A Roller Coaster walk

The Lands End Trail

Many years ago, while holidaying in St.Ives, Cornwall, I purchased a small walking guidebook written by the owners of a seafront shop making and selling ornamental glass items. As I chatted with the shop owner, she recommended one of the walks in the book which was an eight mile section of the South West Coast Path from Zennor to St.Ives. 'It will take you 4 hours', she said, and as we left the shop I inwardly scoffed that such a short distance would take us that long.

The John O'Groats Trail

Because of a lack of footpaths in the area, most LEJOG journeys end with a horrible slog along the A9 road to John O'Groats. However, recently, the creation of the John O'Groats Trail has meant that it is now possible to cut out most, if not all, of this unsatisfactory ending (or beginning) to most walkers End to End journey. At the moment, the JOGT, which mostly follows the coast from Inverness, is a 'work in progress' but the excellent website has divided the trek from Inverness into 14 stages. Using a green, amber, red, 'traffic light' system, the website advises the current state of each stage and at the moment, there are no red stages and only two or three 'amber' stages. Like most walkers, I have an aversion to walking on tarmac so I will be utilising the JOGT wherever possible and reverting to the A9 only where this new trail is unviable. Photos of the walk can be found on this link http://www.jogt.org.uk/gallery/

My LEJOG Kit List

Choosing which items of my kit I want to use on my LEJOG walk, which I am starting in July, is mostly straightforward so this list is basically copied directly from my 2015 Pennine Way list but updated to include more recent purchases. As I said in the PW post, I rarely buy really expensive gear as I do not backpack in winter conditions so I don't need really 'high-end' equipment. I also feel that many of the more expensive brands are over-priced and tend to look for good quality, middle range kit. I have stated elsewhere that I am a big fan of Decathlon, which is where I buy most of my clothing. I find that although the prices are very competitive, the quality is excellent and I have a number of their items that I have used fairly extensively on hikes that have never let me down. There are however one or two areas where I do spend more, particularly with camping gear and footwear, although having said this, the tent I am planning to use is a fairly low-priced Chinese, lightweight trekking pole tent. Again, after the tent, the most expensive, non-tech items on my list are my Ultra Raptor trail runners made by La Sportiva. I toyed with the idea of changing to a different shoe for the walk but eventually decided that as I have never had any foot issues on my hikes, I would buy another pair and continue with what I know works for me. This list obviously doesn't include consumables and I haven't listed all of the smaller items.

Geertop Tent

The South Downs Way video

I finally got around to putting together video clips that I took on our South Downs Way hike in September 2017. I had trouble with the editing and some of the sound isn't very good.

Mapping the End to End

OS mapping coupled with Viewranger

For my End to End hike in July, I have decided that I won't be taking any maps with me. Well, that is not strictly accurate, I will have OS mapping for the whole of the UK but I won't be taking any paper maps. I have made this decision for a number of reasons, one being the sheer quantity of maps required for a trip of this length makes it really impractical and I simply can't be bothered with organising the delivery of maps to me en-route.

Lands End to John O'Groats - My journey through Britain

When I first took up hiking as a pastime, I read a number of books written by long distance hikers about their experiences on the trail. My attention was particularly grabbed by those written by ultra-long distance walkers and I eagerly devoured stories of these seemingly unattainable adventures with one in particular firing my imagination. The book was 'Journey Through Britain' by John Hillaby and by the end of it, although I wasn't really aware of it at the time, the book had sowed the seeds of a life-long ambition. Over the years, I became a member and walk leader for my local ramblers group and also enjoyed some long challenges including Wainwright's Coast to Coast walk, a walk I have completed three times, the Southern Upland Way, Pennine Way, West Highland Way and most of the Cape Wrath Trail.

Walking the South Downs Way

The South Downs Way is a 100 mile National Trail running from the ancient capital of England at Winchester, to Eastbourne on the south coast. I had walked the trail over a number of weekends back in the nineties with our local Ramblers group but this trip was in a westerly direction and I felt at the time that it would be better walked in an easterly direction, towards the sea, rather than away from it. Also, the best scenery on the trail is in the eastern half of the trail so it made sense to me that it should be walked in this direction. I also wanted to do it as a continuous walk, rather than in sections so as we were visiting the UK, we took the opportunity to take on the trail over eight days, staying in pubs and hotels along the way. The following is a photo diary of the trip between 18th and 26th September 2017.