept me going: the thought of how lovely it would be to camp at the head of Loch Choire and a Mars bar. I'm not a huge fan of Mars bars, but it was sugar and it certainly gave me the perk I needed to finish the job of getting up the hill.

On the final push to the loch (positively striding out, all weariness gone once the end was in sight) a noise made me look around. It took me a few moments to locate the source. A large group of deer on the other side of the valley were having a good chat amongst themselves, with barking and higher pitched mewing sorts of noises predominating.

At the loch, which is indeed a stunning setting, we eyed up our likely pitch but thought we'd just have a look at the wooden hut a few paces further on before we pitched. The hut turned out to be an ex-stable that has quite recently been upgraded as a bothy. It's not big but it's very light and airy.

It wasn't a difficult decision to make. The tent was forgotten. We'll spend tonight indoors, kipping on a generous sleeping platform after an evening spent in plastic garden chairs - luxury!

I'd been kicking myself for the last few weeks for not joining the Mountain Bothies(y?) Association before we left and finding out whether there were any bothies on our route. Having stumbled across a few of them and making use of this one I will give my thanks upon my return home by joining.

Our arrival at this hut was perfectly timed. No sooner had we decided to stay than we heard rain upon the roof. Showers are passing through at intervals and the wind is fair howling. However, we completed our walk in fine weather (wall-to-wall sunshine this morning, and about time too) so it can rain as much as it likes for the next few hours!

Day 78 - Oykel Bridge to Lairg

1 July
Distance: 16.25 miles
Number of killer dugs (thwarted by fencing): 2
Number of deer we witnessed trip over a fence: 1 (and I always thought they were such elegant movers!)

When you've requested your breakfast for a certain hour of the morning, been told that the requested time is no problem, and given your order the night before, you rather expect to receive your breakfast at the appointed hour, don't you?

Not at the Oykel Bridge Hotel, I'm afraid. We sat for twenty five minutes beyond the agreed time waiting for our cooked breakfasts, which saw us leaving rather later than we would have liked.

It was fast walking today, though, and shorter than the schedule said for having taken a more sensible route.

For the initial part of the day we took a riverside and track route that kept us off the main road, then from about five or so miles in we were mainly on the A road. It's not a busy A road - it's single track with less traffic than the lanes at home, so aside from the fact that it was tarmac underfoot, it wasn't a bad walk.

We had company too. A whole swarm of flies that accompanied us pretty much the whole way from the excellent general store at Rosehall to Lairg. They must be very well exercised flies now and they certainly didn't respond to repeated requests that they 'procreate and travel'.

We're not entirely looking forward to tomorrow. The walk looks fine on paper, but our bags are going to be mighty heavy. We've not resolved our accommodation problem in Watten so it looks like our only option is to have a fourth consecutive wild camp a few miles before (my, we'll stink by Dunnet!). That means that we next get to a shop on Sunday. Plus we've just picked up our final resupply parcel so we're heavy on dehydrated food and gas too. My left shoulder is going to be crippled.

Day 77 - After Inverlael to Oykel Bridge

30 June
Distance: about 15 miles
Number of people seen out walking: 0

An hour and a half after leaving our night stop we arrived at the River Douchary, which was our originally intended night stop. It would have been a very fine place to camp, but we made the sensible choice to cut yesterday short, particularly given the weather.

We made today easier for ourselves. Rather than taking the scenic and largely pathless route, we took a direct line from the river up to a track on the other side of the valley. It was a track that took us the whole way to Oykel Bridge and whilst it may not have been the most attractive walking surface it made for fast progress and the surroundings were stunning.

Even better, we had fine weather today, with very good visibility. We could see for miles and that always makes for a good day.

A car park on the Corrie Muzie estate had a sign saying "Hillwalkers must use this car park", which made me wonder for what we should use it, given the lack of a car ("Dogs must be carried" came to mind).

Walking along the estate track, where a surprising number of vehicles passed us, we discussed the fact that in the whole of our trip to date no-one had offered us a lift. Obviously, we would have refused, but I had expected that every now and then some kind-wishing soul would make the offer.

In the strange way of these things, not half an hour later, just as we were finishing up lunch, a car passed us, stopped, reversed and offered us a ride.

The occupants of the car were a couple called Helen and Jim. Having declined the lift, we chatted a while. They had popped over from Ireland for the weekend to spend a couple of days in the hills, bothying. They were also so kind as to offer us food, and we came away with another £10 for Macmillan.

The walk down to Oykel, through mainly felled forestry, was entirely uninspiring, but not as uninspiring as the Oykel Bridge hotel, where we are staying tonight. It goes down as the worst value for money night of our trip.

This is a hotel that charges £110 per night for a room. Of course, that is way above our budget, but they agreed to a reduced rate of £80, which although still above budget was more acceptable to us. I expected luxury for the advertised price.

Even at the reduced rate it's poor value for money. Even if they have put us in their shoddiest room in consideration of the reduced rate it's still poor.

Our twin room (despite having booked a double) is very dated and poorly decorated. It doesn't have any electrical equipment bar a kettle - no television, no radio, no hair drier (not that I need one, but I expect one). Then there's the bathroom (ground floor, clear glass window, curtains - that don't close - hanging off their rails). Can you believe that this is a hotel that doesn't have a shower in the bathroom (unless you count the plastic hose job that you slip onto the taps via rubber connectors)? I mean, really, how much does it cost to put mixer taps and a shower curtain in?

Okay, I shall stop ranting now. On the positive side, we have comfortable accommodation and the lack of a shower does mean that we have a bath. It's a big, deep bath. I spent about a week in there.

Sitting in the bar it's obvious that this is very much a fisherman's hotel. There's lots of talk of the intricacies of fishing going on. I'd never realised that river levels are to fly-fishermen what snow levels are to skiers.

Other news of today is that we heard from Doug (LEJOGer No. 4). He reached JOG at 3pm yesterday. All being well Conrad (LEJOGer No. 2 - he took a very similar off-road route to us up here in the north) will have finished today. Last we spoke to him, three days ago, we heard that he'd had the misfortune of the sole falling off one of his boots and had effected some rather ingenious field repairs on it. I look forward to catching up with him once we're all finished.