LEJOG Postscript

It's hard to believe, but it is just over a week since I arrived home! My journey is gradually beginning to fade, but there are all sorts of little reminders; for instance the last blister plaster came off this morning! It has been very special indeed to be reunited with Veronica.  Both daughters have been around to visit and it has been delightful to see them. Still, I wake up in the middle of the night, wondering where the loo is in this B&B and suddenly realise that it is in a very familiar place, and that person next to me is very familiar as well! I lost a stone (6.4kg, 14lbs) on my journey but the test will be to see whether I can keep the weight off!

For some reason, the last blog post of my journey did not get distributed to those people who had subscribed by email. I received a number of emails asking whether Veronica ran me over on the last leg!! I'm pleased to report that the oversight was nothing more than another glitch at Google and it gave me an excuse to write this very final post, just to round the whole thing off. 

In my very nerdy way, I have spent a couple of days analysing the statistics of the journey and I thought I might share these with you for better or for worse.  I decided that it might be of interest to split the journey by the type of walk rather than just the region, so differentiating between the National Trails and the Roadwork, as well as some regional information. You will need to click on each graph to see the detail, if you are at all interested!

But first, in case you didn't see that final post on the internet, here is the proof that I made it!

And here is a visual summary of the whole journey. If you look at the picture above you will see that the shortest route from LE to JOG is 874miles. My journey was 1202 miles and in the map below you can see quite clearly that the deviations to do the National Trails added more than 300miles to the journey.

The individual flags on the map each represent daily waypoints, actually the location of the B&B for each night.

(The data in the graphs immediately below are all metric. If you are more of an Imperial persuasion, please move down the post to the end of the metric commentary, whereafter I have duplicated all the information in Imperial Units)

Unsurprisingly, the total distance walked correlates closely with the number of days on each phase of the journey. South West England and the Pennine way together made up almost 50% of the total distance and Scotland around a third.

From the beginning I thought that I would average about 16km (10mi) per day, hoping that as I got fitter and stronger, the distances would increase. In my training exercises, I remember feeling tired after as little as 10km (6mi), and wondering how I would cope with much longer distances with a full pack. As it turned out, I did manage the expected distances and over time, they did increase. The trend line in the graph above shows this quite clearly. Though to be honest, the graph also shows that when the distances were pre-ordained such as on the national trails, I did do longer distances, but when the choice was my own, I backed off! Pah!!

This graph doesn't show very much!  In fact all it shows is how much I climbed and descended which turned out unsurprisingly to be closely correlated with the distances I walked (see above!)! I included it only because, as I said in the previous post, it does show a lot of climbing and descending!

This graph is a little more interesting! First, it shows that the National Trails were in general more demanding, which isn't surprising, though what did surprise me is that the roadwork wasn't that far behind. I was staggered by the statistics for the Pennine Way. In my recollection, there were lots of ups and downs all through the Pennine Way, whereas one would have thought that the walk along the coast of North East Scotland would have been as flat as a pancake!  Not so! They turned out to be much the same. What was also very surprising was that the walk along the Great Glen Way, which one would have expected to be all very flat given that it was supposed to be along canals and lochs, turned out to be really quite hilly! I was also surprised that Offa's Dyke and the West Highland Way were much the same! You would have thought that having done the walk myself, I wouldn't have been all that surprised by these statistics, but it just goes to show!!

The trend lines in this graph show that I walked faster as I got fitter, and more interestingly, that I took fewer rest periods along the way as time progressed.  My gadget was unforgiving in that it regarded every stop along the way, to take a photo or a pee, to look at my map or the view, as a definite stop. Of course it also had a negative view about lunch stops or tea breaks.  The stats show that as time progressed, I became fixated on just keeping walking (the difference between the total time and the walking time reduced). This was partly due to increased fitness and partly due to Scottish midges, though they were far less of a problem than I had anticipated. The major reason was that I grew comfortable with the walk and just liked to keep plodding on. Strange really!

This graph slices and dices the information in a different way. Here I have taken the same information but looked at it on the basis of National Trails vs. Roadwork. I have to assume no-one reading this blog will be silly enough to do the the whole of LEJOG, but they might be interested in the comparison. It shows that the total amount of roadwork was not significantly greater than the total time on the Trails, either in terms of distance or days, though because I was lazier on the roads, they did take proportionately more time.

It also shows that I did  walk larger distances on the Trails and I did climb higher on the Trails, none of which is surprising!

Finally, for those who didn't see the last post, here is the weather postcast!  Again, it doesn't show very much, other than how lucky I was to choose the driest April in recorded history to start my walk and that this luck persisted into Scotland, when the really wet weather went south. It also shows Wales and Northern England were wetter! I actually got drenched to the skin on only about six days, which unsurprisingly correlates very closely to the number of days that I spent walking with Englishmen (or women!). Quod erat demonstrandum! (OK, I do admit that they weren't always with me on the the really wet days, but they are devious enough to confuse the weather a little!!)

