The plan was to amble around the Welsh Borders this weekend, using campsites – not many wildcamp options around here. Everywhere is full! So, time to sort out garden and perhaps do some urban walking

David McDowell (see France from top to bottom) has got me thinking. What would be a good route through France?

France is a country that offers some stunning walking along well marked routes; it’s not all just wine and baguettes! Here you have the dramatic mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees, but also the hills of the Massif Central and the Voges, the wonderful undulating country of the Perigord and the lands of the Lot and the Tarn — the Aveyron is a real gem of a place. Getting closer to the sea there’s the Ardeche and the Cevennes. And France also offers some stunning coastal walking.

There are some problems though. I’ve heard of people cycling from top to bottom and taking boats through the rivers and canals from the Channel to the Med. But I’ve never heard of anyone walking it before. Route planning would be critical. Those great expanses of lowlands —kilometres of wheat fields that seem to go on forever — may be welcome when your are riding a bike, but they might be just too much on foot during the heat of summer.

Fortunately the French have done a lot of the planning for us. For example, the GR 36 footpath starts at Caen on the North Coast and winds its way down to the Med near Narbonne, by way of Normandy, Le Mans, Saumur, Angouleme, Perigeux and the Dordogne, Cahors and Carcassone. That would be some walk. You could branch off at teh Loire and head South East through the Limousin, the Massif Central and connecting onto the Stephenson Trail through the Cevennes to the Camargue. That would be a fine trip as well.

Starting would present a challenge.  Calais might seem obvious and a route from here would you through the picturesque country of the North including the lovely Somme. But Calais means a big chunk of extra walking and probably sends you on a path that is far too easterly, unless you choose to walk through Paris.

My favourite start would probably be at Cherburg. Cherburg is not the most attractive of towns and tourists tend to race away from it and down the peninsula. The peninsula, though, is a lovely place and would be a great start to a long walk, whether you took a coastal route or walked through the middle.

There’s almost too much choice here to make route plotting easy! Ideally, you’d want to criss cross from west to east and back again.

Weather would also be a real challenge as the walk would take months. Winter weather can be pretty horrible in France and you probably wouldn’t have to finish walking through a cold, wintery Languedoc landscape. Perhaps, this alone means that this would be a project best tackled in stages over a number of years.

But above all else I can’t get away from the thought that one route wouldn’t be good enough. I reckon you’d have to do the walk (at least) twice to do the country justice. Add in (a some would) tours of famous vineyards and things get even more complicated.

A real challenge this and one that I’ll come back do occasionally.

It will be fascinating to see the route that David comes up with!

While looking at the Cicerone website I found this in their FAQ section:

Q: Is Paddy Dillon Irish?

A: No, he’s a Lancashire lad! There must be some Irish way back when, but not in the recent generations he says. In fact the publisher is more Irish than Paddy is!

This made me smile, not least because it gives you a feel for the nice gentle humour that is often associated with the company — and with Paddy of course.

I’m glad to know that Proprietor Jonathan Williams has more Irish blood than Paddy.

Personally, I’m trying to work out whether Paddy is actually human! I heard a rumour once that he came to earth on a meteorite; but that can’t be right!

I mentioned in my Friday walk piece that I as walking without poles. While South Shropshire is not the most mountainous of place it is all very up and down. Pick the right route and you can accumulate a pretty reasonable ascent during the walk.

I wanted to take this walk in the most natural way I could, preserve a rolling gait as much as possible i order to really feel how things were. This would be the first time in years that I’ve done this walk without poles. It was quite an interesting experience.

I was certainly slower over the ground, yet not really that much slower over the entire route. Without poles I wasn’t charging up the slopes or racing across the flat. Everything did seem a little more relaxed somehow and I did realise how stiffly I often walk when using poles.

True, there were no-knee crunching descents, well none that went on forever! And I wasn’t carrying a full pack. While my poles will still go with me on loner outings I think I may walk more often without them.

Any thoughts team?

I love the odd connections that you experience with the internet. I received an email from Marco this morning. The two young men in this photograph (taken at the St Charter Festival a month ago) are his sons Eneas and Roberto. Could I send him the photo? Of course. A pleasure.

Friday saw me out on the hills for the first time in months, the back problem now well and truly put behind me. I’ve been out walking a lot but this was the first time that I’ve done any sharp ups (and more significantly) downs.

This summer feels a write off although there is still a chance to get some more miles in before the longer nights come. No trips to Snowdonia this summer or even the Pyrenees which was a plan lurking around and waiting to happen. Ambling around the South Shropshire hills I realised what I’d been missing, and some of it I was quite surprised about.

