Journeys by hiking, running, cycling and touring
It seems no one spotted the "deliberate" mistake in my last planning post - indeed I was even complimented on the reasonableness of my 24 day schedule. Except, if you'd added up the days for each section you'd have come up with 27, making it even more reasonable. It was only sitting down to start … Continue reading Planning the Cambrian Way – Part 3: Cardiff to Abergavenny (Stage 1)
I've now had a chance to walk through the route on Anquet, referring to the Cambrian Way book and the various blog accounts of the walk I'm using to assist in the planning. Not wanting to plunge into the detailed working out of daily walks and where to stop overnight at this stage - it's … Continue reading Planning the Cambrian Way – Part 2: The First Rough Plan
How do you go about planning such a long walk ? Leaving aside the doing the walk itself, which is a formidable enough challenge in its own right, the thought of also having to turn a blank sheet of paper into a fully formed plan for the walk would definitely scare some people off. For … Continue reading Planning the Cambrian Way – Part 1: The Approach
A week and a bit ago, I did a post asking for some views as to which of 4 possible options for my main long distance walk for next year I should do. Here are the results and the decision. Anyone who read the post carefully would have noticed that nowhere did I promise to … Continue reading Which Long Distance Walk for 2013 – The Results
It's time to start thinking about a long distance walk for 2013. I'm looking for something which is up to about 2-3 weeks long, and have got a shortlist: I originally intended to do the Cambrian Way in 2011 but even though I had 8 months off work, still couldn't find a big enough gap … Continue reading Which Long Distance Walk for 2013
I've been thinking a lot about ways to improve the Cumbria Way, with a suggested new northern end, some options for a new southern end, and a number of ideas for "quick fixes" to liven up the standard route. But now it's time to actually put my money where my mouth is and share the … Continue reading An Alternative Cumbria Way
In my last post I talked about my proposed new Northern End point for an amended Cumbria Way, and also discussed the merits and demerits of the other options. In the northern case, I felt the answer was pretty clear cut - to me there was one outstanding candidate for a revised end - the … Continue reading Fixing the Cumbria Way – Southern Endings and New Routes
As I discussed in my earlier post, the single biggest issue with the Cumbria Way is where it ends.  No one wants to spend a week walking through lovely Lake District scenery and end it all walking through an industrial estate or next to a railway.  There has to be a better way. Of course, moving … Continue reading Fixing the Cumbria Way – A New Northern End Point
In my previous post, I talked about the problems with the Cumbria Way official route, and in this post I'm going to propose some quick fixes to the route that involve minimal change overall, and importantly don't create a whole new long distance path. Really these are just some ideas for varying the walk, but … Continue reading Quick Fixes to the Cumbria Way
"If it's not broken, then don't fix it", so goes the saying, and there's a lot of truth in it. But for me the Cumbria Way is broken and what is generally a fine walk has got serious flaws that almost stopped me doing it in the first place and would weigh heavily on my … Continue reading Fixing the Cumbria Way
This year's planned chunk of the South West Coast Path was due to be the biggest section yet, but circumstances had another idea and we had to cut it short. Here's the story. Day 0: Friday 18 May It’s all been a bit weird. I finished most of the planning for this trip way back … Continue reading SWCP 2012
Ok, maybe the title is a bit dramatic. Â It wasn't anything like a complete failure, unless you only measure it against the original plan to walk as far as Falmouth over 7 days rather than to Par over 4. Indeed, the irony was that in some ways this trip was the best of the 5 … Continue reading SCWP 2012: Post Mortem
I flew along today. The walking was, for the SWCP, easy; a certain amount of fitness had kicked in; and I had a reason to get it done. Day 4: Tuesday 22 May I lingered over breakfast talking to Tim, the proprietor of The Well House, partly because I was the only guest, but also … Continue reading SWCP 2012: One under Par
Every year there's always one day more than the others when I become aware of the place names. Maybe the toilet humour from yesterday put me in the mood. That said it was also about the simple joy of putting one foot in front of the other on a day of perfect weather and perfect … Continue reading SWCP 2012: A day of silly names and perfect views
I'm not deliberately setting out to offend anyone with this post, but if I do then I guess that's a bonus. Every so often you find yourself doing a walk where a theme emerges and try as you might, it persists. Today was just such a day. Day 2: Sunday 20 May. Crafthole to Looe … Continue reading SWCP 2012: Toilet humour