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

I've sprained my ankle. I misjudged a scramble, thought I had hold of a tree, and went right over on my left ankle so hard I couldn't believe I didn't hear a crack. The pain was instant and left me speechless. Anthony (thank God I wasn't on my own) had to haul me up by my backpack to get my feet back underneath me. The first, golden role of hiking: do not take your boots off. So we sat for a while, I chowed down all the different types painkiller I had in my bag, and with alternative options very thin on the ground, we walked on. It got less painful as we went - possibly thanks to the painkillers kicking in - and I covered the 2.5 miles we had left, but now I'm in my room and the boots had to come off to shower, it's swelling and turning purple in front of my eyes despite the ice pack and elevation. The first thing you're told if you arrive in A&E with this kind of injury- and lots of people do- is to rest it. But if I can walk tomorrow, I'm ge...

After three days spent pounding pavements, or at least trudging on tarmac, I spent my day off yesterday napping, eating and being very determinedly sedentary. The half-mile walk into town was enough to prove to me that my legs were not fully recovered from their endurance test. This morning dawned- not that I knew it, with two layers of blackout blind between me and the outside world, which was blissful- with a torrential downpour. The forecast was very clear in predicting that this would continue all day in both Drymen and Rowardennan, and this coupled with my left leg still feeling generally not-quite-right was sufficient excuse to walk the B-road rather than climb Conic Hill (and all the tree-trunks littering the route) for a wet and limited view of Loch Lomond. I was delighted to find a pavement runs the entire length of this B-road, presumably purely down to people like me who don't want to climb hills. It was a little muddy places but it was there, and I loved it for that...

I have walked over 63 miles in the last 72 hours and I really cannot impress upon you all enough how much of a terrible idea that was. I understand why elderly people pull those faces when trying to stand up now. Everything in my legs hurts.  But hey, I have the day off tomorrow! In all seriousness, this was pretty idiotic of me. The guy whose route I'm following had to neck painkillers en route to finish the day I've just done, and I think in my head I thought a day off in Edinburgh (which he didn't have) would mean I didn't have it so bad, but anyone with half a thought could probably have predicted this wouldn't be the case. I possibly also thought I'd be all fit and good at walking by now, which I am, but that doesn't really stop it from hurting your feet when you spend virtually all day walking on tarmac for three days, and I think may have made it worse because now I walk faster and stop less. To make it up to my feet, I've taken a look at Thur...

A second day walking on tarmac canal towpaths all day has really begun to get to my feet, my knees and my ankles. Although some of that could also be the fact that I've walked nearly 40 miles in two days. Another day of pretty canal-side flowers with the occasional view, divided by lunch at the Falkirk Wheel. There used to be a ladder of 11 locks to get from the Union Canal to the Forth and Clyde, but instead they now have a pretty swish-looking wheel with a pair of boat-sized canal sections at either end of a diameter, which rotates- quite slowly- to take you from top to bottom. I'm sure if I'd had the time or inclination to look around the exhibition I'd have been more impressed. I really haven't much else to say so I'll keep it short, especially as I'm sitting in the house to use the wifi due to issues with the extender in my private outbuilding! Distance walked: 20.56 Time taken: 6h exactly Percentage completed: 71.9% Miles left to walk: 317 Mi...

I walked along a canal all day today, which is quite something. I haven't walked along a canal since the Grand Western on my way into Somerset (as far as I remember, anyway), and I've yet to have a whole day on a towpath- and now I get two in a row! By the end of tomorrow I'll have walked all but two miles of the Union Canal (I didn't go into central Edinburgh just for the sake of walking the whole thing) and part of the Forth and Clyde. The Union Canal is quite special because its engineer displayed a special kind of single-minded stubbornness in taking an idea to its logical extreme which I admire deeply. When building a canal, putting in locks to deal with ascents or descents is time-consuming and expensive, which is why aqueducts and tunnels happen. The guy responsible for the Union Canal simply took this to heart and the whole length of the canal is at 73m above sea level. When it was built there was not a single lock in its entire course. What this means is th...

I had a friend for my walk today! Dan lives in Edinburgh and is kindly hosting me, saving me a couple of nights in a B&B or youth hostel, and also came out on a bus marathon to join me for the 14 miles back in. After a bit of a struggle identifying the road we wanted to take, which looked off-puttingly like someone's driveway, we had a nice walk across a lot more contour lines than I was expecting, but at least along a nice obvious track. We accidentally herded some calves along for a while before noticing their mothers trotting quite quickly along behind us, which was slightly alarming- my only real rule for cattle is "do not get between a cow and her calf"- but between us we sorted the situation out. I had my first encounter with Scottish peat bog, which was very similar to English peat bog: wet and not fun to walk on. Once we made it around the hill, there was a decent path, which made it all rather better. From there, we had a road walk into Balerno, where we ...

Ah, another supremely forgettable day. I'm writing this a good four hours after arriving because I'm bored by the very idea. It's all my own fault- I was so worried about non-existent footpaths when I planned the routes in Scotland that today was virtually all road-walking and you really don't see as much that way. I had a day off in Peebles! Things happened which I cannot share here but if you speak to me in person I may share the story. I don't want to say too much, but honestly it's a tragicomic farce with an unbelievable heroine (me, naturally, I'm telling the story), a post-modernist take on plot and an ending that will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew. The Guardian would give it five stars. Heck, they'd give it six if they could. Other than that, I spent a lot of time in Costa, had a bewildering experience in the local museum/art gallery, which included a museum of museums (so meta) and hid from the local the-English-are-no...

Ah, me, I have so little to say about today's walk. I've almost forgotten it already. It wasn't bad at all, just not all that exciting. I was pleased about one thing: the path I was worried may not exist ran from a car park, and at this car park was an information board showing local walks, one of which was the exact path I'd picked and going to Three Brethren, a summit where I could pick up the Southern Upland Way. I should have been more suspicious of the name "Southern Upland Way" but for some reason it sparked nothing in my mind when I was plotting the routes. Of course it meant I spent well over an hour climbing to get out of the valley Selkirk is in. Once I got to the top, I more or less walked along a ridge, with an occasional generous loop to avoid summits- the way-designers were clearly of my way of thinking- along a nice, obvious track. I caught up with one other walker at around lunchtime, and trotted along with him for long enough to be told ...

Land's End is, I trust you are all aware, the South-West-most tip of Cornwall and thus, by extension, the UK. John O'Groats, or rather, Duncansby Head, is the North-East-most tip of Caithness and thus, by extension, the UK. In general, a journey from Land's End to John O'Groats should, therefore, mostly go North-Easterly in direction. In the South, I usually managed that, or at least ended my day in a place at least either North or East of where I'd started. Recently, there's been a lot of West in my walking, mainly thanks to the fact that the Pennine Way and my journey to it took me rather too far to the East. There's going to be even more West after Edinburgh because I'm crossing the country to Fort William to avoid the Cairngorms, which are beautiful but rather sparsely populated (despite what some guy in Bellingham tried to tell me, you cannot easily cross them without camping or a car). Today, though, I have finished in a place disti...