At the bottom of Ragleth Hill is was nice to meet a group of ageing ramblers, about thirty of them, all laughter and exuberance as they looked forward to their day on the hills. I was soon climbing alone experiencing once again that sudden sharp realisation that some of these inclines are far harper than they have any right to be in this part of the world.

I was walking without poles and although setting a reasonable pace I was slower than usual. With poles I would have just powered up the hill but at this slower pace I found myself taking a path into woodland that I’d not noticed before. I’ve climbed this hill countless times before but have never walked through the woodland that surrounds it. It wasn’t the most spectacular of woodland walks but it still had that sylvan, mystical, quality about it. Some early morning sun found its way through the dense overhead foilage. Sometimes the slopes were steep enough to make me place my feet with real care. At other times other obstacles such as fox holes and allen trees had to be negotiated with care. Also, here in the woodland, sheep were grazing. You seldom see sheep in woodland in England although they always seem to be here whenever I descend back down through this woodland.

A quiet, wet, Friday is the bets time to stroll through these tiny Shropshire villages. Postmen were delivering. Retired residents tended their gardens with care. The village church and gardens looked as immaculate as ever. In a cottage (next to another called ‘The Ancient House’) a women who looked in her nineties was being chatted to be another resident, keen to check that her senior charge was feeling better illness, that she was eating well and that she had no immediate shopping needs.

The Little Stretton campsite is usually crammed full in good weather in August. The change in the weather had obviously frightened folks away although a few hardier families were setting up their tents for the weekend. A little further along the track I was delighted to find that Ashes Hollow Cottage, which has been refurbished after years of sitting empty, is now inhabited and with signs of children in the garden.

By now the rain was beginning to fall heavily. It was a Janet Street Porter day, “if you want a quiet day on the hills go out when the weather is shit!”.

I was alone as I climbed this quiet and secluded track. Use just a little imagination and you could be somewhere in Snowdonia. It was on these quiet and lonelier paths that I really realised what I had been missing; the ability to just get lost in the landscape, and I this case to be lost in the rain and the clouds. I’m not sure whether this state of mind actually helps me sort out problems, or even if it leaves me a more relaxed and better person at the end of it. But to be lost on high landscapes like this is a wonderful experience, one that I appreciated even more for my few months away.

Strolling downhill towards All Stretton I felt not so much a sense of achievement as one of relief. As an outdoor blogger I can feel legitimate again. It feels something of a fraud to be sitting at the computer and talking about the hills when I haven’t seen or smelt them in ages.

It was good to be back.

Maybe there’s always been an strong association between the TGO Challenge and meat pies but if so I’ve only discovered it this year.

When the Challenge journal is finally produced (sometime soon) you’ll be introduced to Phil Turner’s culinary pleasures — on the trail at least. Pies, sausages and all kinds of what Phil calls ‘indeterminable meat products’ feature prominently on the menu. There were times when Phil seemed driven on by the desire to get to a meat pie shop!

Phil’s route vetter (I shall keep him anonymous) seemed to have tipped Phil off about the availability of pies as he strolled across Scotland — the kind of information not shared with me when this same individual vetted my first route. But to be fair, there’s a section on the route forms for questions. I wouldn’t put it past Phil to have asked ‘where can I buy my pies’?

I met this same vetter on this year’s route. I was strolling towards Ballater and we shared a rest stop together. I’d not been to Ballater before. “Nice village” came the comment. “I prefer it to Braemar”.

“There’s a good pie shop” at Ballater he volunteered. His partner looked distressed. “Don’t tell everyone” she said (or words to that effect).” Everyone will want to go there”. When I finally made it into the campsite at Ballater I switched on my mobile to find a message from Phil confirming that the pies here were, indeed, fine. For reference, the pie shop is in the first stretch of shops encountered as you enter Ballater from the bridge end.

Fast forward to now. I’m engaged in my usual quest to determine a start point for next year’s Challenge. For me this is always the hardest part of route planning. I have a kind of check-list of things I’m considering. No early road walking please. A nice place to stay the night before. Easy access by bus or train. But perhaps the main influencing factor is the recommendation of others made at the end of the Challenge. I tend to mention to those who’ve done a fair few where I’ve started in the past and ask them to recommend a favourite start. This year I bumped Peter Molenaar at Montrose campsite. He’d started at Archaracle; he made it sound nice. That’ll do I thought.

A few days ago I put a note on the Challenge notice board asking for ideas and information about Archaracle. I’ve received a few helpful comments and emails. Each one of them mentions the pie shop in Archaracle. You can sense the build up of saliva as they type.

This year I realised I was becoming an old Challenge codger, hobbling around with a bad back and so on. When I was in France a week ago I realised I still had by TGO Challenge badge fixed to my Tilly Hat. I fear there is no way back now. I might as well settle back and plan my route by Pie Shop.

