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Published: October 28th 2011
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Best of Britain - The West Highland Way
Walking 1160 miles from Lands End to John o'Groats (LEJOG). "Great breasts." You know you've hit a low point in life when such comments are aimed at you, rather than your wife who's walking beside you. I was in England for the first time in 2½ years and this insult, from a group of uniform wearing students, was my welcoming message. It hit home hard. I'd been living in Asia, gorging on everything edible, and was in the worst physical shape of my life; bouncy man boobs and a derriere that would continue to wobble long after other body parts had stopped.
Having never seen much of England before, I'd promised my American wife a spot of sightseeing around my native country. Travelling around England has never appealed to me. Surely a case of 'not on your own doorstep,' I've always chosen far flung locations believing they offer a more unique cultural experience. I was hoping this experience would prove me wrong. Cornwall, the Cotswolds, the Yorkshire Dales and the Western Highlands of Scotland soon became front runners and I hoped hiking through these areas would quickly cut down on the potential for more 'great breasts' insults.
It didn't take long to realise the immense beauty and variety that
Best of Britain - South West Coast Path
Walking 1160 miles from Lands End to John o'Groats (LEJOG). Britain has to offer. With the wish-list of destinations growing exponentially, I happened by chance to come across a website dedicated to the efforts of one man and his 1100 mile walk across Britain. Jokingly mentioning this to my wife, I was shocked by her enthusiastic response to attempt something similar. From here the idea evolved into a fully fledged plan of action and our next travel challenge: to spend three months walking 1160 miles continuously from Lands End (the south western tip of England) to John o'Groats (the north eastern tip of Scotland). While the Lands End to John o'Groats (simplified to LEJOG) route is completed by thousands of cyclists each year, only a handful manage to walk it.
Within a month we had organised our itinerary and route, planning to camp for the duration of the walk. Starting from Lands End in Cornwall we would follow the South West Coast path to Newquay before cutting inland past Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor to Glastonbury, Wells and Cheddar Gorge. From here we would journey towards Bath, picking up the Cotswold Way and then the Heart of England Way that would take us through Shakespeare's county and the rural heart
Best of Britain - Bodmin Moor
Walking 1160 miles from Lands End to John o'Groats (LEJOG). of England. This would all be excellent practice before joining the Pennine Way, the longest and most challenging of Britain's long distance footpaths that would take us through Derbyshire's Peak District and the Yorkshire Dales all the way to the Scottish border. Using canals from Edinburgh, we would head towards Glasgow before catching the West Highland Way to Fort William and then the Great Glen Way to Inverness. From here it would be several days of road walking to John o'Groats and the finish line of our 1160 mile walk.
Friends and family seemed a little puzzled to our new choice of travel plans. "Why?" "Are you crazy?" "What's the point?" were regular questions. Answering these questions wasn't so straightforward. For me, it would be the physical hardships of such a strenuous challenge that proved appealing, alongside the possibility of losing some chub. For my wife though, the reasons were much deeper. Losing three grandparents while she was working in China and unable to attend their funerals, she viewed this walk as something she could do in their memory, raising money for Association for International Cancer Research (a charity that funds cancer research projects globally) in the process. Seeing
Best of Britain - The Pennine Way
Walking 1160 miles from Lands End to John o'Groats (LEJOG). striking landscapes and sampling local culinary delights and beverages would be the icing on the cake.
Were we confident of completing such a challenge? Not really. In fact not at all. Neither of us were in good physical condition. Neither of us were hikers and neither of us had camped in any place other than a musical festival, where alcohol intoxication meant falling asleep anywhere and in any position. Upon visiting camping and hiking stores, we also realised neither of us were prepared to pay the extortionate costs to wear gore-tex lined clothes, carry backpacks that weighed less than a helium party balloon or sleep in a tent that could be folded into your back pocket. Instead we headed straight to the reduction and bargain rails and soon had a budget selection of equipment and apparel. My raincoat looked as waterproof as toilet paper and the steel metal frame of my new fifty litre backpack seemed sturdier than the foundations of my childhood home.
Days passed by quickly and soon the start date of our 1160 mile LEJOG (Lands End to John o'Groats) charity walk loomed large. I started to panic and do strange things. I applied for
Best of Britain - South West Coast Path
Walking 1160 miles from Lands End to John o'Groats (LEJOG). a multitude of jobs, hoping this would prove the perfect alibi not to go through with our walk. None of them were successful and we found ourselves making our way to our start point, Lands End, unfit, unprepared and feeling slightly anxious about the journey ahead. After informing friends, family and local media of our endeavours, there was certainly no way of escaping from our task at hand. Would we complete our 1160 mile charity walk from Lands End to John o'Groats? Confidence wasn't high, but whatever the outcome, we hoped to raise a good amount of money for charity and give it our best shot.
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Ali
Ali Watters
Fantastic Acheivement
and the photos are stunning!