You thought it was all just walk...

The Long Walk: Mark II

Now that some time has passed...

...the memories of painful feet and aching limbs have faded...

...and washing up no longer seems the chore that it once did...

...so the long walkers have been tempted back to the South West Coast Path by thoughts of breath-taking views...

...heart-warming camaraderie...

...and belly-filling food.

Introduction:

In the summers of 1995 and 1996, a team of crack 6^th formers, accused of crimes they had not yet committed, took part in two long-distance walks, for charity. Amongst them were:

Dan Taylor
Paul Taylor
Paul Savidge
Matthew White

And me, James Skene. The first walk was the Offa's Dyke route, 190 miles in 9 days, and the second was a collection of walks in Yorkshire culminating in the Three Peaks walk, 160 miles in 8 days. A good time was had by all on both occasions, and society benefitted mightily. My feet hurt for weeks afterwards and I cursed the land, the sky and God almighty.

Nearly ten years had passed and we had grown in wisdom, but also in girth. Moreover, our souls were now heavy with the kind of sin that only a lengthy and painful physical ordeal can erase. Therefore I proposed that we repeat the exercise, raise some good money for charity, and slough off the fat and lassitude that the transition from teenaged geek to twenty-something suburban under-achiever has burdened us with.

I spoke of this with many of the original walkers and they were mutedly positive. Subsequently, several of them wisely disassociated themselves with the whole project. However, a few new converts were made, and a few old hands remained.

Planning was undertaken for this hardy band to walk from Minehead to Tintagel, 150 miles along the South-West Coast Path, between the 7th and the 15th of August 2004. These same plans were modified so that this lazy bunch would walk only to Bude. But the path took us from Somerset, across the northern coast of Devon, to Cornwall, or Kernow, as they have it down there, where we collapsed in a pub and took pride in our new cloth badges.

And now we plan to do it all over again, only this time along the next 135 miles of path. We will conquer Cornwall and emerge victorious at Land's End.

Contents and Links:

Long Walk 2006

Check out the plan and the campsites for this year.
Familiarise yourself with the route courtesy of the South West Coast Path Association photo tour.
Find out more about the Logical Genetics Patent Walk Logger.
Pack with the help of the 2004 kit list.

Sponsorship 2006

Here are the sponsorship details for this year:

Dan and Richard are walking for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Jason is raising money for Cancer Research.
Francis is acquiring sponsors for the Red Cross.
Jo and Skene are doing it for Oxfam.

Practice Walks 2006

Thames Path upstream.
Thames Path downstream.

Long Walk 2004

Introductory page for last time.
Jo's photos.
Dan's pictures.
Reports of practice walks completed for the 2004 walk.

Long Walking Generally

Peruse an excellent site about long-distance footpaths in Britain
Will Self walked the Essex way, then wrote about it in The Standard. Here is the remarkably uncritical article.

News:

