WHW Mileage, Kit and Comms, and Final Thoughts

"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
Walter Bagehot 

I am not so perverse as to live my entire life by the quote above, but a big reason for doing this walk was to prove to myself that I could actually complete a 95 mile walk and in the process, shed the weight of unfinished business. Part of this is a legacy of past relationships; not just with the guy I did it with originally, but more recent relationships too.
Previously I seem to have surrounded myself with people who doubted me, my capability, my steadfastness. Telling me that I couldn't do something, that I wasn't good enough. Sometimes if I dared prove them wrong I'd be punished. For a long time I believed them and while on the face of it I had plenty of adventures, they were other peoples' adventures, to suit them. They weren't mine. Now times have changed.

My determination was certainly challenged here. I hope it's been obvious where I struggled but also where I rose up too. Sometimes this was with the help of friends; at other times just my own self reliance. In a way I feel as if I've reclaimed part of myself. The WHW isn't a massive undertaking in my opinion, but it did give me cause to think at times!

One of the things I've learned through doing the walk is that, whereas I previously thought of myself as someone who would be able to manage just fine in solitary, actually I derive a lot of pleasure from being with other people. Where in the past I have often said hello to people on the walks I do, this walk was a little different in that other people seemed to want to connect with me and share their stories at a more fundamental level. This tended to work most for other single women (none actually doing the walk), and younger men travelling together. (I didn't encounter more than one or two men travelling alone either). For some it was a simple hello and exchange of two or three questions. For others there was far more depth. I feel pretty comfortable in my own skin; enough for people to be themselves with me I hope. I've no agenda with people; I'm not looking to gain anything at their expense, to ridicule or put them down. More, I prefer to encourage and spur them on. I wouldn't want to live any other way.

Doing the walk exagerated the highs and lows I usually feel. I usually feel a sheer lust for life, but sometimes I can swing from feeling abundantly alive (which is great) to pretty low sometimes (which is not so great but I try to treat it as a balance to the happier side. This doesn't always work!). There were issues going on at the time of the walk that I couldn't really do a lot about but which did have an impact on my outlook and how alone I felt at times. Usually I walk alone (cue: Green Day) but this walk was different in that obviously there was a fair number of people around; especially around Loch Lomond, before people really started to drop out. I found it difficult to access the normal tranquility I feel when I walk, and I may have been better with a more isolated walk, curiously enough. And to clear the decks at home as much as I can before I do another walk, if I have any element of control over them.

I have a goal of completing the PCT and I need to have faith that I can deal with the lows as well as the highs when I am so far removed from my friends and family. In the future I would like to do longer walks both on my own and with company to see what suits me best. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the people on the walk and this is surely evident through my writing. But I think I'd like to be far more off the beaten track which would set my expectation from the outset. Something I need to test.

So, to a few stats:

Daily Distance (Miles)
Day 1 Milngavie to Garadhban Forest   16
Day 2 Garadhban Forest to Inversnaid  20
Day 3 Inversnaid to Crianlarich            11.5
Day 4 Rest Day
Day 5 Crianlarich to Bridge of Orchy    13.5
Day 6 Bridge of Orchy to Kinlochleven  20.5
Day 7 Kinlochleven to Fort William      14.5

Kit
Disclaimer: For anyone looking for inspiration regarding cutting edge or lightweight gear, look away now; the following may offend!


My WHW was undertaken with what I had to hand. No special purchases were made, apart from a new gas canister. I've not had much money recently so haven't been able to massively reduce the weight of my kit / upgrade it / be fashionable / whatever. The biggest contibution was the free GoLite Jam from a friend, enabling me to leave out at least 2Kgs. Another contribution was made by Steve Horner after trying to hide his tea pot in my old pack. That wasn't going to happen again.

The Big Three
Tent: Wild Country Trisar 2.8Kgs
Sleeping (Quilt + NeoAir) 1.6Kgs
Rucksack 0.56Kgs
Big Three Total 4.96Kgs

• Cooking (Coleman Microstove, New Canister, Titan Kettle, Lighter, Spork, Empty 2L Platypus, Stuffsack) Total 566 g
• Hygiene and Meds Total 170g
• Clothing Total 1.5Kgs
• Painting things 227g
• Info (Map, Book (Henry David Thoreau's Walking @88g), WHW Guide Book) Total 288g
• Misc (Petzl Tika Plus, Compass, Penknife, Moscoils, Writing materials) Total 306g
• Food (At the start I had enough for 4 days, see below, but this included 2xMountain House dehydrated Meals, 5xBreakfast (OatSoSimple with dried milk), 2xGalaxy Hot Choc Sachets, Tea, Coffee, Dried Milk, Snickers Bars) Total 1121g

