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I have never written a report so far but I thought this walk would justify giving it a try. As it will probably be quite a long report, I will split it into a few parts. Any feedback or criticism will be appreciated and might help me make later sections of the report more interesting! English is also not my first language, so please be lenient with my grammar and spelling
IntroductionThe first question everyone has been asking me was WHY I did it, usually before calling me all kinds of synonyms of ‘mad’. When George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Everest, his response was simply: ‘Because it’s there’. Is there a better reason to do something silly? At the time, I was a bit bored with the path my life had taken and the day to day office life. For a while I had wanted to do ‘more’ with my life but had no idea what. Around the same time I received a very good job offer in my home country of Luxembourg. Despite being a bit unhappy at the time, I didn’t want to leave Scotland as I had lived here for 12 years and it felt like home.
As I was unsure what to do, I packed my backpack one weekend in January 2012 and headed to the Cairngorms where I spent a night chilling out in my hammock with a bottle of whisky, pondering over my options. As the bottle got emptier, my ideas and plans got crazier until eventually my plans evolved from travelling a bit to hitchhiking to walking home. Shortly afterwards I fell asleep / passed out. I headed home the following day feeling exhilarated; something I hadn’t felt in a while. Coming up with awesome plans while drunk is common, once sobriety sets in you realize how stupid the idea is and throw it out the window. But I just couldn’t let go of this idea, I had nothing to lose, so first thing Monday morning in the office, I sent an email to my boss handing in my notice, exact leaving day to be discussed as I had no plan yet; emailed my landlord to cancel my lease, sent an email home to accept the job in Luxembourg; and finally called up my bank manager to get an appointment to take out a loan.
It was done! I set back, sipped my coffee and an unexplainable flood of thoughts overcame me, I felt high as a kite on adrenaline, excitement and fear. Then it dawned on me that I had absolutely no experience walking! Sure, I liked spending my weekends in the hills, bagged a handful of munroes etc, but my passion was camping and outdoor survival, not walking. I have wrecked knees and anything further than a few hundred yards I take my car. A few years back I had attempted the West Highland Way but had to drop out after day 1 due to a ridiculous amount of blisters… but there was no way back now. I must have been sitting there for quite a while before the phone rang and work pulled me back to reality. Don’t think I did a very good job for the rest of that day but whatever, I was going on the adventure of a lifetime!
I got a large enough loan approved by the bank, my family approved of my idea after a moment of shock and I started telling as many people as I could, to put that extra pressure on me, making sure I couldn't back out anymore. Lastly, I signed up to do the whole walk for charity. As my mum is coeliac and I wanted to thank my parents in some way for their support that allowed me to come to Scotland in the first place to study, I set up a justgiving page for Coeliac UK and started spamming the link on facebook.
I eventually set my leaving date for the 1st of April 2012 (which caused even more disbelief that I would actually do it but I enjoyed having people think it was all a very elaborate Aprils Fool’s joke).
GearDuring the rest of January and February I spent every free minute buying and reading books about long distance walks, ultralight gear, bivvying etc. I had a blast spending a good portion of that loan in the various hiking shops here, buying the lightest gear available; it was like Christmas, every day for weeks!
Going as light as possible was key. As I wanted to do the walk unsupported, I had to carry everything from beginning to end. The main decision was what I would do for sleeping. While I have an ultralight Terra Nova Laser Photon Elite weighing in at only about 720g, I didn’t like the idea of having to rely on it lasting for such a long period of continuous use. I had never used a bivvi before but I liked the idea of them, very basic and robust, quick to set up and pack away and most importantly, easy to hide away in a bush in them for once I would leave Scotland. Lots of people warned me against using a bivvi as it would be quite uncomfortable over such a long period of time or at least getting a hooped one, but I was determined to see how far I could push my limits and comfort zone. (I can be very stubborn!). The other decisions I received a lot of criticism on were not taking a stove and no MP3 player. MP3 player was an easy one, as much as I love music, I wanted to fully appreciate the loneliness and countryside without the distraction of music. Food was a bigger issue, I was planning on avoiding civilization as much as possible so had to make sure I always had enough rations to last me 3-4 days at a time. Water would be easy enough as I could just use my Katadyn to make any water drinkable. As for food, I spent quite a bit of time researching what would provide me with the highest calorie to weight ratio. This turns out to be butter and neat alcohol… I settled on living on ready-peeled pistachios (got to save every g!!) and Nature Valley cereal bars. Again I wanted to test how far I could get out of my comfort zone.
My aim was to carry no more than 14kg, below is a list of all the gear I took in case anyone is interested. The backpack came in at just under 10kg, which left me with 4kg to split amongst water and food.
RouteBy now it was beginning of March, I had stopped working and spent literally all day, every day for the rest of the month at home reading about routes and staring at the Walkhighlands OS map. I generally prefer the safety of a paper map over trusting a GPS, but considering the distance, I would have had to carry a ridiculous amount of OS maps. The weight alone plus the inconvenience of having to regularly find hiking shops to buy the next set of maps, I decided against them and to take a chance by fully trusting my GPS device. For emergencies I had a compass and figured that if it failed, I would always be able to somehow find civilization again with just a compass.
As I was in no rush to get home, I decided not to take the shortest route but go for a scenic one. For a while I had been planning to visit some friends in Wales, but had never gotten round to it. About to be leaving this country for good (or so I thought), and not wanting to break a promise, I opted for a little detour through Wales, what are a few hundred extra miles after all
I meticulously planned every step of the way and saved the routes to my GPS, which I had luckily bought a few years ago with a 50k OS map of the entire UK, unknowing that I would ever need more than the Scotland area of it at the time. Below is a picture of the rough route I have taken, if anyone is interested in the GPX files, please let me know!
After creating 5673 waypoints, these are the stats I came up with for the UK part of my trip:
Total distance: 1027.7 miles
Total ascent: 35,683m
Total descent: 35732m
(my GPS showed 1158.8 miles on reaching Harwich, so my planning was not too far off considering the distance)
At the time, reaching Harwich was as far as I got with planning. I couldn’t find a decent OS map of the continent and I didn’t have those in my GPS anyway, so I decided to just wing it once I would arrive in Holland. The UK was all I was really cared about at the time anyway, I grew up on the continent and had no real interest in its scenery, so once I would arrive in Holland, I would just take the most direct route home. My only plan was to make a detour to Werchter, a small town near Brussels as it is the host of a 4-day rock festival that I had been going to every year for 13 years. I had bought tickets for it long before deciding on this walk and I figured that time wise it could potentially work out. But that was all too far in the future to care about for now.
‘Time to nut up, or shut up’With all the planning and preparation done, there was only one last major sacrifice to do! Over the last 12 years I had become quite fond of my long hair, but I figured there was no way of keeping it hygienic while sleeping rough over prolonged periods of time. So after a bottle of wine it was time to head to the bathroom with a pair of scissors and a razor …
![before.jpg]()
- Before
![after.jpg]()
- After
Seeing myself in the mirror was a bit of a shock and reminded me a bit too much of American History X, so the goatee went too and I kept my beanie hat on for most of the time during the first weeks.
Over the last weeks I had given away the majority of my belongings and my parents came up with a van to take the few left-overs and my car back to Luxembourg the day before I set off. I felt quite lonely watching them drive off and returning to my now deserted flat. Luckily two close friends visited me on the evening of the 31st of March and kept me distracted. Once they left, I went to bed early in preparation for my big adventure…
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Link to part 2:
http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=34950