So – why exactly did I do this walk?
The first thing that people ask when you say that you’re doing something odd, like walking 1,500 miles from one end of the country to the other, is “why?”. Then people ask “what was it like”? And want to know all about what a day in the life of an “end to ender” entailed. So on this page, I’ve gathered a few of my practical experiences together, to give a general impression of why I did the walk and what it really was like.
The practical details of the walk are on the “prep” pages
Scroll down the page to see what’s on this part of the website.
(NB Links and photos need to be changed)
Click here to read about why I did this walk 
There were five main reasons why I chose to do this walk, and why now was the right time to do it. Read this section to find out what they were.
Click here to find out how this compared with expectations..
Walking from one of the country to the other isn’t like anything I’d ever done before. It wasn’t like a normal backpacking trip – in fact it was more like going to work.
This section explains why.
Click here to find out about a few of the practicalities of walking so far
This is is a bit of an eclectic section detailing some of the things that I considered in preparing and doing my walk. Like whether to use trekking poles or not. Click the link to be de-mystified.
Click here to find out about coping with loneliness
Did I take a copy of War and Peace to read in the evenings, and help while away those idle hours?
Actually the answer is no, but to find out how I coped with 11 weeks of isolation, click the link
Click here to find out about the hazards – real and imaginary..
Being a bit of a catastrophist, I tended to imagine all the things that might go wrong on my walk and plan for them in advance. In the end, the things that i had worried about didn’t happen, but the things that I hadn’t, did.
Get all the gory details here..
Click here to find out about the weather
In a word – cold and wet.
Well that’s three words but you get the idea. So click the link to find out about the various shades of cold and wet that the country served up as I was walking
Click here to find out about keeping clean
They say that cleanliness is next to godliness in which case I must have been distinctly unholy.
But this section has the details about how I kept me and my possessions moderately hygienic.
Click here to learn about how I saw in the dark..
And it wasn’t just a case of eating carrots..
At the start of the walk, it was dark by 7, so I needed torchlight. But by the end it was light all night. Find out how I coped, here.
Click here to understand how I planned for the unexpected
In line with my catastrophist philosophy, I tried to think about everything that I would do in an emergency and put plans in place to cope. In the end, I got is mostly (but not completely) right. The details are here.
Click here to find out about the best- and the worst bits
Every expedition like this has its good bits and its bad bits. This section has them all – warts and all.
Click here to learn about all the wildlife I saw on my journey
In simple terms – I saw a lot of plants but very few exciting animals. But that may be because I tend to go around in a bit of a daze a lot of the time. You can read about what I did see, here.
Click here to find out about coping with midges
The only good thing about midges is these tiny pests don’t carry diseases. But there isn’t anything else. Click here to read about the best way I found, out of five options, for dealing with them.
Click here to find out about how I tried and failed to like slugs
Sadly, try as I might I couldn’t get to like this slimy creatures. And I did have lots of practice, as I encountered them everywhere. You can read my molluscan observations here.
Click here to see a list of the Long Distance Paths that I connected up to make my route
I tried to stick to long distance paths where I could to make route-planning easier. In the end I used all or parts of 17 of them. The are all listed here.
Click here to find out about some of the people I met
I met hundreds of people on the way – far too many to list and describe them all. But some of my general reflections are here.
Click here to see what I might do differently, if I were thinking of doing it again
I should add that I’m not in a hurry to rush out and do the hike again. But if I were, there are a few things I might do differently next time. They are discussed here..
Click here to find out what coming home at the end was like
It was great to be back and to return to normal life.
But there were some unexpected physical – and psychological – side effects too. They’re all here..
Click here to find out about some of the people I met
I met hundreds of people on the way – far too many to list and describe them all. But some of my general reflections are here.
Click here to read some of my impressions and observations from the walk
When you do something mammoth and unusual like this, you always notice things along the way that you hadn’t expected (and also realise that some of your preconceptions are wrong, too).
Some of my closing observations are here.
The reasons why..
For me, there wasn’t any single reason why I decided to do this walk. It was a combination of factors. The first reason was, simply, that I like walking. I’ve been doing long distance walks since I was a teenager, and Land’s End to John O’Groats (or “LEJOG” as it is sometimes called) is the ultimate goal for many UK hikers.
