Day 2 Ha to Perfection!!

The Ha in the title refers to a the sea mist that covered the land this morning! Walking away from the last night's finish point has quite ethereal! Only seeing short distances and pretty much in monochrome! The only colour being the red of my mate Ruth and her car!.
This was soon left behind and the first miles of tiny road threaded through boggy farm country and past one unsociable farmer who refused to even acknowledge our existence! ........... Fill in your own words here!
Still we plodded on and the sky started to lighten as we passed a farm guarded not particularly well, by two border collies who both turned tail at my command!
Coming off of the b roads and on to the a836 near Barrock we headed to Dunnet where a local gun maker sported the Queen mothers coat of arms and badge of appointment!,out of Dunnet and straight to the beautiful beach, where the sun broke through as we sat down for sandwiches!
Three kilometers of walking the sands and we reach Castletown where a tea was bought in a local shop. Sitting on a wall to drink this I enquired of a local and my old mate JP if there was a coastal path to Thurso as my planning had indicated only an intermittent track, turns out there isn't so 7 kilometers of straight A road were started. Leaving the village a chap and his son (in a go kart) asked about the walk and a pleasant chat was had!
The road out required lots of traffic dodging but the view to the sea alleviated this.
Into Thurso past some castellated gates and over the river of the same name, following the coast took us past surfers hitting the waves and more views to the Orkney Islands until we reached today's destination camp site at 3.30, now making use of the WiFi here to send this blog.... A great day!....which leads to the perfection in the title!

Day 1 And we're off!

We got to John O'groats about 4.30 pm and after doing the sign post photos headed west at 5pm. obviously not a long days walk! But planning required a 4 mile first leg (don't ask why!), a short path along the cliff took us down to a small beach where both Alfie and myself followed the ritual of dipping our toes in the sea and picking up a small rock to carry south.
Heading inland slightly we pick up the road west passing through the sparse boggy farmland of the far north until we reach a rather gothic looking church and graveyard, this being at most easterly point of Gills bay, who's pier (our destination for the end of the short walk) hosted a dramatic looking sunken ship slowly rotting into the sea, looking north the weather is still clear enough to see the Orkney Islands, quite a relief considering the weather report!

Day 1 And we're off!

We got to John O'groats about 4.30 pm and after doing the sign post photos headed west at 5pm. obviously not a long days walk! But planning required a 4 mile first leg (don't ask why!), a short path along the cliff took us down to a small beach where both Alfie and myself followed the ritual of dipping our toes in the sea and picking up a small rock to carry south.
Heading inland slightly we pick up the road west passing through the sparse boggy farmland of the far north until we reach a rather gothic looking church and graveyard, this being at most easterly point of Gills bay, who's pier (our destination for the end of the short walk) hosted a dramatic looking sunken ship slowly rotting into the sea, looking north the weather is still clear enough to see the Orkney Islands, quite a relief considering the weather report!

On the way up!

After a days easy travelling north with a stop at Lindisfarne to sight see the Holy isle, we've made camp at Perth in a very familiar place, Noahs ark camp site. where Alfie and I camped on our Lejog in 2010!!!
Not a lot has changed here and while the weather holds we have a great view of Glen Shee in the distance where we walked en route to Aberfeldy last time!
Sadly the weather is looking anything but good with heavy rain and gales due for Saturday and Sunday..... Them's the breaks!
Even now the walk doesn't feel real! But I'm sure after Sundays gales reality will hit!

Radio interview!!!!

Just a quick blog before the off tomorrow.
Yesterday, along with Rachel from accommodation concern, I took part in a live radio interview on radio Northampton!
Here's the link to the show, my bit starts about and hour and fifteen minutes in at 3.15pm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0230374

The will only last for a few days sadly.... So I'll try and do a recording of it for future cringing! ;-)

Meet The Charity!

Having got all plans in place and sponsorship forms sorted it was finally time to reveal my plans to my chosen charity!
Accommodation Concern!
And wow did they like the Idea!!!!
having dropped in thursday night for a quick meeting I am amazed with the speed with which they've assimilated the idea, in one brief meeting the charity side of the walk has quite simply exploded!....flowered may be a better analogy having nurtured this idea for so long!
They are coming up with so many superb ideas for promoting the trek that at best I may have considered then dropped through a lack of means to make happen!!!
Times are indeed very exciting!!!!
We have another meeting lined up, and I can barely imagine where this is going! :0)
watch this space!!

Camera comparison

Under no circumstances should you think i'm a photographer, pure point and click is enough for me!
but as I've mentioned in an earlier post I'm no longer taking a camera other than the great camera (my opinion only!!) on my phone.
So after some training walks where I've been taking shots with both my camera and phone i thought it might be good to show the compared pictures, the wider/taller pics are from my phone and the squarer from my camera......

