Breakfast at the Inveroan was as good as the dinner.  It dealt with the last vestiges of the whisky as me and the walkers chatted over our plans for the day.  Some were going to Kingshouse 10 miles away and others on to Kinlochleven which is 18 miles or so from the hotel.  I was heading for Fort William and had around 33 miles left to go.I packed everything up and hit the road a little later th…

Day 2 broke with a comprehensive clag out on the low peak outside the B&B bedroom window though with a tiny patch of brilliant sun so I thought it could go either way today.  Spoiler alert, it wasn't the sunny one.The one solid thing about the accommodation was the breakfast and the granola course would have done me on any normal day but I shoved in a toast course and a veggie fry-up course for g…

With COVID raging and at the time of writing no prospect of it reigning in its raging any time soon a getaway or if you like a forgetaway was in order.  I'd toyed with a route around Knoydart - bits of the Cape Wrath course - and then the Great Glen Way, both of which obviously meant the immediate purchase of maps and despite rejecting both in the end, no map is ever wasted.  You can't have too …

Panel DiscussionLast night I was at an Icebreaker (a New Zealand clothing brand that manufacture merino clothing) event in a Shoreditch pop-up to promote their merino clothing. I don't normally do this kind of thing as companies tend to expect gushing praise about something actually pretty trivial in exchange for a few of whatever it is.But the fact that we're flushing 700,000 pieces of plastic in…

The week-long Berghaus Dragon's Back Race is a major commitment in terms of both time and finance. Having just finished the race (blog post here), I wanted to give my thoughts on whether it's worth the investment and also how I would advise next year's first timers to do things better than I did.I should point out that I'm not sponsored in any way by anyone or any company with any relationship to …

Ever since the Internet has provided the opportunity to suspend all productive activity and watch dots instead, that's been my guilty pleasure. Days are lost every year to the Spine and I remember watching Jez Bragg's dot glide across the Dragon's Back route map in 2015. There's something about the combination of knowing someone else is doing something heroic and outrageous with the potential for …

As I write, we're only 3.5 weeks out from the Dragon's Back race - surely the toughest personal challenge I've taken on so far.It starts in Conwy on the 20th May 2019 and ends almost 200 miles South in Llandeilo on the Friday, having covered pretty much every significant peak on the way down. Every day is an ultra distance over some extreme terrain with the added challenge of largely being left to…

You can't move for warnings about the state of the environment and man's devastating effect on it these days.  The science can be complicated and presented in an overly techincal way, making it less accessible.  Professor Ed Hawkins, climate scientist for the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, thought the same and came up with a strikingly clear illustration of the changes we are cau…

Next May I'm due to start the Dragon's Back race from Conwy Castle on the North Coast of Wales down to Llandeilo, the best part of 200 miles South.  It's run over 5 days and over pretty much every mountain in between with strict cut-offs throughout for good measure.  It's an enormous undertaking whichever way you look at it - my major (of many) concerns being the cumultive lack of sleep with wha…

Great Yarmouth Seafront and PierEvery year since forever my extended family has decamped en masse to Sheringham on the Norfolk Coast, 4 miles up from its more well-known neighbour, Cromer.  My lot were in the shoe-making business in the distant past in Leicester and all the factories used to shut down in the Summer at the same time for 'Leicester Fortnight'.  Half the city would flock to the coa…