Walking Progress

It's been a while since I updated my walking progress. As I've mentioned before, inspired by the Eowyn Challenge I have spent the year so far trying to 'walk' from Hobbiton to Rivendell in Middle-earth.

My progress has slowed down somewhat in the last week, after an awesome week the week before, as you can see above. There wasn't anything serious last week, I was just feeling rather under the weather, so I'm hoping to bounce back this week and try and get at least five 10,000 step days in over the coming seven days.

As for my progress across Middle-earth?

As of Sunday, I was on Day 10 of the Hobbits' progress towards Rivendell. I have now met up with Strider, left Bree and my current location is coming out of the Chetwood. I'm on one of those stretches where you go quite some distance without any real change in Middle-earth scenery and part of me was sorely tempted to join my friends on their 19 mile walk they went on yesterday. The other part of me argued that Sunday morning was the first day that I didn't feel totally rotten so I'd probably be best off taking it nice and easy.

As you can see above, I'm doing really well towards my goal. I'm especially pleased that I'm ahead of target at the moment. I think I'm due to finish somewhere around about Christmas time at the moment, which gives me a nice little buffer of a week or so in case I fall behind.

I'm really looking forward to crossing that 200 mile mark, but first I have to get past the Midgewater Marshes, at 173 miles. Luckily, living in Scotland, I have plenty of experience of midges!

Sunday Walk, Part 2: St Blane's Chapel & Standing Stones

Yesterday I finished up with our arrival on the ridge overlooking Loch na Leighe. This was where the walk really got a little bit trickier.

I think that we made a little bit of a mistake at this point in our route, as we followed the path round the hill when I think she should have gone down towards the Loch. When we came round the corner we found an electric fence which we had to duck under (we weren't sure if it was on or not, but we weren't taking any chances). Then we ended up on the wrong side of a little river. There were a couple of grassy patches in the middle and we managed to make our way across (with a little bit of team work).

At this point the track crosses the land belonging to Plan Farm (the farm that I did my stint on during lambing season) and I suspect that it's been rerouted slightly. We were following the green marker posts and wound up walking along the edge of a field of sheep before coming up against another electric fence with a marker on the far side of it, and this fence definitely seemed to be on. Again we ducked under, walked up the track and found a gate with a marker pointing through it.

We were concerned about running into a field of cows because we'd seen a couple of fields of them at this point and we weren't sure if our current route was going to take us into one of them, so we were rather surprised to turn a corner and discover three pigs. We knew that the cows might have come towards us (one of the group had a run in with some cows on a previous walk) but none of us were familiar with pigs. We weren't too sure what to make of it when two of the pigs came towards us, but they soon went back to their food and we headed on along the track.

Although there didn't seem to be any cows in the field, they had obviously been there recently. The track was very muddy with cowish deposits left here and there. I started picking my way through trying to stand on the most solid bits of mud and occasionally sinking into it if I didn't move quick enough. Some of the others tried finding a drier route which led them into some gorse bushes.

And so I come to the part of the work which was my least favourite part of the journey. I ended up pushing my along the edge of the drier land where the gorse bushes were; it was slow going as I tried to avoid sinking into the mud or slipping. And that's where it all when horribly wrong.

I put my left foot onto what I thought was solid ground, except it wasn't and my foot started sinking. I tried to find a stable footing with my right and failed. In a split second I realised I was going down. I remember thinking that if I fell to the left I would land in the mud but to my right were the gorse bushes. And before I could decide either way my left foot slipped more and I went forward, landing between a pair of gorse bushes with my right hand in one.

And it hurt!

A lot!

For a second I nearly cried, especially when I pulled myself to my feet (finally finding a patch of solid ground to set my feet on) and discovered a massive thorn sticking out my finger. I pulled it out which promptly started my finger bleeding and had to fumble in my pocked for a nearly clean tissue, while everyone was asking me if I was alright. I wasn't really, my arm and my hand hurt and my pride was rather bruised too, but I managed to follow them across the muddy track to the wall which we all struggled over to get onto proper dry land so I could take in my injuries.

