Shona and Mike Take a Hike

As we enter the last 4 weeks, before we begin our marathon  1100-1200 mile hike from Lands' End to John O'Groats, we thought it might be good to give a rough overview of where our walking route will take us.  As you will observe, from the photo, the route we have planned takes us along the Coastal path through Cornwall, into Devon then into Somerset.  Once we reach Bristol we will cross over into Wales for a bit and take a route west of the Pennines before heading up towards a route that will follow the Settle Carlisle Railway and then on to Scotland. Oh my, what then sprung to mind was walking the West Highland Way, which is where we will no doubt encounter the most feared beastie in all of Scotland. The midges, the midges, I'm no gonnae kid ye's, The midges is really the limit, Wi teeth like piranhas, they drive ye bananas, If ye let them get under yer simmit! (For my non Scottish friends, that's a sleeveless garment worn under your shirt). There is no defence aga...

As I begin this blog I want to say, please forgive any mistakes, I am actually trying to do this one on my IPad and not the laptop which is a bit awkward. The other day when thinking about this weeks blog it was suggested I could write “nothing about something”, or was that “something about nothing”? I really can’t remember, so I thought I would write about both “nothing and something. The nothing is that there is nothing to report on our training front, we have been away to Lanzarote with a few friends, pensioners all, for some R & R. By the time we get home, the baby of the bunch, that’s me, is still 67, next, the birthday girl who turned 68 on Sunday, there is also 69 year old, a 70 year old, and of course, “the auld yin”, bringing up the rear at 71 years of age.  It was nice to enjoy the sunshine for a week, and a lovely time was had by all, and of course, having been friends for a life-time there was lots of poking gentle fun at each other for the silly things done or sai...

This week Shona and I, as part of Land's End to John O'Groats training schedule, completed the last part of the 116-mile-long Fife Coastal path. Sadly, we didn't get a certificate to prove we had completed it, so I've uploaded a photo of a certificate we did get some years ago, it was for winning the adult wheelbarrow race. If you can, zoom in you'll see the details. It is however quite old, faded, wrinkled, tea stained and a bit frayed round the edges, when I said this to Shona she said, "just like us then" . However, should we complete the Land's End to John O'Groats (LEJOG) walk and provide the necessary Transit/Verification documents to the LEJOG Club, they will send us a certificate at having walked the 1100-1200 miles.  That'll be another certificate we could add to our collection. Shona mentioned the other day the first one she remembers receiving was her "Cycling Proficiency Certificate" as did I when we were at primary school...

As I start to write our blog each week I never really know where I am going. A thought seems to go in one ear then straight out the other. Now I can hear some readers of our blog saying, "that's because there is nothing in the middle to stop it" 😂. Now what were my thoughts for this week? I'm sure they'll come to me. Hoping to remember what I was thinking about, I decided to share the sunrise we saw when we were walking up to Larbert station on Monday morning. This reminded me of the old Scots song: Oh it's nice to get up in the morning, When the sun begins to shine, At four or five or six o'clock In the good old summer time, But when the snow is snowing, And it's murky overhead, It's nice to get up in the morning,  But it's better to lie in your bed: Getting up early really does have some benefits, not only can we witness such stunning sunrises, the bird song is also just so delightful. This year we seem to have had an abundance of robins aro...

As I begin writing our blog, I usually have a theme of sorts on my mind however, once I start to type I find my thoughts going in a completely different direction.  This week I wanted to return to some statistics and before I get side tracked, I've uploaded a screen shot of the miles we have covered in our training programme, since the beginning of January. If you are able to zoom in, you can observe that we have walked a total of 606.59 miles that equates to 9.78 miles per day. Now the boring part, (as he gives a big sigh), when this photo was taken we were 62 days into 2024, out of these 62 days, on at least 18 of them we walked less than 5 miles per day which worked out at a total of 46.57.miles subtracting this from 606.59 = 560.02 then divide by 44 it works out at an average of 12.72 miles per walking day. During our walk we hope to walk for six days a week for approximately three months, taking Sunday off as a rest day and, where possible, attend church somewhere. This means ...