On the page it looks as if I was carrying about 9.3Kgs; In reality I reckon this was probably more like 10Kgs when considering the water I carried, plus the extra weight of the tent from the rain. When I came home the whole lot weighed 8.4Kgs. This will be a far cry from when I did it last time; I recall a figure of about 37lbs for my Austria trip, which equates to about 16.8Kgs. How the hell did I carry that? Over the coming months I want to drastically reduce the weight I carry. Both on me and my pack :o)

Obviously I need to replace my waterproof trousers. And my tent. And I am thinking about something warmer to sleep in as we head towards colder months. I like the quilt and it's starting to see a bit of use (in the house too when I have people over; it's probably had as much use from this as outdoors!) But I'm tussling with the sleeping bag option again. I need to give more thought to a lighter weight approach to being warm in winter.

Water
I tended to carry no more than about 200ml in the Platypus; I used it for the first day which didn't have so many water sources, but after this I only filled it with enough to act as a reservoir before the next source if I didn't think the 500ml bottle I carried (from the Co-op) would be enough. In the end I only used the Platy if I wanted more water overnight to save getting up and even then rarely filled it more than half way. I drank straight from the streams, if I had a choice those with moss to act as a basic filter, preferably sandy bedded, fast flowing. I usually had quite a lot of choice!

Food
I was trying to not spend too much money on food. When I set out I had 2 Mountain House Dehydrated meals, 2 meals I had dehydrated myself, some Pitta bread with foil packed tuna and Primula Squeezy Cheese Spread. I'd packaged up OatSoSimple (which is too high GI for me) into daily breakfast amounts mixed with dried skimmed milk powder. I also had 3 Snickers bars, GORP (of course; I find it gives me a lift but that's sugar for you, though the nuts helped level that out) and tea and coffee. I took some Via sachets which were awesome!
Along the way I picked up some really heavy but good Flapjack bars, two big (mass produced) sausage rolls which were good for longer energy; I guess the from the fat since there couldn't have been much protein in them, more Snickers bars (duo packs then I could save it) and that was about it. Odd can of Sprite in Gartness. Lager Shandy and Orange Juice with Lemonade a few times. That was great to flood out carbohydrate and electrolytes back into my body and helped to recover better, for rehydration and energy. Not sure I can use that argument with the shandy though...
In the future I'd probably switch to more cereal bars and flapjacks in the day. I liked the breakfast but found I was hungry again after about 2 hours. The GORP was great, the Primula I'd leave out, tuna was good but heavy but was nice to get decent protein in. The pitta was a Food Doctor multiseed cereal healthy type that seemed to last well for a few days, didn't distintegrate and gave me a bit longer lasting energy.
I interspersed a couple of days with pub meals which were okay but just meant that I was carrying food for longer; until I'd eaten it. It was good psychologically though!
I'm not sure that I ate enough; I felt okay most of the time but do tend to react if I haven't eaten enough so kept an eye out for that (I get the shakes!). After a couple of days I knew how I reacted to the extra exercise and carrying so fell into a pattern that worked.

Communications
I have a very old (approaching 2 years) Motorola Razr which is usually pathetic as far as battery life goes. It meant that I restricted my calls and texts and barely accessed the web. I have mixed feelings about using a phone on a trip like this. On this walk it would have been nice to be able to be more in touch with people, but I am conscious that one of the reasons I like walking is to escape. I feel a bit caught up with Twitter and Facebook at the moment and am not sure it's really in the spirit of why I love the hills.

Fitness
As far as the actual physical walking goes, one thing that would help me in the future is to have a more solid foundation of walking behind me. I was pretty pleased with how my body responded to the physical demands of the walk given the little preparation I'd had (I find it hard to accept that at 39 I can't do what I did at 25!!). I hadn't carried a pack for several days at a time for several years. The longest day walk I'd done recently was only 11 or 13 miles (I can't remember now). So to do a couple of stretches of 20 miles with a pack was pretty good going for me I think. I just want to capitalise on that now. I dropped a bit of weight and I certainly notice the increased fitness generally, but got to keep on keeping on!

All in all I'm pleased I did the West Highland Way, there's a few things I'd change but it's all good experience for the next outing, which will be...