And now, having presumed to take up so much of your time over so lengthy a period, it is time to close this Blog. I can only reiterate that this entire journey would have been so much lonelier without your participation, both in the comments and in the private emails. You will understand that seeing Veronica at Journey's End was just wonderful, but somehow I feel that the whole thing would have been empty without your participation. Thank you!!

(As I promised, the Imperial data follows!)

Unsurprisingly, the total distance walked correlates closely with the number of days on each phase of the journey. South West England and the Penine way together made up almost 50% of the total distance and Scotland around a third.

 From the beginning I thought that I would average about 16km (10mi) per day, hoping that as I got fitter and stronger, the distances would increase. In my training exercises, I remember feeling tired after as little as 10km (6mi), and wondering how I would cope with much longer distances with a full pack. As it turned out, I did manage the expected distances and over time, they did increase. The trend line in the graph above shows this quite clearly. Though to be honest, the graph also shows that when the distances were pre-ordained such as on the national trails, I did do longer distances, but when the choice was my own, I backed off! Pah!!

This graph doesn't show very much! In fact all it shows is how much I climbed and descended which turned out unsurprisingly to be closely correlated with the distances I walked (see above!)! I included it only because, as I said in the previous post, it does show a lot of climbing and descending!

 This graph is a little more interesting! First, it shows that the National Trails were in general more demanding, which isn't surprising, though what did surprise me is that the roadwork wasn't that far behind. I was staggered by the statistics for the Pennine Way. In my recollection, there were lots of ups and downs all through the Pennine Way, whereas one would have thought that the walk along the coast of North East Scotland would have been as flat as a pancake! Not so! They turned out to be much the same. What was also very surprising was that the walk along the Great Glen Way, which one would have expected to be all very flat given that it was supposed to be along canals and lochs, turned out to be really quite hilly! I was also surprised that Offa's Dyke and the West Highland Way were much the same! You would have thought that having done the walk myself, I wouldn't have been all that surprised by these statistics, but it just goes to show!!

The trend lines in this graph show that I walked faster as I got fitter, and more interestingly, that I took fewer rest periods along the way as time progressed. My gadget was unforgiving in that it regarded every stop along the way, to take a photo or a pee, to look at my map or the view, as a definite stop. Of course it also had a negative view about lunch stops or tea breaks. The stats show that as time progressed, I became fixated on just keeping walking (the difference between the total time and the walking time reduced). This was partly due to increased fitness and partly due to Scottish midges, though they were far less of a problem than I had anticipated. The major reason was that I grew comfortable with the walk and just liked to keep plodding on. Strange really!

The other interesting observation is that I clearly walked more slowly on the National Trails than on the roads. This is not surprising. Often on the National Trails, I was walking with other people, and their pace governed mine, but also, the National Trails involved many more ups and downs and as Mr Naismith decreed many posts ago, this will always slow you up. What interests me is that by the time I got to the Great Glen Way, I was just going for it! I tried to persuade myself that I should stay in the moment and appreciate everything along the way from start to finish, but maybe I turned out to be human after all! The end was nigh, I was fitter and I was going for it! By the time I got to North East Scotland, I was flying, despite the ups and downs. Clearly, I wanted to be reunited with Veronica!

This graph slices and dices the information in a different way. Here I have taken the same information but looked at it on the basis of National Trails vs. Roadwork. I have to assume no-one reading this blog will be silly enough to do the the whole of LEJOG, but they might be interested in the comparison. It shows that the total amount of roadwork was not significantly greater than the total time on the Trails, either in terms of distance or days, though because I was lazier on the roads, they did take proportionately more time.

It also shows that I did walk larger distances on the Trails and I did climb higher on the Trails, none of which is surprising!

Finally, for those who didn't see the last post, here is the weather postcast! Again, it doesn't show very much, other than how lucky I was to choose the driest April in recorded history to start my walk and that this luck persisted into Scotland, when the really wet weather went south. It also shows Wales and Northern England were wetter! I actually got drenched to the skin on only about six days, which unsurprisingly correlates very closely to the number of days that I spent walking with Englishmen (or women!). Quod erat demonstrandum! (OK, I do admit that they weren't always with me on the the really wet days, but they are devious enough to confuse the weather a little!!)

And now, having presumed to take up so much of your time over so lengthy a period, it is time to close this Blog. I can only reiterate that this entire journey would have been so much lonelier without your participation, both in the comments and in the private emails. You will understand that seeing Veronica at Journey's End was just wonderful, but somehow I feel that the whole thing would have been empty without your participation. Thank you!!