Walking 1000 miles from Lands end to John O'Groats in aid of The Air Ambulance (starts april 7th 2024)

Sunday 15 November 2009

back again!
just back from a nice 17 mile walk with full kit (alfie now sleeping!)
so i thought id try modding the blog some more,
Google latitude seems to be able to pinpoint my position on google maps when i access google maps from my phone i should be able to update and make my position visible to anyone who may want to know during the trek, this seems to be a handy and potentially life saving addition if everything goes tits up!
gadgets are good!

Monday 2 November 2009

Updated the blog today, spent about 4 hours weighing and listing my kit, and listing the major points on my route.
i daresay that i will change some of this as i get near to the begining of the trek but it will do for now.

Am quite pleased that my base weight is coming in at about 10.5kg. if i can shed some weight i will do as with food and water i'll be carrying about 15-16kg on the longer stages, ive not measured this out yet so its only a guess for now, but it seems a fairly sensible estimate and if correct well within my normal capacity for carrying on a long distance walk tho not in a 50 litre pack on a 1000 mile trek! will have to do some full pack walks to see how the rucksac holds out.

Sunday 1 November 2009

seriously long day at the computer today, i Have been measuring and marking my approximate days ends onto my maps in increments of 17 miles, usefully google earth could import my planned gpx route in very easily so i'm certain that my measurments clicked into G Earth are reasonably accurate.
Google also made it easy for me to create an image of my entire walk which you can now see in the right hand bar.
Enough computer for today. time to feed alfie anyway :)

Saturday 31 October 2009

as i have have the burner lit i thought i'd try out a little cooking :)

normal ultra light weight food is basic to say the least (in my experience!) so i thought i'd cook a pasta and dried peas stew with a little seasoning and a nice chicken breast (cut up)
ok not ultra light but during three or so months of walking pot noodle is gonna get really dull!.
Having already primed the stove (see previous post) I set the breast and rice and seasoning into half a pot of water and left it too boil.
After reaching a rolling boil i took the pan from the heat (used about 25ml of meths outside with no wind shield) and put my home made pot cosy on and left it to simmer off the stove.
30 mins later i checked the food and all was cooked still steaming hot!

OK heston blumenthal may not have been impressed (Bunny!!!) but this is wholesome and different camping food which Alfie thoroughly enjoyed! lol! Ruth had made mousaka for tea!
I've been testing my cooking gear today!
a little experiment with my wee vargo meths burning stove and pre priming the meths seems to have worked wonderfully at speeding up meths evaporation and should mean i use less meths without carrying any more gear.
my method is simply to pour a tiny amount of meths into the lid my stove is standing on in the picture and light it, this then heats the meths in the stove and causes the meths to evaporate quickly thus causing little jets of flame to shoot from the burner and enabling cooking to start more rapidly.

Alfie in his waterproof jacket essential for keeping the inside of the tent dry and nothing to do with me being overprotective!
Test email from my phone


Sent from my HTC

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Alfie testing his fleece for those cold nights in the tent!

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First test post via mms