LEJOG 2017

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. ...

One person's trail trash is another's trail treasure The more often I explore, the more treasures I find. These happy discoveries are always a welcome surprise and the variety of the things I find amazes me and invites speculation on the history of the objects.  A friend helpfully displaying a roe deer skull In summer 2011 I found a TomTom satnav at the edge of a field near a busy road, thrown presumably from the window of a speeding vehicle by an enraged delivery driver inconvenienced by the infernal machine's contradictory instructions. At the end of the same field on the same evening I found one of those wide metal hoop fly fishing nets abandoned by a poacher, entangled on a barbed wire fence on the bank of the River Loddon, right under one of those aggressively written "Private No Fishing!" signs. Later that year, a little further along the same route, I found a large bag of sweets carelessly discarded by a child on Halloween, which I helped myself to. ...

Planning I want to try and avoid talking about my plans for LEJOG with the fanaticism of a prepper reviewing shiny new kit. And I want to keep this simple so there's less to screw up. The end-to-end on foot challenge breaks down into simple units which can be dealt with separately: experience, health and fitness, timescales, navigation, where to stay and what to carry. Note: the objective is to get there quickly by covering as much distance as possible as efficiently as possible. Experience I haven't done a thousand mile thu-hike before. 1,000 miles was my total mileage in 2016. Doing it in one go will be a different experience. I have some experience with multi-day walks involving O/S map navigation and rough camping - and I'm treating LEJOG in the same way, on a larger scale.   Health and fitness I've been distance walking since 2011 and have notched up a few thousand miles worth of experience. Training in 2016 laid the foundations for distance walking i...

2017 in miles, hours and boots Note: I wasn't planning on training for LEJOG until early 2018 with a proposed start date of 29th March. However in April an opportunity arose meaning I'm on for LEJOG this summer. Training has therefore been brought forward: January  29th December (Thursday) 2016, Training route,  24 miles , 6 hours 42. 2nd January (Monday) 2017, Training route,  24 miles , 7 hours 15. 8th January (Sunday) 2017, Basingstoke to Winchester,  23 miles , 7 (hard muddy) hours. 14th January (Saturday) 2017, Reading to Basingstoke via Calleva/Silchester, 7 hours, about  23 miles . 21st January (Worting Road to Kingsclere via Cottington's Hill/Hannington and back), 5 hours 45,  17.6  miles. 28th January (Saturday) (Cottington's Hill and back; hill training, 3 ascents) 6 hours 40,  22 miles . Turned my right ankle on a divot. Ouch. 29th January (Sunday) training route full circle (with various shortcuts)...

The boots intended for LEJOG 2018 arrived at my local Blacks on Wednesday 22nd March 2017, 1 year and 8 days before the intended start date. That might seem a bit premature but it isn't - here's why: Boots are a big deal. It took two years of experimentation to find what works; trial and mostly error cost between £700 and £1,000. When I got it wrong I suffered pain that can be quantified by the total number of 200 mg ibuprofen tablets taken to counter it (over 100), plus the disappointment of getting it wrong and the envy of seeing my walking buddy find the right pair. And now I've found boots that work I'm stockpiling in case the manufacturer does something cruel like change or discontinue the line. Time, money, pain, disappointment, envy - lessons that taught me to listen to my feet: New (left) and old after 6 months/470 miles. Getting it right matters because getting it wrong matters more.  My walking buddy and I walked the Great Glen Way in September ...

LEJOG or JOGLE? The idea of walking north until the end of the land fascinates me. So I'm a LEJOGer. Pat Jilks decided to walk the end-to-end from north to south and flew from Gatwick to Inverness, catching buses to Wick and John o'Groats. "It was just how I wanted to do it," she said, "and psychologically, I'd be walking towards home."   Why LEJOG? "Because it's there."  That famous quote has been attributed to George Mallory in his response to a journalist from the New York Times who asked him why he wanted to climb Mount Everest.  Because it's there is the sort of answer I expect an educated man like Mallory would have thrown at a reporter to shut him up. It's glaringly scant for a mountainous challenge like the first ascent of Everest, or even for LEJOG, and  I'd be doing Mallory's expedition a disservice to use that phrase out of context. Wade Davis t he historian who wrote  Into The Silence  ab...