Pre-Walk Blog No 1
Welcome to the website set up to promote my solo walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats in the Summer of 2022.
I will be posting occasional blogs in the run- up to the walk, and then during the walk I will be posting daily.
I watch a lot of quizzes on TV (partly because I do some part-time work for some of them, but mainly because I am a quiz nerd) and you often hear the question asked, ‘What would you do with the jackpot if you won it?’ For some reason, sometime last year while watching ‘Pointless’, I asked that question of myself, and my answer was immediately ‘walk Land’s End to John O’Groats.’ Thus, the plan was instigated.
(I have kept a diary since my school days, and I encountered the first reference to wanting to walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats in a diary entry in December 1971 – I was a sixth former at the time.)
You obviously need three things to be able to plan such a trip: time, money, and relatively good fitness.
TIME
I am still working full-time at a large range of free-lance activities, connected with either music or quiz question checking/writing. Someone accused me on a Christmas card of having retired, which I was cross about, as I definitely do a very full working week still. However, my work is nearly all flexible, and so I was able to plan to pause most of it for the eleven weeks the walk will take. I only needed to arrange for willing deputies to (a) sing for 5 weeks with the Cathedral Choir at Southwell and (b) take Bingham Choral Society for 5 rehearsals. Thankfully my friends Stephen Cooper and Jonny Allsopp respectively, were happy to do this.
MONEY
I have just started receiving my state pension, and have not yet given up any parts of the professional work, so suddenly I have extra money, which has given me the opportunity to fund every expense of the trip - all money donated will go to the charities. Apart from some equipment, and travel to the start and from the end, most of the costs are for the accommodation along the way. I am not hardy enough to camp (or strong enough to carry a tent!) – and certainly not to do what somebody did recently – the whole journey sleeping in the open! I have accommodation booked for every night. Luckily, I have already had offers of accommodation for 22 of the 77 nights, and I will probably get some more before I go. Otherwise, the various hotels and B and Bs along the way range in cost from £40 to £205 a night, mostly at the lower end. I am hoping to reroute to avoid the £205 one, but I am currently hampered by some places not yet being open after Covid. In any case, projected costs look at being about £6,000, which is £545 a week – which, if you regard it, as I do, as an 11-week holiday is pretty good!
FITNESS
Although I do not play sport and I have never been to a gym, I have always done walking holidays – with friends from school, youth hostelling with my kids when they were young, and more recently most of my holidays in the last ten years – Derby Dales (frequently),Wye Valley, Northumberland, Hadrian’s Wall, Snowdonia, Belgian Ardennes etc. So I am used to doing 15 to 18 miles several days in a row. The stages of the planned walk (determined by the availability of accommodation) range from 8 to 22 miles, with an average of 16 miles and I will be having a rest day every seventh day – as it happens, on Tuesdays. My main two challenges will be hills and luggage. Many of my walks have been coastal or by rivers, and a lot have been fairly flat. Also I am normally walking with just a small day-pack. So I will be preparing for the trip by doing some walking with a full pack, and in some cases heading for the hills. I have so far done one 16.5 mile walk with my new rucksack – which was fine, though it was local and thus flat. I am booked for a few days in the Derby Dales at Easter, which will be a good opportunity to walk with the pack in hilly terrain. It will not be much good starting in Cornwall if I am not ready for hills!
As I say, I am regarding the trip as an eleven-week holiday, though of course there will be some differences, the main one being that, if the weather is bad, I will not have the choice to stay indoors. There are bound to be some wet days which are relatively horrible.
Many walkers who take on this journey plan their routes around the challenging footpaths – choosing to go via Offa’ Dyke and the Pennine Way etc. I have not done that. You will see that my route is chosen largely to minimise the risk of getting lost! So I am staying by the coast a lot of the time, and taking the River Wye Path up the Welsh border, and the Great Glen across Scotland (I have always wanted to walk the Great Glen). There will be more remote and mountainous walks, particularly through the Lakes and much of Scotland, but generally I have chosen easier walking.
I am genuinely anxious about getting lost, or taking paths that are on the map but don’t exist – or exist but go through fields where the farmer warns of dangerous animals. Getting lost or re-routing may result in days which are too long, or having to take a bus or lift at the end of a day, in which case I will have to return to do the missing bit on the next rest day. I am sure this will happen more than once, but I am anxious to avoid it if I can.
I am keen for people to walk with me for the odd day – do get in touch if you would like to. The route page of the website shows you on which days I already have walking companions fixed.
And of course, there is the opportunity to sponsor………….
Daily Data
Days left until John O’Groats | 258 |
Route miles walked | 0 |
Estimated miles until John O’Groats | 0 |
Miles walked including evenings and rest days | 0 |
Counties walked through | 0 |
Number of walking companions so far | 0 |
Number of stiles crossed | 0 |
Current sponsorship total | £418.75 |
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Support the Charities
To donate to any of the four charities, click here.