We would like to say a special thank you to the following people:
. Sue (wife/mother) and Mary (mother-in-law/grandmother) for being our support crew during the walk.
. All friends and family of Barry and Michael who have provided sponsorship.
. Everyone from the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) at the University of Greenwich for their support and sponsorship.
. Everyone from Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance for supporting and sponsoring us and the guys in the IT department who loaned us the kit to allow us to produce our blog.
. Everyone at Emmanuel Church in Greenwich who sponsored us.
. Mary, the proprietor of the Postgate Farm B&B (where we stayed in Glaisdale) who was a complete stranger when we first met her, but who sponsored us immediately without even being asked.
. Clare Trevorrow from the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation for providing help and support along the way.
In addition, we would like to give a brief mention to some of the B&B owners on our Coast to Coast which went that extra mile during our very short stays:
. Stonethwaite; Knotts View: lovely B&B, very accommodating and helpful.
. Patterdale; Grisedale lodge: Really friendly owners, carried our bags to our rooms, dried our boots, provided tea and cake on arrival, give advice for the walk, very high quality B&B.
. Glaisdale; Mary (Postgate Farm) & Sandra (The Red House). First rate B&B, very reasonably priced, excellent accommodation.
We did this walk in memory of Rob Disspain, Barry's brother in-law and Michael's Uncle, who despite succumbing to lung cancer in 2009, managed to live such a full life. Though he is gone, he is very much in our thoughts.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI've just found your Blog and have enjoyed reading bits of it (will read the rest after work!)Well done for completing the walk and for raising so much money for a very good cause.
My husband and I intend to walk the C2C in 2012 to celebrate(?)my fiftieth birthday... Just wondered if you would have done anything differently, chosen different length walks on any of the days, or any other tips you could pass on? We're pretty fit and walk regularly, including a recent week in the lakes where we tackled some of Wainwrights favourite walks.
Would appreciate your comments! Gill
Gill
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. It's good to know people are reading our blog and find it enjoyable.
Regarding the walk ... I (Barry) was 52 when we completed the walk in May, so you've got nothing to fear regarding your age when attempting the walk next year.
As you can see, we completed the walk in 12 days. This length of time was favoured by quite a few walkers at the time, although just as many people chose to take longer .... 14 days or more.
Personally, I found the walk on some days to be just a bit too far and in retrospect would probably opt to complete the walk over 14 days - allowing me to savour the spectacular countryside a little more. (Although Michael would probably opt to complete it over 10 days - he found it all very easy - but he is 24 years younger than me).
Regarding other tips .... I would try and make sure you do plenty of training walks over similar terrain to the Coast-to-Coast. The walks in the lake district are definitely the more strenuous, so perhaps do a few training walks in the Derbyshire Peaks (Kinder Scout for example) or the Dorset Coastal path. Decide how many days you want to spread the C2C walk over and work out the average distance per day. Do training walks over that average distance on a couple of consecutive days - just to get used to doing long walks one day after another. But above all ... make sure you enjoy it. Don't be frightened of the walk, if I can do it, anyone can (Seriously). Plan your routes carefully beforehand (we carried all the maps with us on the walk, but navigated almost entirely using an Apple Iphone with the maps loaded onto it ... + GPS). Make sure you're comfortable navigating using Maps - to be honest, I was particularly lazy with this & let Michael do all the navigating.
Choose the time of year you plan to do the walk carefully. We were exceptionally lucky with the weather .. hardly a drop of rain during the whole walk. However, parts of the walk were still quite boggy.
If you plan to stay in B&B or YHA accommodation during the walk. Make sure you book early. We commenced our booking process in December for our walk in the following May and still found places were already fully booked. We carried very little baggage on our walks (just a small rucksack each with a little food and lots of fluids, waterproof jacket and trousers, maps, compass, mobile phone and thats about all).
My wife and mother-in-law carried the rest of our stuff around in our "support vehicle" - the family car. They swanned around shopping etc. during the days whilst we were doing the walks & we met up each evening. It worked very well.
However, if you and your husband are travelling alone, many of the other walkers employed the baggage handlers like Sherpa etc. to carry their stuff between accommodations and found them to be very reasonably priced and reliable.
I think thats about all I've got to say for now.
Hope you're lucky with the weather when you do the walk. Enjoy it. The feeling you'll get when finally walking down into Robin Hoods Bay after completing the walk will be something you'll remember for a very long time.
Cheers
Barry
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