My left walking boot was completely caked in mud, as was my left leg almost to the knee, as well as the knee of my right leg. It was about this point that we all decided not to follow the planned route because we didn't know what the track would be like the rest of the way, so instead settled on walking back along the road; a longer walk but one which would probably be a lot safer.

We walked round St. Blane's Chapel and down the hill, where I located another thorn in my hand which I didn't have the guts to remove myself so got one of the girls to do it for me and pinched a plaster from someone else. About this time I realised that I had a whole host of thorns still in my hand; it took me best part of a week to get the rest of them out.

The moral of this story is, of course, if there's a choice between falling into mud or into a gorse bush, aim for the mud every time. It might be messy and smelly but it'll be less painful than the thorn bush!
The walk back up the road to the car was long but nice. We admired the sheep in the fields, chatted (I think I've helped sell another couple of Fitbits) and enjoyed the scenery. We spotted some buzzards and had a few spotty little snowflakes fall on us as well. We took a brief break at the standing stones and it wasn't long after that before we were back at Kingarth.

Despite the slightly scary walk along the rocks and the very painful fall in the gorse bushes, I really enjoyed the walk. It was great fun getting out and about on a part of the island that I don't often go to. I'm not sure it's a walk I'm going to repeat in the immediate future, but I think I will have another go at it in the summer when the land's hopefully dried out a little more.

It was definitely good for my Fitbit; I hit over 24,000 steps for the day, and I earned my Ferris Wheel badge (for climbing over 75 flights in one day)!

Weekly Rundown: Sunday Walk

This year's big resolution is to walk more; not just to be more active but to actually go out places on walks. Luckily I have a group of friends who are happy to go a good long walk occasionally and so this time last Sunday we set out for a rather long Sunday stroll.

The estimate for the walk was that it was going to be somewhere in the region of eleven miles, so last Sunday I got myself organised, pulled on my walking boots and plugged myself into my mp3 player, then walked a mile up the road to the place where we had agreed to meet.

We had a rather muddy walk across the Meadows (our local playing fields) before getting onto the main road. The plan was to walk from town diagonally across the island to Ettrick Bay, a beach at the north end of the island. There's a little cafe at the beach where we were able to stop for some lunch before walking back into town along the front.

The week before our walk we had some awful weather. Storm Henry hit, bringing with him 90 mile per hour winds. The Sunday we went walking was probably the only decent day out of seven. It was pretty sunny on the way out to the beach, only starting to spot with rain when we arrived there.

Along the way there was a lot of chatting, laughing and pausing to take photos.

Arran looking all moody and Middle-earth-ish.

As I've been using my daily walks to count towards my progress across Middle-earth, I decided to have mushroom omelette when we reached Ettrick Bay; after all, according to my Middle-earth mileage tracker I was roughly at the point of the book 'A Shortcut to Mushrooms'. The mushroom omelette seemed fitting.

It was very drizzly on the way back. I ended up absolutely soaked, helped along by a car which drove through a puddle at the side of the road and splashed water over the three of us walking on the path! Despite that, I really enjoyed myself and we've already spoken about planning another walk at some point in the future, hopefully making it a regular thing.

It was a very good Fitbit day as well! I earned a whole bunch of badges, my favourite two being for walking 30,000 steps in a day (I may have put my laundry away one item at a time before bed to hit that quota) and climbing the equivalent of 50 floors!

 

The twelve miles did kind of kill my walking boots though.

I've had those shoes for well over a year now, but the recent increase in walking seems to be wearing them out quicker than before. The walk on Sunday finished them off and I wore right through the grips on the bottom. My new walking shoes have arrived now and I'm slowly breaking them in.


I'm curious to see how long these ones will last me!

Walking Progress

This isn't including my walk yesterday (since I'm writing this blog post almost a week ago) or my walk this morning either, but I thought I'd share a little update on how my daily walking is going.

Last week I hit a lifetime achievement on my Fitbit; Penguin March! That is, since getting my Fitbit I'd walked 70 miles which is the same distance that a King Penguin will walk. I'm not counting my everyday walking miles towards my target of walking the 458 miles from Hobbiton to Rivendell; so by last Thursday I'd walked roughly 45 miles. All the same, it's nice to see the way that they're adding up.

