Apologies - this is a long post - and unless you’re planning on walking the Pennine Way in 2024 it’s probably not much use to you. Following a comment on my previous post, I thought it may be useful to describe the (somewhat painful) process of planning and booking the accommodation for this year’s Pennine Way walk. I say somewhat painful because although it wasn’t straightforward by any means, it probably wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. A couple of months ago I’d started the process of booking a traditional south to north route along the same path and given up in frustration at the lack o ..read more

Retrospective Looking back over my shoulder, to the year behind us, I see a bit of a mixed back of walking achievements. I had a good first half of the year and fairly mediocre second half, with almost no proper walking taking place after mid-September. I blame that decline on a combination of consistently poor weather, especially at weekends, and a lack of motivation on my part. In the early part of the year, any lack of motivation was overruled by the enthusiasm of my walking companion, Chris, who was always eager to get out and walk the Peak District hills. Later in the year our diaries dri ..read more

1st August 2023: Lauder to Longformacus – 15.0 miles I thought I slept pretty well last night, but my omniscient watch tells me I didn’t have enough REM. I’m not quite sure what the impact of this will be, but I feel fine, apart from a slight muscle twinge behind my left knee, which wasn’t there when I went to bed last night. I doubt this is related to the lack of REM sleep, however, I just mention it in passing. I have a large room with a double bed, although it has a footboard, so I had to sleep diagonally across it, but I don’t have an en-suite, and no sink either, so I had to go for a noct ..read more

31st July 2023: Galashiels to Lauder – 16.0 miles Two things struck me at 4.30 this morning. Firstly, I’m amazed I get any sleep at all at home – I must be very lucky and there must be almost no ambient noise once I drop off, because I’m very rarely woken up dead early in the morning. Secondly, while I’m walking I should probably go to sleep with the bloody earplugs in from the start, rather than, as I was this morning, hunting round in the dark, in the bomb site that is my room, looking for them. The window in my room doesn’t have a perfect fit and there’s obviously a leaky gutter somewhere n ..read more

30th July 2023: Innerleithen to Galashiels – 15.0 miles I needed to use my ear plugs again last night. Not church bells this time, but random and very noisy pipes, which would click loudly for a couple of minutes every now and again. I knew for a fact that they’d either wake me, or keep me awake in the night, so although they aren’t very comfortable, I opted for the ear plugs. They seemed to work well enough and slept through until about 5am and then dozed for a bit. I could hear the rain on my bedroom window and the cars driving through puddles on the road – I wasn’t going to be as lucky toda ..read more

29th July 2023: Scabcleugh pickup to Innerleithen – 18.5 miles Even before starting the eastern section of this walk, I was of the opinion that the Southern Upland Way was the jewel of Scotland’s Great Trails. If I thought I had the mental stamina for 15 days away from home I would have quite happily started from Portpatrick again. The last two days have just reinforced that opinion. The quality of the path far surpasses any of the other SGTs I’ve done! I would go as far as to say it makes the Rob Roy Way look like a rather pathetic joke, being played on walkers by the powers that elect walks ..read more

28th July 2023: Moffat to Scabcleugh pickup – 15.5 miles I didn’t think I slept much last night, although my watch says I got 8 hours, albeit quite interrupted. I woke at 2am and 4am and again at 5am. As I was watching a film on my tablet last night, I heard the dreaded toll of bells from the church across the road. The worst possible scenario – they rang the quarters, halves and the full hour! They weren’t as loud as previous bells that have kept me awake all night, but they’d be loud enough to disturb me, so I opted for the ear plugs. I heard the 9pm chimes, then put the plugs in and decided ..read more

27th July 2023: Home to Cockburnspath to Moffat It’s probably worth taking a couple of paragraphs to put this walk in perspective. Today is 10 years 2 months and 29 days since I first set out from Portpatrick to begin the Southern Upland Way. I walked for eight days and finally gave up thanks to a pair of injuries, and a worrying lack of motivation to push through the hurt and complete what was a sometimes frustrating, but overall a truly enjoyable walking route. I reached a point about three miles outside Beattock and then turned about and headed for a café in Moffat to await a pickup from my ..read more

I must have written more posts about boots than any other piece of walking equipment I’ve ever owned, and I don’t imagine this will be the last one either! It seems my search for the right pair of lightweight walking boots continues. I’ve long since given up looking for the ‘perfect boots’ and over the past two or three years, I’ve been working on finding a ‘good enough’, compromise boot. For many years, until about 2015, I swore by Salomon boots. Their Missions and Comets were very comfortable and fairly waterproof, but build quality wasn’t great and the upper would fall apart quite badly and ..read more

12th May 2023: Aberfeldy to Pitlochry – 9.5 miles It’s hard to start walking again once you’ve stopped for a while. I wasn’t sure if it was better that I’d stopped for 90 minutes, or worse! not only had my legs switched off, but my brain had too. It was quite firmly in ‘find food’ mode when I started out again. I didn’t think I’d have time for a proper meal if I was going to get back to the car before nightfall. I had no worry about walking in the dark, but if I could avoid it I would. And besides I’m not sure my legs would have thanked me for adding a meal to the weight I was carrying. As suc ..read more