The second reason was that I actually like this country and wanted to explore it first hand, at “ground level”. I was also aware that in September 2014, there was going to be a referendum on Scottish independence and I quite wanted to do it while the country was still intact.
Thirdly, I cycled the LEJOG route for charity in 2005, and had really enjoyed the challenge. When I finished that journey, I realised that one day I would have to come back and do it “properly” – in other words, on foot.
Click this button to download a report of my 2005 bike ride (4 MB):
LEJOG bike ride 2005 - 4 MB PDF downloadAnd an important fourth reason was that our two sons had both just left home and gone off either to University or the world of work. Both of them had been active Scouts, and I often think their choices in life were shaped at least as much by what they learned through Scouting, as by what they learned at school. So I felt I wanted to give something back, and with the 2015 Jamboree coming up, fundraising for this worthwhile cause seemed like the obvious right thing to do. There are more details at the “Scouts” page.
Perhaps the fifth, and last, reason, was the most surprising. The advent of electronic mapping tools, like “ViewRanger” appealed to two of my main interests – mapping and technology. So the opportunity to use electronic mapping, and to be able to share my experiences as I walked through new media like Facebook, Twitter and WordPress blogs, really appealed to me.
So with these drivers, and with all the necessary permissions in place (see “prep” page), there was really was no excuse for not setting off. I duly packed my bags, said my goodbyes, and headed off into the unknown (well Cornwall) on Monday 24 March 2014.
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What was it like? – Comparisons
The second thing that people always ask, after “why?” is always “what was it like”? Well this section will give you a bit of a feel for what it’s like to live in a tent and out of a rucksack, for 79 days on the run. This is a fairly random collection of thoughts that I accumulated along the way, and as I reflected on it afterwards.
I suppose that it was not really “like” anything else I’ve ever done before. In some ways, of course, it was “like” backpacking the West Highland Way (which I did in 2012), but incomparably longer. I actually thought of it more as my job for three months. Just as I would normally get up, go to the office, do a day’s work and come home, in a process that would repeat itself endlessly, on my walk I essentially did the same. Got up, put the tent away, walked, put the tent up, got something to eat, wrote my blog, and went to bed. Then repeated the next day. It was such a long undertaking that the end was never really in sight, it wasn’t really helpful to think of it in any short term sort of way.
Before I set off, people were generally supportive – or incredulous – but some of the blogs i read were a bit less encouraging. One remarked that his body was totally “wrecked” by the time he got to the end. Another recalled being ill through exhaustion all the way up the Cape Wrath trail, near the end. And yet another rather sobering blog pointed out that if you put one teaspoonful of milk into a pint bottle every day, it would take as long to fill the bottle as it would take you to complete the walk.
In the end, I rather stopped listening and reading – with a thing like this you can get over-informed to the point that you never set off. So I just prepared as best I could, picked up what useful hints I could, and ignored the rest.
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Walking
Strangely enough, I didn’t find the walking too difficult. I actually found the effort involved in writing a blog, finding accommodation, getting food, and getting the tent up and down much more hassle-some. Actually setting off and walking was quite a relief as I could escape into a bit of a reverie and just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. With electronic maps and GPS, navigation wasn’t an issue, so sometimes I had the strange sensation of being a passenger, just going along for the ride.
Apart from blisters and other minor-ish ailments (see “health” page), the main source of physical pain as I walked was my rucksack. Because it was so heavy, I knew from my West Highland Way experience that my shoulders would be rubber bare if i didn’t protect them. So I cut the end off my Karrimat and made them into shoulder pads, which I wore under my T-shirt. They were very effective but when soaked in sweat, started to get smelly. So I sealed them in freezer bags to keep them clean, and that seemed to work. So I didn’t get shoulder-blisters, but I did find it very hard to get the pack weight balanced just right. It seemed to press on my left shoulder unduly hard, no matter how I adjusted it. I even went into a sports shop in Ambleside to see if they could help – a really knowledgeable assistant spent ages readjusting all the straps – but it didn’t seem to make any difference. In the end I just put up with the pain pretty much for the whole duration of my walk. Occiasionally fortified with ibuprofen..
