2023 Planning

It used to be that planning my walking itinerary for a year was a relatively quick and simple process – I only had one walk to think about, and the planning was normally all over and done with by Christmas, or New Year at the latest. Admittedly, I dragged out the planning – it’s something I enjoy, so I would take my time over it, making sure all my t’s were crossed and my i’s dotted, until I had everything lined up and ready to go for the year ahead.

Over the past few years, things have changed though, whereas I used to spend 2 weeks walking a single long distance path, I now spend 5, 6 or 7 days on two different paths, using hotels and B&Bs. The addition of the campervan in 2021 has added another string to my bow, so I find I’m now also planning two or three long weekend walks of 3 or 4 days each, with the goal of completing another 7 or 8 day linear route in sections.

A similar post to this, from last year, saw me planning four different long distance walks; the Speyside Way in Scotland, the Yoredale Way in the Yorkshire Dales, part of the Ravenber Way through Northumberland and a straight line route across the Yorkshire Dales in my Tip-to-Tip walk.

The Speyside Way was completed in May, and although I was somewhat critical of the path surface at times, the route was mostly very enjoyable. The Yoredale Way (as ever) was absolutely sublime, it’s one of my all-time favourite walks, and I finished that in August. The section of the Ravenber I’d planned to walk with Chris using the campervan, ended up being a bit of a trial and partially due to lack of fitness (on my part) we agreed to sack it off after the first section of four days. The Dales Tip-to-Tip seemed to be cursed with injury and illness, and we only managed three of the eight days. We both want to complete that one though, so I’m hoping we’ll revisit it at some point.

So it is, that I turn my sights to this year’s walking.

Rob Roy Way

Almost as soon as I’d finished the Speyside Way, I began to think about another walk along one of the Scottish Great Trails. There are so many to choose from, but some are too short, some are too long and some just don’t look very interesting. I produced a very short short-list and quickly decided on the Rob Roy Way. At about 80 miles, it was the right length for a seven-day walk, and it passes through some wonderful looking scenery. It runs from Drymen, just north of Glasgow (and one of the stops on the West Highland Way) to Pitlochry in Perthshire. It skirts the southern slopes of the Grampians and runs alongside Loch Tay.

It looks like the path could be the victim of more ‘multi-use’ surfaces, but I’m better prepared this year I think, with a different choice of footwear. The paper thin soles of the Inov-8 Roclite 345s have been swapped out for the more substantial, but still lightweight, Salomon X-Ultra Mid boots. Only time will tell if this is enough to save my soles, but I doubt it could be much worse than last year!

The biggest issue with planning the Rob Roy Way has been the accommodation. A combination of lack of available beds and my reluctance to spend more than about £70 for a bed for the night resulted in some very long sections between stops. As I found on the Speyside Way last year, these may be official long distance paths, but they aren’t heavily used, and I don’t think the footfall is high enough to maintain B&Bs in every village. Many accommodation providers seem to have switched to holiday lets, or gods-forbid, Airbnbs and the number of traditional one-night bed and breakfast places is declining. This has the knock-on effect of driving up their prices and where I used to be able to find a bed for £40-£50 a night, it’s now £70-£100, or even more. I find it hard to justify spending £80 for a B&B, so I self-limit many of my options.

In the end, I found that parts of the route are well serviced by bus, so I’m staying in one place three nights and keeping my fingers crossed that the bus can shuttle me back and forth along the route. Most nights are between £60 and £70, with my most expensive being £90! That’s the most expensive B&B I have ever used, and the only reason I’m using it is that there’s absolutely no alternative – no bus option and nothing anywhere close to it.

My first day walking will be Sunday 7th May – I will probably try and post a daily update as I’m walking, so keep an eye out of you like that sort of thing.

Southern Upland Way

Anyone who has been reading these pages for a few years will know I have history with the Southern Upland Way! I started the route in 2013 and again in 2015. The first attempt saw me reach the half-way point at Moffat, where the combination of injury and apathy led me to ringing my son for a lift home. The second attempt got me as far as Sanquhar where simple home-sickness directed me to the station, and a train home. The route has felt like an unscratched itch for a while now and I’ve blown the metaphorical dust off the route a couple of times in the past few years to see if I can do it again. I still don’t think I have the mindset for 14 days away from home (that boat may have sailed for the last time), so starting again from Portpatrick was never going to happen, but 7 days away feels OK now and that’s all it would take to walk from Moffat to Cockburnspath – thereby completing the whole route, after 10 years!

