One month to go
The usual excitement symptoms are here: a sick feeling that I have too much yet to prepare & that it's a ridiculous thing to attempt. Surely I will get exhausted after 10 days & go home.
Blagging it
Yet I press on, surely boring everyone I meet with my only conversation topic. I include myself as getting fed up hearing my own repetitions, even as I do it by email. But I want to tell people 'cos I am excited AND I want walking companions to share this with and not go bonkers. Talking to Bethan on the Park Run this morning - her Dad did E2E in 2009. His book title "In Expectation of a Kingfisher" should win an award on its own for originality. Apparently he documented plants & birds he saw en route, doing about 11 miles a day (from March 10th into July, with a trip home!) & blagged coffees from farmhouses. That's what I would call leisurely, sounds great.
Recent walks, testing gear:
One two hour walk around Sale Water Park, & one 5 hour walk in the Peak District with the new Montane Ultra-Tour backpack. The resulting backache & observation by Graham B that it didn't look to be fitting well made me switch to the 900g heavier, & familiar, Osprey Kestrel 68 for the next.
Another Water Park slog & a 6-hour walk up & down hills from Eyam via Rough Side to Curbar & Froggat Edges with 3 volunteer companions (thanks Pete, Paul & Pam). A cold day, a touch of sun on the edges, but mostly memorable for the mad rush at the end to get back to the Eyam car park for 5pm before the gate was locked. Fortunately at 17.10 it wasn't. Backpack definitely more comfortable with better back support, only this time it's neck & shoulder ache. Feet good, knees feeling it a little.
Gear assessments
Loaded pack was 19 pounds with all gear (sleeping bag, tent, cooking gear, minimal clothing change, hat, gloves, socks, washbag, electronics support), including walking poles (but not food & water or maps). I could get to 11 pounds if I ditched all camping gear & took lighter rucsack, as with Apennines trip, but too risky for accommodation failures. The minimum would have to be bivvi bag instead of tent, no cooking gear & lighter rucsack at about 15 pounds (until Highlands anyway). Decisions, decisions & visions of soggy nights.
Route plans updated
A couple of longer stages have been split into two days, campsites marked. I have printed 106 sides of A4 maps at 1:50K, painstakingly* from Memory Map, suffering all its little quirks. Not least the discovery that downloading a MM "route" into ViewRanger creates huge blue blobs. The solution: to convert every "Route" into a "Track" & upload that ... more hours of keyboard-flying, web page updates, mutter mutter. (*One A4 side printed at a time, selecting a region to line up with the previous print-page is very time consuming.)
Blagging it
Yet I press on, surely boring everyone I meet with my only conversation topic. I include myself as getting fed up hearing my own repetitions, even as I do it by email. But I want to tell people 'cos I am excited AND I want walking companions to share this with and not go bonkers. Talking to Bethan on the Park Run this morning - her Dad did E2E in 2009. His book title "In Expectation of a Kingfisher" should win an award on its own for originality. Apparently he documented plants & birds he saw en route, doing about 11 miles a day (from March 10th into July, with a trip home!) & blagged coffees from farmhouses. That's what I would call leisurely, sounds great.
Recent walks, testing gear:
One two hour walk around Sale Water Park, & one 5 hour walk in the Peak District with the new Montane Ultra-Tour backpack. The resulting backache & observation by Graham B that it didn't look to be fitting well made me switch to the 900g heavier, & familiar, Osprey Kestrel 68 for the next.
Another Water Park slog & a 6-hour walk up & down hills from Eyam via Rough Side to Curbar & Froggat Edges with 3 volunteer companions (thanks Pete, Paul & Pam). A cold day, a touch of sun on the edges, but mostly memorable for the mad rush at the end to get back to the Eyam car park for 5pm before the gate was locked. Fortunately at 17.10 it wasn't. Backpack definitely more comfortable with better back support, only this time it's neck & shoulder ache. Feet good, knees feeling it a little.
Gear assessments
Loaded pack was 19 pounds with all gear (sleeping bag, tent, cooking gear, minimal clothing change, hat, gloves, socks, washbag, electronics support), including walking poles (but not food & water or maps). I could get to 11 pounds if I ditched all camping gear & took lighter rucsack, as with Apennines trip, but too risky for accommodation failures. The minimum would have to be bivvi bag instead of tent, no cooking gear & lighter rucsack at about 15 pounds (until Highlands anyway). Decisions, decisions & visions of soggy nights.
Route plans updated
A couple of longer stages have been split into two days, campsites marked. I have printed 106 sides of A4 maps at 1:50K, painstakingly* from Memory Map, suffering all its little quirks. Not least the discovery that downloading a MM "route" into ViewRanger creates huge blue blobs. The solution: to convert every "Route" into a "Track" & upload that ... more hours of keyboard-flying, web page updates, mutter mutter. (*One A4 side printed at a time, selecting a region to line up with the previous print-page is very time consuming.)
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