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!

Very true!

I'm currently reading the first Jack Reacher novel, he makes a very good point about the kindness of strangers.... 'A wanderer depends on the kindness of strangers. Not for anything specific or material. But for morale. '
How very accurate and something I've known for so long but never managed to put the words to! Great that you can learn the wonders of the trail even when your between walks!

Day 7 22/6/2013 Pain stopped play!

Sad to say but we've pulled out of the last two days walk into Ullapool. Alfies feet have become too sore to walk on :-( hence the cheesy picture!







Having walked from the wild camp at slow pace due to Alfies sore paws and repeated attempts to bandage them failing we made it into Lochinver by about 9am, after a breakfast at the Fishermans mission (modern and clean tho not dog friendly) and much plodding around the village Alfie now having bandaged and duct taped feet.We picked up a bus at Lochinver bay just after 1pm and are now camping at the end of the route waiting for John to finish tomorrow or early Monday. Good luck mate!

Day 6, 21/6/2013

After a fitful sleep we face the dawn through a thick cloud of midges (still!). away from the wild camp without breakfast we had east in the direction of our next reprovisioning stop via a twisting and undulating road in thick low cloud, leaving much of the scenery to our imagination.


 a few hours in we reach the fishing village of Nedd with its eccentric road sign warning of pigs piglets sheep and dogs as you enter. Cute!, passing into this ancient village you see all the existing houses mixed in with the ruins of their predecessors and the odd gypsy caravan!. Leaving this quaint place in the mist I catch a sniff of garlic in the air, further along I find some wild ramsons and grab a handful for a light breakfast :-).
Over the hill to Drumbeg where the provisioning shop is, we find it closed for today..... Arse! Since we're all running low on food this could be a problem! So deciding to eat what we can we find the only shelter available to be the public toilets! Alfie enjoyed being held under the handryer for a bit lol!.
Continuing in the low cloud we head west to clashnessie picking up some eggs enroute, Entering Clashnessie we follow the single track road cut into the cliff....------------>
The bay has a lovely beach and very popular on a sunny day I imagine, for us it was a spot to boil up some of the eggs and make sandwiches and for Alfie an off lead opportunity!

WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

The road out takes us across the neck of the Stoer peninsular to Stoer itself, a nice Crofters village with another nice beach through its neighbour Clachtolle and on to where a footpath runs along a stream to a ruin of a mill (pic), the grinding wheels still lay abandoned in the vicinity. The path continues to Achmelvich and is extremely dog unfriendly campsite!


We forgave them this as they filled out water bottles and sold us excellent fish and chips which we shared with the gulls. Probably a rule against this to ;-).
Moving on with filled stomachs and a food shortage averted we head into the hills north of Lochinver passing an ancient watermill for a wild camp and naturally more swarms of midges! This must be high season for the little b@5t£rds!.(isnt yet!)
Still once again the view more than made up for it!!!

View from our wild camp to Mount Suilven!

                                                 

Day 5 20/6/2013 The A-B of roads

Away from Scourie bright and early for a full day of road walking starting with a quiet A Road that wended it's way through more of the rocky/lumpy post glacial landscape, passing Badcall bay where last night's salmon could have been landed from the Duart fisheries. a quick rest stop then continuing along the road we miss the track which would have given us an off road section,cant get everything right! so continuing on the road through Duartmore forest and then on to a viewpoint of the impressive mountains around Kylesku. here the award winning bridge crosses the sea loch via a small island. commemorated here was the incredibly heroic missions of British submariners from the second world war who piloted two man sub's into German harbours to sabotage the enemy fleet, far too many didnt make it back.

submariners cairn click to enlarge!

 The hotel at Kylesku warmly invited alfie in even knowing his breed! I had a smashing lamb pie while Ruth tucked into a bucket of muscles and John had fish cakes.
Back on the road passed Unapool and with the bulwark of Sail Garbh mountain ahead we join the B road to Drumbeg.

Swarming Midges!!!!

John heading towards Sail Garbh 

 passing the twin bulwark of Sail Ghorm with the accompanying gentle rain we follow the coast of loch a chairn bhain until we find a pitch the only available flat pitch around next to Alt na Claise burn where we are inundated by millions of midges, making for an early night.