My main goal that I'm working towards on the Fitbit is the number of floors climbed. Every time I go up a hill or a staircase the Fitbit registers it. My daily target is set at ten but I regularly manage to get twenty or more. This is mainly because my current dog walking route involves walking down (and then up) a hill which is roughly equal to eight flights of stairs. This coupled with my regular up and down stairs trips at home means that I often hit my flight's climbed target before I even leave for work.

I should probably up that target really, but at the moment I quite like the fact that I've got one target I'll definitely hit every day.

My target number of steps per day is set at 10,000 though I only really get this at weekends (and the last couple of Sundays I've been really lazy). Looking at my results, I can get roughly 7,000 steps in on an average work day. The mornings are getting lighter, as are the evenings, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get out for longer walks with the dog so I'm at least hitting 7,000 steps per day.

In terms of my progress through Middle-earth, I'm now onto Day Three of the Hobbits' journey. If I can keep going at two Hobbit days per month I'll get through the whole walk before the end of the year. I've been trying to average 1.2 miles per day and I've managed it every day, bar two (when it was too icy to walk anywhere properly and when heavy winds meant it was highly likely I'd get bopped on the head by a tree if I went out). When I last checked I've been achieving 1.6 miles per day, so I'm ahead of target.

Now I'm trying to push myself up to 1.5 miles per day and I'd like to get to the point, possibly around April, where I can do two miles a day. I don't think I'll go any further than that because I'm not aiming to run marathons or anything, just walk a little bit more.


And so far I'm doing pretty well.

Weekly Rundown: Back to Work

I have had a lovely ten days off so it was a bit of a shock to have to get back into the swing of things with work again. It was a bit of a shock to the system to go from nothing to a full five day week, but it went quite quickly. Unfortunately the weekend is going by equally quickly, but I've got a trip to Wales coming up to look forward to.

I've started the New Year with a reread of The Lord of the Rings and I'm currently about halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring. Since I'm taking part in my Walk Middle-earth group, I felt like I needed a little reminder of the books to help me come up with challenges and keep up with the more knowledgeable members of the group. In the past I've read it quite quickly but I'm going pretty slowly this time around.

I overtook my walking progress with the book this week. As much as I'd love to read it at the same speed I'm walking, if I did that I'd still be around the third chapter!

Speaking of walking, I'm doing very well towards my target of 458 miles this year. Yesterday my sister-in-law came to visit with her partner and we went for a lovely long walk around the estate which meant that for the second day in a row I managed to hit my Fitbit goal of 10,000 steps. On Friday night I was only 1,300 away by bedtime, so I paced up and down the living room whilst catching up online to hit the required steps. I did it mainly to see what happened when you reach your goal on the Fitbit; yesterday I managed it before lunch!

So far I've hit my target of walking 1.2 miles per day. It was fairly easy to attain while I was off work, but now I'm back, I'm having to make more time to get out walking. It was tempting to just count all walking that my Fitbit registered, but now that I have it, I can't help but want to continue walking an extra 1.2 miles anyway. It certainly gets my steps up.

The hardest thing about going walking with Tara has been the fact that it's so dark. I've been walking in the morning alone, but at night it's so dark and creepy I've been dragging Mr Click with me as well. I think he's been enjoying these dark and scary walks, possibly because I insist on holding his hand the whole way! I've now figured out that by doing the walk to the bottom of the hill in the morning gives me about half a mile, while the walk to the bump and back in the evening is 0.7, giving me exactly the total I need. Where possible, I'll walk a little extra to give me a buffer against days when I can't walk.

My view as I walked to town for Star Wars.

I even walked to the cinema last week, when we went to see Star Wars. I did have to do an extra lap outside the cinema to make up the 0.11 that I was short for the day. It's amazing how much more active the combination of the challenge and the Fitbit are making me. Here's to a far healthier 2016!


How is your 2016 shaping up now we're returning to normal after the holidays?