Day 32: familiar surroundings

Day 32:

Day 32: Inverness. I was up at 5:30 and ready to go at 6. I was running low on supplies and there were no shops between Carr Bridge and Inverness so breakfast consisted of a can of coke and a handful of chocolate peanuts. This was not enough energy to get me to the end and by the time I was in sight of the Great Glen and Black Isle I was feeling faint. However that was my only problem today; I walked from Tomatin to the familiar surroundings of Inverness in 5 hours 10, something like 15 to 17 miles. I picked up the last poste restante package and am now in my B&B on Ardconnel Street where I've stayed with Sarah before opposite the Tattoo studio where we've had some work done, and it feels an awful lot like home away from home. Did I mention it's got cold? So - there are only 120 miles left to JOG - 5 days and I'm done. Then I can have a real holiday! I'll bloody need one!

DAY 33

Left to right: the Beauly Firth, Inverness, Kessock Bridge, Black Isle, the Moray Firth. The photo doesn't do this spectacular scene justice. The Great Glen is out of shot on the left.

A note about the blog

I must be the only LEJOGer without a smart phone. This means I don't have the ability to update this blog when I'm on the trail. My support team back home kindly offered to update the blog for me, so this will be communicated by text message and written up on my behalf. It will therefore be brief and without photos. I will expand on this when I get back from my journal entries, dictaphone recordings and photo journal. The detailed account will be published as a book which will be available on Amazon.

Charity

Thank you to everyone who has made a donation to Helping Hands for the Blind, a respectable local charity. You can make a donation here. Using Gift Aid, the charity is able to claim an additional percentage of each donation from the government as part of the Gift Aid scheme.  

While I am not tracking how much has been raised, the charity themselves may wish to do that; leaving a note with your donation such as "LEJOG" will help them do that. To be frank, it's more important that they receive donations than it is for me to take credit; they're actually doing something important whereas I am going on what could be described as a holiday.

My books

Lastly and leastly, I am an independent author. Writing is a pleasure even if reading it isn't! I will write an account of my LEJOG journey in the form of a book which hopefully will encourage other people to give LEJOG a try (and probably discourage many more). If you want a copy, the first batch will be given free of charge. Ask and you shall receive...

My other books are available on Amazon:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW TO USE POSTE RESTANTE (U.K.)

Poste restante is a free service where you can forward mail including parcels to a post office in the UK which you will then collect at a later date. I used Poste Restante to forward supplies and clothing to six different Post Offices between Land's End and John O'Groats. If you want to use Poste Restante in the UK but don't know how to set it up, here's how I did it: First you need to know four things: 1. The address of the Post Office you would like to use. If you're sending letters, any Post Office should accept your request. If you're sending a parcel, you will need to select a larger Post Office which has the space to store it. Select the largest Post Office in the area you intend to visit. This is important. Note: you will need to pay regular postage charges on whatever you send. 2. You need to give them a date on which you expect to pick up your mail. If you cannot give a precise date, give a range, preferably no more than two weeks. 3. You need...
Read more

LEJOG - the route

Image
Navigating from Land's End to John o'Groats There is no official route between LE and JOG for walkers. If there was it would include the South West Coast path, Offa's Dyke, the Pennine Way, the West Highland Way, the Great Glen Way and maybe one day the Inverness to JOG trail. Those trails are absolutely fine unless you want to get the job done quickly. So all of the above are out of the question for me.  I like the DIY aspects of route planning because I can choose the most direct, efficient and safe route between two points using a combination of national trails, footpaths, lanes, minor and major roads, national cycle routes and any other footway that helps me get to where I'm going. That way I can avoid pointless ups and downs ("PUDs*"), unnecessary zig-zags** and adding unnecessary mileage to this already long distance walk.   Route planning on this scale is new to me and it's thrown up additional challenges beyond that which I have experi...
Read more

Kit for a thousand mile walk

Image
Travel light, freeze at night Distance is proportional to the amount of weight carried over time. The less weight I'm carrying the longer I'll be able to walk therefore the further I can travel. There ought to be a mathematical formula out there to demonstrate this...if you know what that is, please comment with a link.  The ruling principle of kit selection has therefore been: TRAVEL LIGHT. I really like the saying  Travel light, freeze at night . Luckily it's mid summer and I have a down sleeping bag which kept me warm enough in February when it was demonstrably colder, yet the principle of less is more is sound. A simple and effective rule is: "You can reduce the weight of an object 100% by not taking it." That includes spares of ANYTHING. There are many excellent websites and videos about ultra-light thru-hiking made by thru-hikers which are available free online, particularly from the USA* - so I won't labour the point. But I w...
Read more