By the way, in terms of the practicalities of walking, I was always being asked if I was using trekking poles. A lot of the other walkers I met were using them, but I didn’t. I had used them once, when I did the Cotswolds Way, but I really found they just got in the way and I always felt I was in danger of tripping over them. Plus, they were extra weight. There were a couple of times when I wished I’d had them – the first was on the Cornish coast path, where I think they might have eased some of the pressure on my knees as I went up and down the cliffs. And the second was when I was doing river crossings in Wales and Scotland, where an “extra pair of legs” would have been helpful. But mostly I didn’t regret not having them.
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Entertainment and loneliness
I worked out before I set off that I would probably be walking about 8 hours a day (and in fact that turned out to be almost exactly right). So if I slept for 8 hours a night, I sort of thought I have 8 hours a day when I would be sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I wondered if I should take videos on my iPad to watch in the evening, or electronic books to read. Or maybe take “real” books and do like one of my friends did on the South Downs Way – tear out the pages as he read them to save weight.
In fact I never had time for any of this. As I was walking, I was busy looking where I was going, or thinking about the practicalities of the next stage in they walk, or just day-dreaming. In the evenings, I was busy putting up the tent, getting clean, finding something to eat, and writing my blog. I was occupied fully 100% of the time and was never bored, lonely, or with time on my hands.
I thought it might be a bit difficult to make a pint and a pie last 3 hours in the pub or cafe in the evening but in reality it wasn’t a problem,. Most of the pubs I visited were out of season and midweek, and generally they seemed to be have me filling up some of the empty seats and giving the locals someone to talk to (or to talk about). I always had my laptop with me for blogging, so once I’d finished that I tended to use it to do a bit of surfing, mostly to check out Googloe Earth views of the next day’s route, or trying to find accommodation for the future, or checking out my various ailments (always a mistake!).
I kept up with the news on an occasional basis from the BBC news app, but really didn’t miss being immersed in the day to day hurly burly of 24 hour news.
Some people ask about music – and I did see quite a lot of other walkers who had headphones plugged into their ears, listening to music (or podcasts) as they walked. I must admit I did do the same, quite a lot, on my LEJOG bike ride and I did it on a couple of occasions when I had long road-walks on the LEJOG hike. But more often than not, I didn’t bother. The wires were just another bit of kit that I had to manage, and I found that putting headphones on and off when was raining became quite fiddly. Plus when I was road-walking I liked to keep an ear open for traffic.
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Hazards
Generally, walking in the UK is pretty safe. You’re not likely to get kidnapped, blasted in a hurricane, or attacked by bears.
But I’ve come across plenty of lesser hazards on my various walks in this country over the years. Probably top of my list of things I don’t like encountering are uncontrolled dogs. Most dog-owners are responsible but they do seem to escape from control sometimes and in one practice hike before I set off, I was attacked no less than four times by different sets of loose dogs in the space of an hour. So I think this was my number 1 worry on my walk. As it happened, I never once had any problems with dogs over the whole 79 days of the walk – much to my relief.
My next worry was about landowners who for various reasons didn’t want me on their land. This occasionally happens even if you’re on a right of way. But, again, it was never a problem on LEJOG. Possibly because I was nearly always on rights of way or by-roads, and in Scotland the “right to roam” allows free access.
And third on my list are cows. They are normally pretty peaceable but I’ve found they can become excitable when in large groups or at dusk.
And because they are much bigger than me, I usually try and avoid walking through large groups of them if I can. On a couple of occasions on LEJOG, I couldn’t avoid them and I did get nuzzled by ferocious Friesians which was a bit alarming. Especially as my escape route – over the nearest fence – was a long way off. Anyway, I escaped unscathed and no harm was done.
The path itself was extremely varied – ranging from trackless upland wasteland, to well made up gravel tracks on only railway lines. I didn’t encounter too many hazards from the path – although river crossings were a bit tricky and I learned the hard way that the best way to get across is just to keep your boots on and plunge in – accepting that you will get wet feet. And in the far north of Scotland, i was acutely aware that I was in a remote pathless area and if I’d slipped over a boulder or got stuck in a bog, I cold have been in a very tricky position indeed.