I wont put any opinions with the pics but if anyone wants to comment go for it!

I love macro shots when i'm walking a great view of the alien world under our noses! so i've also taken a few with my phone just to show it off!

I dont think they are a patch on my cameras ability to catch the macro world but i'm happy enough with them for Jogle!

Proof of point

I've been busy with some local walks to toughen my self up (sorely needed as it turned out!) and to test out my gear to see if its all working nicely together, it is, i wasn't! after a two day full pack worst case (weight wise) test, which i didn't complete due to blisters and old leaky boots! (my old lejog boots) I've been cutting some weight from my pack I've acquired another alpkit pipedream 400 which weighs in at 800 grams two thirds the weight of the sack i'd planned to take! and invested in a travel tap water filter bottle.
Naturally i wasn't going to just go walking the length of Britain without testing the filter on the travel tap bottle.

river Ise (stream really)

so off i go today to a local stream to get a good example of dirty water....As you can see fairly murky! so a good candidate for testing the bottle, the filter is supposed to be able to filter out all sorts of bacteria and viruses including anthrax!! also heavy metals, insecticides,herbicides, chemicals,water borne diseases and nasty flavours.













I filled the bottle through a cloth to remove any sediment as the instructions asked, and got some pretty clean pre filter water, though i suppose its what you cant see that you should be careful of!

pre filter

Both pictures where taken in exactly the same conditions and with the same camera and with only an inch of water in each identical glass, I think its pretty obvious which is the post filter water even without the pictures captions!

post filter

It goes without saying that this doesn't prove the water is clean, so I've drunk the clean water to test if its potable, i'm doing this in the full confidence that with organisations like Nato using these they've been thoroughly tested!

Charity

Well that's another day spent in organising the walk.
today being charity bits, there's now a nice justgiving link to the right with the justgiving logo, and after learning how to use the free OpenOffice word processing suite I've put together  the sponsorship forms as you can see. I'm pretty pleased with them and happy with the layout!
No walking this weekend, I really need to pull my finger out and get the training started!
Next week for sure!!

oops

bit of a cock up regarding access to the details of Jogle in my last post, it should now be visible to anyone clicking on the link, whereas before it was request only!....let me know if its not!!!

Details details!

Its all in the details!
Ive completed my planning for jogle!
not bad with three months to go, below is the link showing the distances, stops and hopefully an excessive costing of the walk , since i'm allowing between £20 and £30 a day for groceries,pub meals and of course beer i should stay below budget, which will hopefully give me enough cash left for replacment boots when needed.

I'll put a permanent link in the usual place on the right of the page as well........


Link-Jogle details spreadsheet

All too quiet on the blog!

Yes the blog has been way too quiet!
And with so much going on in the background its about time I updated our progress on the planning and reequiping that's been happening in preparation for our jogle starting in August!
The route has been finalised for a few months now clocking in a total distance of 1004.9 miles to be walked!. The maps are all printed including a backup set and a small fortune has been spent updating and adding gear to mine and Alfie's kit lists!
The latest addition being dog boots!, this is in reaction to Alfie getting sore paws on the north west pathage walk last year, really don't want him to have to be rescued on this trek! As you can see in the picture they have vibram soles! Very professional! Though it's a huge learning curve for him getting used to boots!. Sleeping arrangements for Alfie have changed instead of his little sleeping bag I'm packing a warm coat for him to wear at night, far more practical!.

Other new gear for me being a new berghaus jacket and berghaus trail light boots, hooded windproof cycling jacket for mid layer, two new pairs of socks and a two litre water filter bag to prevent the build of peat I found in my platypus after lejog!
I've cut down on the quantity of gadgets I'll be carrying, with the improvement in smartphone camera technology, I've invested in a Sony xperia z1 compact with its 20 mega pixel camera, great battery life and speedy GPS. also being waterproof, I no longer need to carry the combination of phone, GPS and camera. I just have to carry a lager rechargable battery to keep the phone topped up all week when away from socket outlets.

With regards to the planning side of things I've nearly established how much money the walk should cost me, and I'll be keeping track of finances on this walk as others planning a trek like this may find the final cost as interesting as me.... We'll see in October!

The next stage of planning is the charity, I've not yet notified the chosen charity, but at the back of my mind I've started working on simple money raising schemes, most notably is getting business type cards printed with the just giving page that's going to be in existence and and the blog so I can hand these out or leave them around at work or enroute! Or just giving to strangers in passing, this was an idea I felt would have been useful on lejog as I really don't want to collect money as I walk along!

Other than that I think just more training walks in the build up to August...

Think that's enough of an update!