Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

So here's the plan.

It's getting more and more probable that this is going to happen, so here's a quick overview of what I intend to do later this year. There are still a couple of hurdles to clear in order to make it okay for me to be away from home for over two months, but I don't think they're insurmountable.

The short version is easy:
15 August (approx): Depart Land's End
15-25 October (approx): Arrive John O'Groats
Naturally, this needs a little fleshing out.

The route I have in mind is fairly fuzzy so far, and will remain so until it's actually plotted out and divided into useful stages. McCloy's book is proving a useful reference. His route seems to make a lot of sense, although given the shortage of coastal walking on the journey as a whole it's very tempting to take the South West Coast Path for the first stage rather than the inland route. This adds another 90 or so miles (145km), which would bring the walk up to about 1,240 miles (1995km) by my rough calculations. That's 62 days at an average of 20 miles (32km) per day, which as I've allowed 77 days should be more than possible with plenty of opportunities for rest days and spending time over the more interesting bits.

It's naturally going to be necessary to do things like eat and sleep en route (damn these irritating biological restrictions), and this, along with the weather and the fact that the days start getting a lot shorter in autumn, largely dictates the exact dates for doing this walk. The tourist industry in many places starts to close down from the beginning of October onwards, and by the end of October it can be hard to find accomodation in some places. If you do it too early, however, you're likely to run into the end of the midge season in the Highlands. The disadvantage of starting in the middle of August at Land's End is that it's the height of the Cornish tourist season, which means that at least for the first couple of weeks advance bookings will be necessary.

There are many options for accomodation. I'm planning on carrying a tent (hey, you can get one-person backpacking tents weighing under a kilo now) for those times when there's nothing more comfortable around, or just for when there are reasonably civilised campsites available. The rest of the time there are such things as B&Bs, inns and youth hostels. It would be possible to do the macho thing and camp all the way, but where it's possible it doesn't seem to make sense to deny myself the odd comfy bed.

Many people do things like this primarily as a fund-raising activity. While those aren't my reasons for wanting to do this (maybe I'll expand on those in a later post if people so desire) it seems to make sense to choose a couple of organisations which deserve a bit of support and encourage people to donate to them if they wish to express their relief that it's not them who's walking such an awfully long way. One organisation which I think deserves more public recognition and support is the London Air Ambulance, who I've observed not once but twice landing in the car park at Surbiton station. I'm also planning to support another organisation with a more global remit - Oxfam spring to mind. Nothing's finalised yet, but we'll see what happens.

Oh, and of course - I'm a computer geek and a gadget freak, so there has to be some kind of technological aspect to this. Howsabout GPS tracking, updates from the road and a video log?

Anyway - more when I know it. It's still not definite that this will happen, but it's getting more likely by the day. Incidentally, if it does come off I'll be primarily doing it as a solo exercise, but if anyone wished to join in for a day or two I certainly wouldn't be averse to a bit of company on occasion.

Posted by mpk at March 15, 2005 4:30 PM