As it turned out, it was an unexpected hazard – giant hogweed – that caused me the most problems. You can read about it in the “health” page.
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What was the weather like?
Britons are obsessed with the weather and I suppose I’m no different. After the miserable winter of 2013-14, which had resulted in my practice walks frequently more accurately resembling scuba dives, I didn’t have high expectations. So I kept an eye on short term and long term weather forecasts all along my hike – and beforehand I packed as much wet weather gear as I could reasonably carry (see packing list).
When I set off from Lizard, it started to rain hard within 30 minutes of departure. And it rained pretty much all of the next 2 weeks, with occasional slightly drier interludes lasting a few hours. I developed coping strategies – mostly by wearing all my goretex waterproofs and just a thin layer underneath to minimise sweat – and tried to get used to it. But by the time I reached Minehead, the weather really bucked up and I had a much drier interlude, with plenty of sun, which lasted all the way to Cumbria. Once in the Lakes, I had a week of unremitting rain which, it has to be said, isn’t entirely unusual, and the hills still looked lovely. And of the four weeks I spent hiking through Scotland, I only really had a couple of torrentially wet days. Quite amazing.
So although I did get long spells of decent weather, it was never really warm. I only recall actually feeling warm once on my hike – and that was on the short stretch from Glasgow to Milngavie. generally the temperature was between 5 and 15 C and although I never actually encountered any falling snow, it did feel pretty sleety on a couple of occasions.
So I think on balance, the weather was cooler and wetter than I’d expected, but not as bad as my worst fears conjured up during the preceding wet winter. And I felt that the waterproofs and warm weather gear I’d taken worked just about as I’d hoped they would during the hike. Only on one occasion – on the upper stages of the ascent of Scafell Pike, did I fill that i could have done with another warm layer to put on.
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Keeping clean
There’s nothing worse than feeling dirty and smelly when you’re hiking. That was one of the reasons why I chose to use recognised campsites where I could, rather than wild-camping: so I could get a shower in the evening. This did make a huge difference to my quality of life, and it meant that my hiking gear lasted longer between needing to be washed.
The trouble with using the washing facilities on campsites is that you have to bring your own towel and shower gel – so I carried a very small flannel (which I could never get dry, so getting dry was more an exercise of water re-distribution) and a tiny bottle of shower gel (which I refilled if i could when I stayed at B&Bs).
I didn’t really try and wash clothes as I walked, simply because it was impossible to get anything dry. Rather, I did my washing roughly once a week, when I stayed at a B&B. there were usually radiators or other heaters where i could get stuff dry again.
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Daylight and darkness
When I set off from Lizard, it was still early spring, and it was normally fully dark by about 7 pm. So although i could walk in daylight, trips to the pub, and moving round the campsite in the evenings was done in darkness. I carried a small Petzl LED head torch so I could see what I was doing and it met my needs perfectly – lightweight and compact, and extremely economical on batteries. In fact the same 3 AAA batteries lasted the whole trip. It wasn’t very bright – but I didn’t want that – so may not have been suitable for hiking at night. But it was fine for what I needed. And I did have a backup – the torch on my iPhone would get me out of an emergency if needed – although it does drain the batteries very fast.
Because it was dark in the evenings, the biggest navigational problem I had was actually in getting back from the pub in the dark – especially if it was a complex 2 or 3 mile route.
So I took the precaution of recording my route on my “ViewRanger” app on my iPad on the way out, so I could just retrace my steps on the way back. And to avoid glare, I inverted the colours by triple-clicking the “home” button.
By the time I reached Scotland, my northerly journey and the progress of the seasons meant that it didn’t actually really get dark any more – it was still light enough to see what I was doing at the campsite until at least 10pm. And at the very north, it was so light that the birds sang all night and it was fully daylight again by 3:30 am. This meant I tended to wake early, which wasn’t too much of a problem as I often had long distances to cover and needed the time.
