LEJOG 2017

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...

Poste Restante 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. 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'd heard about other LEJOGers using this service to forward supplies and clothing ahead to save them having to carry or buy everything en route. Essential supplies PR is mentioned in several LEJOG blogs and books yet frustratingly the authors offered no explanation as to how they actually went about setting this up; at best they would refer readers to the Post Office website's frustratingly vague/impossible to comply with instructions  http://www.postoffice.co.uk/mail/poste-restante "Please refer to the website" I then telephoned the  Royal Mail customer service line on  0345 774 0740, hung up, researched how to use their automated menu system and tried again: ...

LEJOG - THE BOOK I woke up this morning and the first words out of my mouth were "Don't be an arsehole today." I tried but it was difficult (I'm a professional telemarketer which scores highly on the a'hole scale). When I'm not doing office work I go walking in the country and make up stories about dangerous sea creatures, yogurt and passive-aggressive telemarketers. I thought it would be a good idea to combine these two hobbies into one - I don't mean being an arsehole while walking/writing, I mean writing a book while walking LEJOG.  The challenge: to write a book while walking 1,000 miles in 6 weeks. That's 166 miles a week. 24 miles per day. 8 hours per day at 3 miles an hour. 1 mile every 20 minutes. The book must be over 40,000 words. That's a minimum of 40 words a mile.   FAQs: 1) What does FAQ stand for? F*** Al Qaeda? Frequently assaulted queers? No, it's a symbol of laziness showing that the wr...

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...

Gear in grams I'm now going to talk about LEJOG gear with the fanaticism of a prepper reviewing shiny new kit. I said I wouldn't do that but that was when LEJOG was a year away  - now there's less than 3 months to go it's time to dispense with the existential bullshit and analyse  operational data . Which means gram counting.   Background: I am a thru-hiker not a "pure" bushcrafter or wild camper. Thru-hiking is a useful term from the US; it means an end-to-end hike (starting and finishing a trail in one season as opposed to hiking it in shorter sections). The UK needs updated terminology, so consider this a push in that direction. Bushcraft is a catch-all term for wilderness survival skills; fire making, shelter building, foraging, natural navigation, hunting, etc. While bushcraft skills can be useful, particularly when hiking light or ultralight with minimal equipment, it is not the primary focus of the thru-hike. Wild camping...