We done it!!
Starting at 09:00 on Saturday and finishing at 12:38 on Sunday we walked the 100km (62 miles) of St Cuthbert's Way from Melrose in Scotland to Lindisfarne in one haul. (Plus an extra 8 miles for reasons explained below).
This raised nearly £3000 for Christian Aid (see below). You can still sponsor us by clicking here.
The Team
Andy, Steve, Peter and Brian did the walking and Jess and John provided patient and efficient logistical support including the driving the cooking and the shopping for the things we forgot to bring. We're grateful that despite injury Brian was able to join us for the last part of the walk.
The Vital Statistics
St Cuthbert's way is supposed to be 100km, though I suspect there may be a little rounding-down in that figure! Thanks are due here to Geoff for lending us a GPS widget which recorded our exact time and position every few metres and has given us a complete and detailed track (see here). More about that below too.
We set off at 9am on Saturday 12th September 2009 and arrived at 12:38 on the Sunday (27hr 38min). Note though that we left the official route to rendez-vous with other sponsored-walkers waiting at Kirknewton Village Hall. We arrived at Kirknewton at around 10:45pm(?) and left at 3am. I'll need to check the GPS track to see how much time we were actually off St Cuthbert's Way, but it's likely to be around 5 hours, meaning we did the official walk in about 22.5 hours (however we were really 'going some' and I doubt we'd have walked it in 22.5 hours without such a break). Kirknewton was our one-good-break, other than that we tried to keep the breaks under 15 mins.
Including the diversion to Kirknewton, which measuring the map added an extra 5.4km round trip, the GPS records that we walked a massive 112.2km, that's 69.7 miles!! On that basis St Cuthbert's way would be 106.8 km but some or all of the extra 6.8km might be down to the resolution of the GPS which gives the track a slightly zig-zag nature and we've since spotted an aberration in the track just before St Boswells.
Christian Aid
Christian Aid works with the world’s poorest people, whatever their race or faith, in nearly 50 countries overseas. They tackle the causes and consequences of poverty and injustice. Inspired by their values of hope, justice, courage and honesty, they are committed to seeing a just world - now.
The GPS Track
We didn't get lost, so if you're thinking of following St Cuthbert's Way and you can do something with these GPS tracks then you're welcome to download them:
rawdata.csv
rawdata.gpx
rawdata2.kmz
rawdata.nmea
Note that there are three tracks in each file. The first two are contiguous and are only split because the GPS seems to have glitched at one point jumping back in time by 1 minute. The second track finishes when we turned the logger off when we hit the sack at Kirknewton. The third track is Kirknewton to the end.
The gory detail from Peter's point of view - for them as may be interested
Any variation between this recollection and the GPS data is just what sleep deprivation does to you.
0-20 miles was good, if a bit sunny, in fact we ran bits until I pinged my knee. Steve started sending out updates to our followers on Twitter. This worked really well throughout the walk as the mobile signal was at best 'occasional'. Given the progress I was all for pressing through without liaising with the other walkers at Kirknewton, Steve and Andy thought that would be too much of a snub to Christian Aid - and they were right of course.
20-40 miles was mixed. The evening climb on to the moors really set my knee off big-time and it took until we were coming down at the 35 mile point to 'walk through' the pain, the interim was a grim test of bloody-mindedness - especially as none of us had felt like eating much and the Ibuprofen played havoc with my empty stomach. I do wonder about a minor healing miracle here as Steve was twittering our status and the pain did wear off quite suddenly (any claims?). On the upside it was great going over the moors in the dark, seeing the the Milky Way, seeing the International Space Station passing over, and doing 'proper navigation' through pitch dark pine forests with just the few yards visibility we got with our head torches. Andy's feet were really causing him troubles as we left the main St Cuthbert's route at circa 40 miles to find the village of Kirknewton and pick up the other Christain Aid walkers. At Kirknewton we all examined our injuries before lying down at 11:15pm. Andy managed to get to sleep, Steve reckons he didn't (though Andy reckons he was snoring at one point), I gave up trying to get to sleep in favour of a shower before before everyone else got up for breakfast at 2am.
40 miles-dawn was quite different as we set-off with the big group at 3am and we were now under the jurisdiction of the logistics company (by their calculation 26.1 miles to go). Personally I preferred the self-reliance of the first half of the night, but it felt better having had a rest, some food and a shower. Things were more serious now, Andy's feet had looked a mess at Kirknewton and he had joined me on the Ibuprofen and Paracetamol, even Steve had gone to bed on the Ibuprofen in the hope it would stop him seizing up. We missed John and Jess's more personal support, especially as we didn't get a drink off the logistics people until the mid-morning stop at Fenwick because ... oh never mind, they did fantastic pork sandwiches at Fenwick.
Back at the rendez-vous I'd suggested to Andy that, having walked in 40 miles, it would be pretty good if we set out to 'win', especially as there were some young sporty-looking types to defeat. Andy of course didn't need this pointing out. The night was warm and, already being experienced on the moors that night, we walked in T-shirts and with minimal gear while the newcommers sweated up the hills in heavy gear. By dawn Andy had finished networking with everyone else who'd joined us and, along with a Scotsman called George(?), set out to gain a massive lead on everyone else (where does that man get the energy). Steve was clearly tiring and favouring the pilgrimage aspect (I believe he was twittering it's not a race, it's not a race) but as a someone who's willing to make sacrifices for his team he kept up a killing pace all morning and he and I fell into third and fourth place well ahead (miles?) of anyone else. Sorry Steve, hope we didn't spoil it for you.
After a couple more hours Steve was looking pretty done-in and for me even a few seconds stop would cause a major seize up of the legs, however we were still a long way ahead of everyone else as Steve and I caught up with Andy and George at the Fenwick pits-stop. We scoffed brunch down quick and got away fast feeling sorry for George who perhaps hadn't clocked our racing agenda and faced the prospect of perhaps an hour's wait for his colleagues. We met Jess and John, and collected Brian complete with walking stick, at the start of the causeway knowing that we had bought ourselves sufficient spare time to 'win' if Brian couldn't keep the pace up. However Andy had (mis-)calculated that if we got in by 13:00, and (only) discounted 4 hours for the interlude at Kirknewton (i.e. 10:45pm to 3am), we'd complete the official route in 24 hours of walking including all the minor pits stops; and so that became the new challenge. In our general delerium we accidentally gained a few minutes on Steve while walking along the causeway, which was a mistake for me because standing around caused major seize-ups of the legs. We paused and regrouped before entering the village, meeting John and Jess again, deciding the gate of the abbey would do as finishing post and pouring the champagne. We finally grasped it together for a photo at 12:38pm.