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Planning for the unexpected
I am a “belt and braces” type-person, so as you read the packing list, you’ll probably see that there are duplicates of quite a lot of the essential bits of kit that I was carrying – and that included spare walking shoes and even a spare rucksack (albeit it was the dry-sack for my sleeping bag which doubled up as a rucksack and which i used to carry my blogging equipment to the pub in the evening).
So I felt I was reasonably well prepared for a major equipment failure, and could probably struggle on with my backups for a day or two till I could get replacements.
I was actually more worried about having an accident and nobody knowing where I was. I wondered about carrying a “SPOT” satellite emergency transceiver, but they are expensive, heavy and I’d heard reports of the emergency services being “scrambled” too often as a result of false alarms.
The “Buddy Beacon” facility which comes as part of the “ViewRanger” app actually provided a similar functionality and at no additional cost. The details are all on the “keeping in touch” page. I knew that people all over the world were following me, so that if I stopped for too long or disappeared, the alarm would eventually get raised and people would know where to look.
I also phoned home in the evenings (or used FaceTime for video if there was wi-fi but no mobile signal) so my wife knew that I’d got safely to where I was supposed to be, and where I was going the next day.
This all worked fine except in parts of the far north of Scotland. Up there, there was no mobile phone signal, so my Buddy Beacon wouldn’t work. But usually I could get on line at the end of the walk, and send an email to let people know where I was. The only place where I felt really vulnerable was on the hike from Dundonnell to Knockdamph. I knew there would be no mobile phone signal for most of the route, and none at the bothy (I checked the coverage map before I set out). I also knew there was a difficult river crossing in the middle and that if the river was in spate, I wouldn’t be able to get across. If that was the case, I would have been a day late in getting to the bothy, because I would have had to make a massive diversion and wild-camp midway.
So my wife knew she wouldn’t hear from me at the end of the day, and may not at the end of the next day either, if I was delayed by the river. But this was also the remotes stretch of the walk, over a rocky bog with no path, and no other people about. So it was probably also the section where I was most likely to have an accident. So if I hadn’t called after the second day, nobody would know if I was delayed by the river or because I’d fallen. But failure to call after the second day wouldn’t automatically mean the emergency services should be called, either, because I might well have made it to the bothy but unable to let anyone know i had.
In the end, none of these catastrophes happened. The river wasn’t in spate, and I didn’t fall. But in retrospect I think I should have made a plan – probably an agreement that if nobody had heard from me by noon on the next-but-one day (by which time even if I was delayed I knew I would be able to reach the shooting lodge at Oykel Bridge), then rescue should be called. And if I was injured, but not life-threateningly, I reckoned that I could probably survive for a couple of days at least with the food and drink I was carrying and by getting into my sleeping bag and wrapping myself in my tent (on the assumption that I was sufficiently badly injured that I wouldn’t be able to assemble it properly).
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The best – and worst – bits
I can’t lie. The best part of this walk was getting to the end. The sense of achievement was immense, and the relief at being able to stop, have a cup of tea in bed, be with the family again, and return to civilization was incomparable.
But along the way, there were lots of other highlights. Getting to the top of Ben Nevis was one, and crossing the halfway mark in Wigan was another. I enjoyed some of the towns I visited along the way, too – Chester and Lancaster were among my favourites.
But, aside from getting to the end, the other point that gave me the greatest sense of satisfaction was reaching Oykel Bridge shooting lodge, in the far north west of Scotland. This marked the end of the toughest section of the hike – up the Cape Wrath trail from Kinloch Hourn. At Oykel Bridge I could get back on line, and send an email letting people know that I was safe. And from then on, it was a relatively easy walk to the end.
And the low-points? There weren’t all that many, really. I was pretty worried early on when my knees hurt so much. But Ibulieve gel and glucosamine soon dealt with that. And the pain from the giant hogweed burns, which I got in mid wales and which stayed with me all the way to Scotland, was a bit unpleasant. But not unmanageable. I also didn’t enjoy the hike up Scafell Pike all that much because the weather was so poor – but the elation at getting to the summit made up for it. And I found the days to and from Dundonnell remote, hard, and sightly nerve-wracking because of the lack of communications links.
