Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other: From Land's End to John O'Groats

On my last post, someone  (not naming any names) asked how long the walk to Table Mountain was. It was 4.07 miles according to my GPS.  The graphs on my GPS are utterly hilarious because the elevation graph is almost exactly what a small child would draw for a mountain, and the pace graph is an almost exact inverse. On Saturday (yes, over a week ago, but who's counting?) my friend Sarah and I walked nearly 11 and a half miles and in that time climbed five mountains (she says).  I should probably have looked at the maps before agreeing to this route because it turns out that when the contour lines get too close together, I get grumpy.  It didn't help that the route description kept telling us to stop and admire panoramic views which were completely obscured by mist which bordered on fog.  There was a good long period where, because I had been not-sensible and hadn't downloaded the maps beforehand, we walked along what felt like the top of something with no vi...

So on Friday my friend Sarah came all the way from Oxford to the Brecon Beacons to climb some mountains with me.  We had a lovely time.  On Friday, what with all the travelling, we stuck to a nice short little stroll up Table Mountain (a mere 451m), which I still managed to pretend was training because I carried an 8kg pack. I think my LEJOG pack may end up weighing a little more than I anticipated, because the 8kg was base layers, pyjamas, water, suncream, toothbrush and snacks - almost exactly what I'm planning to take on LEJOG, but on LEJOG I'm aiming to carry rather more food with me.  Because, let's face it, snacks are a large part of my motivation to walk long distances. Anyway, we had a pretty nice day for our walk - a very mild 9-10 degrees and clear-ish skies, meaning we did get a bit of the advertised panoramic views from the top of table mountain, although not quite as far as Abergavenny.  We ate our lunch at the top, sauntered down, and were rewarded ...

I am writing this post somewhat late.  The walk itself was on Monday, and it is now Sunday.  There have been lots of excuses, a reasonable number of hours spent at work, and a lot more walking since then, so I'm behind in my log already and it's only post number five.  This cannot happen on The Walk itself! On Monday, fresh off seven straight days of work, I got up late and then remembered I was going to do a seven-and-a-half hour walk and had no food in the house, and a twenty minute drive to the start of the walk.  A marvellous beginning, of course.  As a result, with sunset at half five, I set off on my proposed seven-and-a-half-hours of walking at 10am.  Leaving me precisely the correct number of hours of full daylight, assuming no stops or rests and an average pace of 3mph with a pack of 6kg(ish).  This obviously made the whole thing rather more anxiety-ridden than I'd like. Nonetheless I set off along the cliffs - noting it was rather windy, ...

I planned my own route for today and it was an absolute triumph: one mile of road walking, five miles of woods and golf course, a dead sheep, one mile of clinging to barbed wire fences and praying that the bog didn't take one or both of my boots, and ten-and-a-bit miles dragging the weight of half a field of mud with me. I swear, it was all going quite well up until the dead sheep.  Then there was "oh God this is very muddy", then "huh this has stopped being muddy and started being boggy" and then an awful lot of "surely this cannot carry on much longer" while I got mud up to my mid-thighs (I don't think they'd take a return on any of my kit any more, somehow) and tried desperately to remember that you get out of quicksand by going horizontally, not vertically.  This was followed by a footpath that more closely resembled a stream, but which at least had clearly visible stone not very far below the surface of the water, a bit more trucking thr...