Once again accommodation was the hardest part of the planning process. I would go as far as to say it’s impossible to walk this route now unless you backpack it, or rely on lifts to/from accommodation. There are a couple of sections of the route where there is no accommodation at all, no matter how much I was prepared to stretch my budget. From Moffat I would have had to walk 35 miles to my first stop – as it is I found a B&B that will collect me about 16 miles from Moffat, and drop me back there in the morning. This means a couple of long days and a bill for £85 (paid fully in advance) plus £10 for the collect/drop off! At the eastern end of the walk I’m going to have to resort to taxis to collect me and drop me off for two days! It’s not ideal, but it should allow me to finally defeat my nemesis.

South Cheshire Market Towns Trail

A couple of old friends have recently been asking me to take them on a ‘proper’ walk. We normally catch-up in the pub, or in a local snooker hall, but more recently they’ve both been walking more in the local area and they’re getting itchy feet for something a little more adventurous. Last weekend I took them on one of my favourite Peak District walks, around Shining Tor, Axe Edge and Cheeks Hill and they absolutely loved it. I’ve known Steve and Andy for over 30 years, but married life got in the way and we’ve only reconnected in the past three years or so, it will be great to spend more time together – and in the hills too!

Steve spotted a local circular route called the South Cheshire Market Towns Trail, which connects some of the towns we know so well, but allows us to see them in a completely new light. If we use two cars we can bite of chunks of the route over the coming weeks and months (when our diaries align for a walk). I’ve done a lot of walking in Cheshire, mostly when I first began hill walking, but this route includes plenty of new paths for me, so I’m looking forward to getting out with old friends, on a new path.

Scottish Conjoined Trail

This is obviously not an official walk, rather it’s sections of several waymarked long distance routes in Scotland that I’ve joined together for the purposes of me and Chris getting out north of the border again. Chris is always pushing to get me out of the Dales and into new areas, so while I was planning my other Scottish walks, I added this one into the mix too.

The plan is to walk it over two 4-day long weekends, starting at the western end of the Romans and Reivers route, in Ae Forest and following that waymarked trail for about 50 miles, where we pick up the Borders Abbeys Way for another 20 or so, until we join the St. Cuthbert’s Way and use that for the final 30 miles to finish at St. Cuthbert’s Cave on Greensheen Hill.

I’ve planned a couple of long days on this route, over 17 miles, in order to help train for the lengthy sections of the Southern Upland Way. Chris was pleasantly surprised to see me stretch the walks above our usual maximum of 15 miles, but I’ve been working hard on my fitness recently, so I’m hoping they won’t be too much of a push for either of us.

Getting Fit Again… Again

As is my way, I let things slide last year. In late 2020 and early 2021 – thanks mainly to lockdown and working from home – I managed to walk every day for 90 days straight. These were admittedly local ‘dog walks’, mostly 4 or 5 mile routes with very little height gain, but the fact that I was out every day made a massive difference to my fitness levels. I lost some of the additional pudding I’d built up in the autumn and winter of 2020 and all in all I felt loads better.

This fitness and weight loss transformed the way I felt during and after the day’s walking on my multi-day walks. Hills that I would normally struggle up, huffing and puffing, were done quite easily and at the end of the day my legs didn’t feel like dead weights belonging to someone else. I really enjoyed my 2021 multi-day walks.

Fast forward to 2022, after spending a lazy winter on the couch and my fitness was mostly blown, my weight had increased again and the result was predictable. Longish days with any sort of decent height gain were hard work and that resulted in a couple of abandonments (like the Ravenber) and I planned shorter days and lower ascent figures, which frustrated the hell out of Chris.

Fast forward again, to late 2022 and I vowed things would be different. I changed my approach slightly though – in the winter of 2020-21 I’d actually injured my foot quite badly by walking every day for 90 days straight. I decided to ease off a bit, and I set myself the goal of walking five days a week, allowing me time to recover and try and avoid another metatarsal injury.

In November 2022 I walked 80 miles in 15 separate day walks, in December I did 140 miles over 27 days, in January another 140 miles in 24 walks, February was 150 miles in 22 walks and I’m already over 120 miles in March. At the same time as I’ve been walking more, I’ve been eating less and I’ve cut out a lot of the lazy food I was eating before, and I’ve lost over 2 stone since the start of December! The overall result is that I feel fitter than I have in years and so far (touch wood) I’m injury free!

Longer, tougher walks like the Southern Upland Way give me an incentive to train harder for them, which in turn means that I can plan more adventurous walks – it’s kind of like a virtuous circle!