But the scenery was terrific – particularly the spectacular glimpse of the Coigach mountains, including Stac Pollaidh, from above Glen Douchary – and this partly relieved the tension. In fact I think the least enjoyable day’s walking was actually from Monmouth to Pandy, in Wales. The scenery was unspectacular – a lot of farmland which i always find a bit tedious – and I felt to be lacking in energy and lethargic. It was only later that i worked out it was because I hadn’t had a proper evening meal; two days previously – something I took pains not to repeat.
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Natural history
On a trek of this duration, and being outdoors pretty much 24/7, I might have expected to come across lots of interesting wildlife. But, if I’m honest, I didn’t. In fact one of my sponsors e-mailed me to ask why I hadn’t blogged about interesting animals along the way and the simple answer was it was because I hadn’t actually seen any.
I think the two most interesting animals I saw were a hare, in Cornwall, a pine marten in Scotland, and a peregrine falcon on the banks of the Clyde (albeit the latter was from the comfort of an RSPB hide set up specially for viewing it). I saw toads, a few deer and even a lizard, but nothing truly extraordinary. I was desperate to see an otter, or a kingfisher, lurking on the banks of one of the many rivers i walked along, but I wasn’t in luck. I think my lack of success is mostly because I’m particularly unobservant, but also partly because what wildlife there is in the UK tends to keep itself well hidden.
The flora were more interesting. When I set off, it was pretty much still winter. The trees were bare, and just a few daffodils were poking their heads into the daylight. But as I walked north, spring caught up with me, and seemed to follow me all the way to the end. First the bluebells came out – I first noticed them in Bude, Cornwall, and they were sill in full bloom when I got to Loch Lomond.
The trees slowly came into leaf as I walked, too. When the sun shone, and the new leaves shimmered iridescent green, the emerald display was dazzling. I think the most impressive were along the Annandale Way, in the hills near Moffat.
And talking of trees, I discovered that all our woodlands have different smells. Although pine forests and spruce forests look very similar, they smell completely different. Pine forests, unsurprisingly, smell of pine, whereas spruce smells like the scented candles you get in posh shops in Covent Garden. And birch woodland is different again. It has a fragrant apple-ish sort of scent, which is quite characteristic. And outside the forests, a lot of Scotland smelled of bog-myrtle, whereas Cumbria smelled of sheep, and Wales smelled of farmyards. I could almost tell where I was with my eyes closed, just by sense of smell!
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Midges
Midges are reckoned to cost Scotland’s tourist industry billions and I can see why. When you first pitch up a beautiful lochside campsite, with neatly manicured grass and warm sunshine, you will be delighted to see that you have the whole place to yourself. Nobody is about, and you quickly find out why.
From about the beginning of May to the end of September, the Scottish countryside is infested with midges. Like slugs, these microscopic mites don’t actually carry disease, but in many ways it’s a shame they don’t. If they carried malaria or the plague or something, then an eradication programme would probably have been started to get rid of them.
But they aren’t and there hasn’t been, so you just have to live with them. They cause intense pain through their bites – and because they live in swarms and are attracted to the carbon dioxide you exhale, you can quickly accumulate hundreds of bites, which feels a bit like being boiled in vinegar (well that’s what I think being boiled in vinegar would feel like).
There are literally hundreds of remedies for the midge plague but they fall roughly into four categories: chemicals which kill them when they land on you, oils which prevent them sticking to you or drown them when they do, airborne treatments like citronella candles to repel them, and physical barriers to keep them off your skin.
I’m not particularly keen on soaking myself in N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, nor on rubbing slimy oil on my skin (which gets on your clothes and sleeping bag and which can dissolve the tent fabric if you’re not careful). And carrying lots of candles wasn’t really practical (though I did have a nightlight but never used it for fear of setting the tent on fire).
So I adopted the barrier method (yes really) and wore a midge net over my head, then overtrousers, gloves, and cagoule to keep them off everywhere else. This was OK in the evenings for pottering round the campsite, but pretty unpleasant (from a sweatiness point of view) when walking hard. Fortunately, though, during the daytime, in high wind, or on the tops of mountains, the midges were dispelled so as I was walking, they only really became a problem if i stopped in a sheltered warm spot. But oh yes, at every campsite north of Milarrochy on Loch Lomond,there was no evening escape other than to shut myself in my tent, or go to the pub.