02-04-2006	Details of the rather nice campsites now online. Thank you Lorna!
01-04-2006	Website updated by my darling girlfriend, Jo, whilst I played the new Elder Flower Cordial game. It has sixteen square miles of territory to explore so I like to think of it as a virtual practice walk. As for the walk plans, the route has been decided, the campsite booked (thanks to Dan and Lorna) and the menus are being planned (by Pamela and John - mmm). When more information is available it will appear here...
12-2005	The long walk is revived following excessive drinking.
15-08-2004	Part 1 of the South West Coast Path Long Walk is completed. We reach Bude. See above for photos.
03-08-2004	Jo and I have painstakingly entered grid references for locations along the walk. These I will upload to my GPS device, which will show us the way as we walk. Here is a map of the waypoints.
26-7-2004	Charity, charity, charity. Finally got my charity page sorted out today, taking the minimum effort approach of setting up a page with justgiving.com. Still got a long way to go to catch up with Dan's impressive efforts. However, considerably in advance of some of our walkers who haven't even declared an allegiance. Here's a list of the walkers, with who they are fundraising for (if they've told me), and where you can sponsor them: James Clarke, The Red Cross, http://www.justgiving.com/mypaintheirgain. Joanne Hacking, Oxfam, http://www.talesofjo.co.uk/longwalk.html Ben "Ron" Haskings, unknown. Richard Johnson, (helping Dan with) The MS Society, http://www.logicalgenetics.com/longwalk.php Hannah King, unknown. Vicky Lomax, unknown. James Skene, The Samaritans, http://www.justgiving.com/skenehurtsformoney Dan Taylor, The MS Society, http://www.logicalgenetics.com/longwalk.php Mark Summerfield, Crisis, https://secure.crisis.org.uk/sponsor/sponsorsomeone.php?id=315.
07-2004	Dan and I went for a walk along the Kennet and Avon Canal ([27-7] not the Oxford Canal as I stupidly posted previously) between Theal and Newbury last weekend (18-7-2004). Dan has some pictures and commentary on the logicalgenetics forums. We cranked an old man's handle. With only two full weeks left before the big one, the time is definitely ripe for getting sponsorship. As usual, I'm leaving it to the last minute. Dan, however, is surpassing himself in his efforts on behalf of The MS Society. He's got nearly 900 quid's worth of sponsorship so far, with banner ads spontaneously appearing on friendly websites, and plans to spam blogs of note like fark. Get along to his sponsorship page to give him a hand. The more you pay, the more he has to suffer. In related news, I recently bought a Garmin eTrex GPS receiver. This should eliminate arguments as to where we are on the walk. It should also eliminate arguments as to where we are going, and where we've been, as you can program routes to follow, and download the route you actually took afterwards. Here's a little map of a stroll I took around Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. The accuracy seems to vary between about 15 feet and 150 feet. Of course, on a coastal path a couple of feet can make all the difference between the top of the cliff, and the rocks at the bottom.
23-7-2004	Jo and I have prepared a kitlist for walkers. Print it out and tick it off (you naughty kitlist, naughty!).
24-6-2004	Jo has also written a very nice report of our exploits in April, when we attempted to walk the Capital Ring, a 75 mile walk around London. It wasn't as successful as we hoped, but as it receeds deeper into ancient history, I find my memories of it become increasingly positive. Pictures were also taken.
19-6-2004	OK, the walk is now planned, and the plan can be found here. The campsites are all booked, thanks to Jo. Dan and Johnson have planned the vehicular support between them. Johnson is taking his car, and Dan is hiring a funky people carrier. A diet sheet has been sent out to all participants, along with a request for money to cover up-front expenses. Final news: I've reorganised this page to make links to the deeper content, particularly the practice walks, more obvious, and to put the news a bit nearer the top. In November, Jo, Mark and James did a practice walk on the North Downs Way. Jo has written it up beautifully, in the second of our exciting practice walk reports. I couldn't be there, because I fell off my bike and broke my arm two weeks earlier. It's better now. In February, I announced on the forums that we've decided on Minehead to Padstow for the walk. After an extensive consultation process, numerous failures to communicate and several examples of gross stupidity, we finally set the the date for the walk for the 7th - 15th of August, and called for firm commitment from walkers. Silence resounded. On enquiry, most people sucked their teeth and muttered about holiday days and trips to sunny foreign places. However, about three people are still coming. The walk has now been pretty much completely planned. No details to put online yet, but Jo and I have identified the campsites at which we will stay on each night. Also, based on the intimidating descriptions in the Southwest-Coast path book, we have cut the length of the walk down to 150 miles, by ending in Tintagel rather than Padstow. This leaves a daily average distance of about 15 miles, and we have staged it so that we have about 8 hours walking per day, according to the book. We then attempted a practice walk in April. The plan was to do the Capital Ring, a circumnavigation of London, a distance of 75 miles, in 4 days. We were not conspicuously successful. Jo and I dropped out after 3 days, and a mere 55 miles. Basically, our feet got very sore, and my knee and ankle packed in. I grew depressed. After all, I'm attempting to organise a long-distance walk, and I'm capable of about a third of the distance over nice flat ground. If anybody mentions 'getting trained up first' to me again, I'm going to hurt them. However, rather than knock it all on the head (as I might prefer), I have been encouraged (by people who haven't walked from their sofa to their fridge recently) to continue. However, the plan has changed a bit. We are now going to hire a mini-bus, or people carrier, and work out some system of drivers, so that if people can't complete the walking (as seems increasingly likely), we will be able to cope. It will also help with getting to the pub in the evenings. And so to the present. I now need to know exactly who is coming. This will enable us to plan transport, food, campsite bookings, etc. I also need money of the non-refundable type. I shall be sending out an email. Probably tomorrow.
06-05-2004	Hmm, this webpage hasn't been updated in a while. But, things are moving on apace! The following exciting events have occurred since last I wrote.
21-10-2003	Busy, busy. Finally got around to writing a script to generate photo galleries. The gallery for the first walk is here or accessible through the new practice walks page
29-8-2003	First practice walk successfully completed in the White Peak, Derbyshire. Read the report and find out what you missed out on. Photos to follow.
15-7-2003	Isn't it nice to be mates with your ISP? Dan Taylor, esteemed proprietor of LogicalGenetics has offered to host the site for free at http://www.longwalk.co.uk/ so we've transferred the site over and set up some forums. This is where most of the organisation will be hammered out, and where I'll post more detailed announcements, so get registered.
14-7-2003	First site up on codepages.

Contact Information:

Mail at j.skene@skenepages.com

Join channel #spang on EFNet IRC.

Post on the forums at Logical Genetics.

Disclaimers:

This is not an organisation, charitable, commercial or otherwise. If you go with us on this walk you take your chances. You are also responsible for your own fund raising and donation activities, although we might suggest a charity that you might like to choose.

This site is maintained by James Skene, Joanne Hacking, Lorna Metcalfe and Dan Taylor. Little on this page is copyright us and we're not responsible for the content of external sites (except the ones we own).