LEJOG 2017

Doubt All the early enthusiasm has gone. Doubt creeps in to my thoughts. It suggests that spending too much time away from home - time away from loved ones, a month and a half off work unpaid that will drain away my finances - is a bad idea. Will I be able to cope with the schedule - 1,000 miles in 6 weeks? That means walking 24 miles a day, every day. For me, 24 miles is a standard training walk I can do drunk, backwards, at night in a hurricane. But not day after day after day. That is a different animal. I will need to become a different animal too. Forget the mile counting, I'll be walking on the clock. One third of my day needs to be walking. This is a 9-5 job. 8 hours a day. Done. If I can't do that I'm screwed. Why the schedule? The guys who are currently walking LEJOG are just taking too damn long. Day 60. Day 65. Day 70. Day 80...I don't have time for all that faffing! It's not in my nature to dawdle - and I'm not saying you guys are dawdling, b...

If you were to ask me "Why do you go walking?" I might reply "It's good exercise" or "I don't drive." Words I have used to describe walking - commute, exercise, travel, explore, freedom, challenge, escape, holiday, view and countryside - hint at an explanation. Individually these experiences accumulate to form a lasting impression that changes or refines my opinion about many subjects, and this is a curious side-effect of distance walking that draws me back to contemplate walks long after the fact.   To put it another way, walking is a series of revelations strung together in a long unbroken line. Components such as fitness, endurance and navigation lead the walker along this path but they are not the end, they are a means.  I like distance walking because of its (sometimes brutal) honesty. It feels good to be eroded by the land and by the weather, and by the rocks and trails I walk on. My layers are peeled away. Stripped back. ...