New Year, New Me!

A Litany of Failures! Regular readers will know I had a pretty shocking time last year when it came to long distance paths in particular and walking in general. I started out on five different long distance walks, and only one of them ended in the way I had planned. Over Easter I walked 4 […]

River Nidd Trail

Chris (@PilgrimChris on Twitter and at www.pilgrimchris.co.uk) and I have been trying to align walking calendars since our aborted walk along the Cape Wrath Trail in May. Various things have prevented us from getting out together, not least my lack of enthusiasm for anything other than low level, unchallenging walking. However, we’ve finally managed to […]

Getting back on the horse!

I felt I needed to get back on the horse that bucked me! I’ve had a pretty rotten year when it comes to long distance walking. I’m shockingly unfit, overweight and seem to have little motivation to change either situation, but I still feel the pull of the long path! Although I cancelled my walk […]

Heading North

I’ll be heading north about 6am tomorrow morning, so just enough time to write a very short post about plans and stuff. My pack is bulging with 5 day’s food and all the other gear I’ll be humping across half of the North West Highlands for eight days. The final figures are in and the […]

Herriot Way 2019 – Day 4

21st April 2019: Keld to Aysgarth – 14.5m When I set out this morning I had every intention of walking from Keld to Reeth along the new low route, beside the River Swale, that I’m adding to the fourth edition of the guide book. As it turned out, I ended up walking to Aysgarth instead. […]

Herriot Way 2019 – Day 3

20th April 2019: Keld to Reeth – 12m I slept like a log (an expression that has always baffled me), that is to say I slept soundly. Soft pillows helped immensely of course as did not having to listen to a neighbour’s TV all night. I stirred about 5am and drifted in and out until […]

Herriot Way 2019 – Day 2

19th April 2019: Hawes to Keld – 11.8m I dozed off about 8pm last night, but never got a decent period of sleep, thanks to the inconsiderate twat in the room next door who decided that full volume was the only way to listen to the TV. He/she was also one of those people who […]

Herriot Way 2019 – Day 1

18th April 2019: Aysgarth to Hawes – 13.1m I set out from Aysgarth in a mixed frame of mind this morning. It  was good to be walking again, but the disappointment from last night was still weighing heavy on me. City’s Champions League quarter final against Spurs was one of the most intense football matches […]

Herriot Way 2019

Next week I’ll be driving to Aysgarth to begin 5 days walking around some of my favourite northern Yorkshire Dales. The primary motivation for this is to do a complete re-walk of the Herriot Way route in preparation for the latest update of the guide book. For those unfamiliar with the walk, it runs from […]

Cape Wrath Trail Planning #2

This is the second of three posts related to the planning process for my Cape Wrath Trail walk, in May 2019. This post is going to look at kit, not so much the kit I plan to use, but at the Kit List spreadsheet I have developed that allows me to find the best mix […]