Hello!

Welcome to the new Walking in my Shoes site. This site is dedicated to one man’s mad idea to walk the length of the UK, more on which can be found on the About page of this site.

The site will document everything from the preparation that went in to the walk all the way through to the very last step. A lot of the content won’t be added until the walk is completed, especially all the photos I’ll inevitably take along the way and the final route I ended up taking, but hopefully there’ll be enough added on the run-up to the walk to keep you coming back to find out what I’ve been up to and how it’s all going.

And So It Begins

Now that the blog’s fully up and running I guess I’d better start to document what I’ve been up to as far as preparing for this rather daunting task ahead of me?

After having pottered around in the new boots for a bit, and wearing them for a couple of days the other week whilst visiting my brother, last week I undertook my first proper long walk in them. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to – the process of breaking the boots, and my feet, in – but I knew I had to start it sooner rather than later, even if there were a million and one other things I had to be doing.

So, I took a walk in to Reading to do some shopping last Monday: a nice 13 mile round trip not including the shopping bit. All in all it didn’t go too badly; it certainly could have been a lot worse.

Mop Chop

Since deciding I was going to walk the length of the UK one thing that crossed my mind, especially since I cut all my flowing locks off last year, was what was I going to do about getting a hair cut? Should I just not worry and see what happens? Should I shave it all off skinhead style so that it wasn’t a problem? Just one of the many things I’ve had to worry about while thinking about the logistics of this walk, sad though it may sound.

After having my hair cut the week before Christmas I thought it would be interesting to see how long I could go before I really needed to get a hair cut, i.e. before I could no longer handle waking up in the morning and sorting the mess out, the aim being to see if I could last at least 10 weeks: more would be better.

Getting Things Together

Today’s been pretty busy. Most of it was spent sat in front of the PC trying to source more items from the kit list, which I’m pleased to say is fast getting ticked off – hurrah! The list is now up to date as it stands today and any item on the list that has its details filled in either means I’ve got it at home right now or it’s on order and will be delivered very soon.

After spending so much time indoors, and it being such a lovely day out there, I decided to get out and take a walk in the boots to see how I faired today. I didn’t really have a plan of where I wanted to go or even how far so I headed out the door, turned and made my way out through Hurst, with the intention of at least being out for an hour.

A Bit Of A Break

After taking a few days out to celebrate my impending Birthday with friends and family, and catching up with everyone from work last week, the work on the preparation has started once again.

I’ve been working on the beginnings of the route I think I’ll be taking and I think I’ve got a very good first draft overview of the route, with all the finer detail still to be worked out once I’ve ordered all the maps I’m going to need.

Reading Again

Another Monday and another stroll in to Reading to do more shopping for bits and bobs for the walk and to have lunch with a good friend: Pret are getting some more money out of me after a break of a few months.

The 13 mile walk went well although the usual spots on my feet began to hurt again and that was with additional plasters. I think I’m just going to have to give in trying to find a way to stop that toe from hurting and just live with the fact that every day of the walk will be, to some extent, painful. Best to get used to that now I suppose?

Pub Crawl!

Seeing as it was my Birthday – 38 years young – I thought I’d mix up the training walk today and add in another of my favourite pastimes, drinking! The route for my Birthday stroll was a nice 9.8 miles around the local lanes, taking in six very nice pubs. The pubs I visited were:

1. The Duke of Wellington (Twyford)
2. The Royal Oak (Ruscombe)
3. The Star (Waltham St. Lawrence)
4. The Shurlock Inn (Shurlock Row)
5. The Green Man (Hurst)
6. The Elephant and Castle (Hurst)

Treadmill Hell

Acutely aware of my pace issue, I decided to spend some time walking on my treadmill to try and teach myself to walk at a more reasonable pace. So yesterday morning I put my boots on, plugged in my iPod, set the treadmill to a 3MPH pace and started to walk.

I’m pleased to say that, even though I’d not put any plasters or anything on my feet, 6 miles in and there was only a slight grumbling from my toe on my right foot. Not bad. Hopefully, if I can sort out in my head this pace out in the real world then I might well manage to save my feet from too much pain.

In the afternoon I did another 3 miles just to see how things went and it was just as promising – hurrah!

A Leasson Learned

Another day, another training walk. This was a bit of a big one though, the longest one I’ve done yet and my feet and knees are complaining a little bit because of it.

I strolled in to Reading to meet my friend Shelli for lunch and deciding that walking along the A4 was becoming a little boring, I thought it’d be “fun” to walk back along the Thames Path to Henley, and then home from there. I had my gaiters with me so it didn’t matter if the path was a little muddy with all the rain, which it most definitely was!

I hadn’t checked out the route before deciding to do it and had it in my head that Henley wasn’t that far and in total I’d probably be walking around 18 miles for the day…I wasn’t quite right with my estimation as I actually ended up walking 21.5 miles! Reading to Henley actually worked out to be about 9 miles, not the 6 miles I originally thought.

Fighting Fit

If walking lots of miles wasn’t enough to get me ready for this stroll across the UK, my next door neighbour – Vicky – convinced me to go along to a session at FastTrack Fit Camp this morning. No fancy equipment, no plush gym; an old barn, a few mats and a whole lot of old-school circuit training exercises!

Now, I’ve never thought of myself as uber-fit, but then again since losing all the weight I’ve not exactly thought of myself as unfit – walking 21.5 miles in a day isn’t for everyone you know? The session this morning pretty much showed me that in the fitness stakes, I’ve got a long way to go! Ok, it’s slightly different to just walking, the circuits target pretty much your entire body, but I was a little shocked at how hard I found it.