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Slugs
Because the weather in the UK is cool and damp, it encourages animals that like coll and damp to thrive. And nowhere is cooler and damper than the grass around a hiker’s tent. So I discovered that lurking in the undergrowth is a ubiquitous army of slugs, ready to pounce (well it’s a figure of speech) as soon as you pitch camp.
They were absolutely everywhere. I don’t think I ever camped anywhere and didn’t find at least one of these ghastly gastropods in or around my tent in the morning. they got inside my rucksack, and crawled between the inner and outer tents, where they were difficult to remove (but they did have to be removed because the consequences of tightly rolling up a tent with a slug squashed inside it are too awful to contemplate).
So I just had to put up with them and remind myself that, repulsive as they were, at least they didn’t carry any diseases. And I did sort of find their variety of size, colour and shape quite fascinating – from almost microscopic white specks, to gigantic orange and brown blobs. Worms (of which there were fewer) were altogether much duller are less varied, by comparison. But I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of these malicious molluscs.
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Long distance paths
I created my route by joining up long distance paths, and then filling in the bits with my own invented routes. In case you’re interested, the long distance paths that I walked all or parts of, from south to north, are as follows (those with the suffix “Connector” are my own inventions):
- South West Coastal Path
- Minehead Connector
- Celtic Way
- Summits of Avon
- Offas Dyke
- Wye Valley
- Snowdonia Gower
- Welsh coastal
- Mersey Connector
- Lancaster Canal
- Thirlmere Way
- Head to Head
- Scafell Connector
- Cumbria Way
- Carlisle Connector
- Annandale Way
- Border Connector
- Clyde Walkway
- Kelvin Walkway
- West Highland Way
- Nevis Connector
- North to the Cape (aka Cape Wrath Trail)
- Sutherland Trail
- Thurso Connector
In the end, I didn’t follow these routes slavishly – sometimes I had to cut out bits (e.g. parts of the South West path when my knees got too painful and I had to road-walk) and parts of the Cape Wrath Trail (when I found the extreme remoteness was getting just too challenging).
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People change with scenery
I met all sorts of interesting people along the way – both hikers like myself (though only two LEJOG-ers) and local residents. It’s impossible to characterise people according to where they live, I found there was so much diversity. But accents changed, of course, and in Wales, I found the local tongue charming to listen to but impossible to understand or read. And in Scotland, the accents grew heavier and heavier, the further west i travelled.
I did notice though that probably the friendliest people, and the most generous, were those in the north of England (and I’m not just saying that because I come from Yorkshire…). Read the “Scouts” blog, to learn in particular about the generosity of the people in Warrington.
One thing I did find is that there is a whole world going on out there between monday and friday which those of us stuck in offices all day never see. Towns are thriving, and a sort of parallel universe exists living and existing alongside, but never overlapping, the evening and weekend world I inhabit. And I did find, at the time of year I was walking outside they school holidays, that many of the popular paths were being trodden by clean-smelling newly-retireds, with time and energy on their hands. If you happened to overhear snippets of their conversations, they were almost inevitably talking about parsnip soup, or jam.
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What would I do differently?
Since I got back, this has been one of the most frequently asked questions. It’s a hard one to answer because in reality there isn’t a lot that I actually would change. the route was just right – visited all the interesting places I wanted to see, and generally allowed me to get to decent campsites.
For all the reasons set out in the “health” section, I don’t wish I’d been fitter before I set off and in fact I might have done a bit less training – especially walking long distances to work on hard pavements with work shoes on – before I set off.
The blogging got a bit tedious, but brought huge rewards. I really enjoyed sharing my experiences with the outside world, but it was a lot of work and finding places to power up and log on could get stressful. If I did it again, I might choose not to do a blog, or if I did just to use a simple system like FaceBook, which is much easier to keep updated. And if it weren’t for the weight and cost, I would seriously consider taking a mobile satellite broadband system. These have come down a lot in cost and weight even in the last year, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this became a realistic proposition within the next 4 or 5 years. It would also allow me to do more wild camping – something I’d like to do more of, especially in mountain areas.