When you’ve written a blog for a long time strange things can happen! One of the weirdest is that people seem to be able to pre-empt what you are thinking at any one time!

Comments seem to be particularly prescient. Regular readers will be up to date with recent comments. But the longer you have the blog the greater legacy of material you build up. I spend quite a bit of time corresponding on posts that are several years old!

Take David of the selfpowered blog for example. He appears on the thread for my review of the MLD Duomid. He wonders about the merits of an MLD tarp tent — the Supermid — over the Terra Nova Super Solar. Blow me down, I read this just as I was beginning to contemplate the same things myself.

The Super Solar is a proper tent with an outer, inner tent with bug mesh and ground sheet. It is made of the same lightweight materials as the Laser Competition. As a two person tent it weighs just above two kilograms (or just under 5 pounds). It is lightweight especially when I consider that on my first TGO Challenge I used a Hilleberg Akto which weighed only a few hundred grams less.

As my gear has got lighter there has been an increasing mis-match between solo gear and gear designed for two or us. We do have a double person tarp and that is fine for an odd night out in the summer. But there is no way that Kate is going to use one of these things on something like the Challenge.

Next year’s crossing might be a two person event. So, I’ve been thinking of lighter options.

The MLD Supermid is a two person (or more) affair, more like the size of a Shangri-la/Hex than anything else. Yet MLD’s sinylon is a much lighter fabric than that used by Golite. The Supermid weighs .7 kilograms. Put a two person bug net in and the whole package comes to just about half the weight of the Super Solar. It costs just under £300 which is not a bad price for such a product.

The Supermid is interesting me a lot. It doesn’t have the two vestibules of the SS and it does have a pole that runs through the middle of the sleeping area. But the 2 person bug — which Ron says can be tight for 2 — is actually bigger than the inner tent of the SS. And there is so much room in these teepee tents that it will feel positively spacious.

So, this MLD tent is a real alternative option. The materials might not be as robust although he SS is now showing a little ware!

I think this might be a serious purchase for next year’s Challenge and trip to the Pyrenees.

One the key decisions any lightweight backpacker has to make is what luxury is it worth carrying? Hikers reduce the weight of their pack by scrutinising everything. True obsessives/aficionados like Colin actually weight even the lightest of things.

Most of my ‘luxuries’ vanished a long time ago. I might take a paperback book with me on a short overnighter when the overall pack weight isn’t groaning under the weight of food. But come the longer trek the books and so on are left behind. I know there are those who used to tear out the pages of the book as they walked, but that just seemed to me to be book vandalism!

I mention this because there has been a conversation on twitter this week between Phil Turner and Steve Horner which made me smile. Phil is a lightweight hiker, of that there is no doubt. But I sometimes wonder if this is so he can carry more gadgets with him!

The subject of the discussion this week was the new version of the Kindle e-book reader that was announced by Amazon this week. This new Kindle weighs under 250 grams “lighter than many a backpack) and has a battery life of between three weeks and 1 month depending on how often you use wifi — a 3G version will give you 10 days of battery life. This is pretty light and, of course, can pack a load of books into its thin form — about 3,500 actually! I suppose at that weight the new Kindle is a consideration, although the monochrome screen has its limitations for anything other than text, for instance maps.

The trouble is with all of this stuff is the weight adds up. Kindles, smartphones, battery chargers and small batteries: well you could always find yourself adding another kilo to your base weight without any trouble indeed.

This may be the future, but you don’t need a Kindle to indulge in the new multimedia world while backpacking. On this year’s Challenge I came across tent maker Henry Shires a few times. I noticed that he tended to disappear into his tent early in the evening. Henry told me that he was watching feature films on his iphone. He was in a B&B or campsite often enough to keep the battery charged effectively. I can’t remember how may films he’d watched, but it was an impressive total — I think well into double figures!

These days I make do with virtually nothing he way of entertainment. I do usually have a camera to stroll around with if I pitch very early but more often than not I’m happy to find entertainment and stimulation in that which is around me. Time in the back country is time for meditation and for marvelling of that which is often ordinary and mundane in the outside world, and which is so refreshingly different from the city.

At under 250 grams maybe the I will be walking with the Kindle at some point. But I think it might be a shame. Is this view of life something that comes with age?

Back at home I’m as geeky as anybody — you should see my broadband speed which was upgraded by Virgin Media yesterday! But in the hills, does going really light mean more space for the mind and the spiritual?

Have you ever stopped what you are doing and though, “grief this is very sad”?

As you can probably see Bob and I have been chatting agains about how we can develop the Outdoors Station — this is a little like a group of scientists that get together each year to work out how to finally beat global warming or lung cancer !

Bob is such a slave driver that I’ve spent all evening recording demo pieces on Scotland and the Pyrenees.

What a lonely life I lead