If there were one generic thing I could change, though, it would be the weight of my pack. I think I would be even more ruthless in getting rid of stiff and, ideally, keep the weight down to about 15 kg / 33 lb
But I’ve done “LEJOG” twice now – once on a bike and once on foot. So, much as I love the UK, I might actually try somewhere a bit further afield. Somewhere a bit warmer and drier, perhaps. And I was looking at the 3000 km Te Araroa trail in New Zealand in an idle moment the other day. That would probably require another decade’s worth of negotiation..
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And afterwards?
I was fairly fortunate that I didn’t seem to suffer many after effects immediately once I’d completed the walk. I did get a strange case of restless leg syndrome, which kept me awake in bed at night, and worried me a bit until I realised it was actually a recognised syndrome. It went away after about a month.
The thick skin on the soles of my feet eventually rubbed off, so that just a few weeks later they were pretty much back to normal.
And I still get the occasional twinge in my lower back and hips – probably as a result the heavy pack i was carrying. I just hope it eventually gets better – but it may just be that the hike accelerated a condition I was going to get anyway as i got older.
Getting back into normal everyday life didn’t prove too hard. I didn’t have any difficulty at all in getting used to sleeping in a proper bed, traveling in a car, and being able to go to the shops whenever I wanted to.
It was almost as if it was someone else that had done the hike, not me. It was as if the contrast between my life when walking, and my normal life before and after, was too great for my mind to accommodate, so they stayed in separate compartments.
As I’d booked 4 months’ sabbatical leave, because I finished the walk quicker than I had expected, I had six weeks to recuperate before I went back to work. I enjoyed every second of it. the summer weather was decent, and I was able to properly relax and catch up with family and friends I’d neglected while I was away. As well as deal with the DIY items that had built up in my absence, too.
So the transition back to work wasn’t too shocking, though I do find myself gazing idly out of the window more often than I used to, wishing I was back on the road again..
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Impressions
The impressions I formed as I trekked north weren’t always about the sort of things you expect to be impressed by. Apart from the geography-dependent smells, I also found that wherever I walked and wherever I looked, even in the remotest regions, I could see electricity poles. You notice them when you’re trying to take photos and you find that it’s nearly impossible to get one without those vital but unattractive pylons lurking somewhere in the background. And I also noticed that outside the main cities, you never see or hear police cars. You get a completely distorted view of noise and of supposed crime when you live and work in cities. In Scotland, outside Glasgow, I think I only saw two other police cars in the whole month I was there.
When I cycled LEJOG in 2005, I noted in my blog at the end that I thought the UK was a country at ease with itself. Sadly, I didn’t feel that way after my walk. The recession, which gripped most of the world, still seemed to be in full swing in in large parts of the country. It felt like the country was struggling to come to terms with a monumental morning-after-the-night-before hangover. And in Scotland, the tensions over the referendum were tangible. A Glaswegian friend of mine advised me not to get drawn into a pub discussions about it, because views were so polarised you would be sure to offend someone or other. It was good advice and I heeded it. I think the scars of the referendum will take a very long time to heal.
So I had to ask myself – did I enjoy it. The answer is undoubtedly yes. It was mentally and physically the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but the rewards were immense. Not just in terms of the money I raised for the Scouts, but also in terms of the memories, in terms of the sense of achievement from overcoming adversity, and in terms of the people and landscapes I saw along the way.
because I had spent so long – at least five years – planning and anticipating the walk, there has been a bit of a sense of loss since I finished. The prospect of the walk always gave me something to look forward to and cheered me up on those days when life was being particularly challenging. Now I don’t have that, and am having to think about new horizons to daydream about. Perhaps travelling to remote parts of the world, exploring places that people don’t normally go.
I have no regrets whatsoever for doing the walk – despite the physical, mental and financial strains it placed on me and on those around me. I’m not rushing to find something to take its place, though someday I probably will. But until then, just watch this space…