I woke up with wet feet and a damp quilt. Argh how annoying! I had been using my very tiny one-person tent in recent days, and although much lighter than my other one, it was so skimped on fabric that any touching of the sides of the coffin-shaped interior with my feet meant….damp. This was …
After weeks of solid hiking it was bliss to be able to take two and a half days off at home in Falmouth. I drank a cider or two, had lovely meals cooked for me and hot baths run. My achy bones had time to rest on a mattress and I was able to make …
I was so excited to hike into Polperro. What I hadn’t realised however, was the Herculean leg-burning effort it would entail to get there! I figured I was a pretty hardy hiker by this point, but the incessant ups and downs of this stretch of coastline were making mincemeat of me. No sooner had I …
Did I tell you about the time that I lived in a Youth Hostel in London for three nights a week for over half a year? For work? No!? Sounds crazy, I know. Especially as it was for a pretty professional job, but I didn’t want to commit to regular accommodation in the Capital because …
Continue reading “My Seven Suggestions For Being a Great Hostel Guest.”
“I’ve been walking these paths since I was born, what could possibly go wrong?” Cue me careening across a windy muddy clifftop towards the edge. I should have known better in stormy February, but having completed the 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail in the US over the last 6 months I figured that a 630 mile hike of …
Continue reading “Appalachian Trail Vs South West Coast Path”
I probably realised early in my hike that I had a fear of being left behind; a fear I didn’t even know I had. Doing the best I could to get over wet rocks and navigate steep inclines quickly in Maine, I would feel the dull panic of being too slow and too old. In …
Continue reading “AT Sobo Part 6 – I fall in love with Maine & worry about being slow”
So it began; The Maine Mountains. Ever since I had left the 100 mile wilderness dirty and exhausted, all I heard was how easy it was compared to what was coming up in southern Maine and the Whites of New Hampshire. I’ve hiked plenty of hard coastal path at home in Cornwall and some big …
I didn’t realise it yet, but these days would be some of my very favourite on trail. The high, cool mountain tops intersecting with the hot dusky pine forests were a perfect mix; rewarding me with views as I undulated up and down over the many miles. My trail legs were still coming in, so I …
Continue reading “AT Sobo Part 8 – Maine’s famous mountains, injuries and my first zero!”
And there I was, within a day of the part of the AT that I’d been hearing about for a year in books and exhilarating posts online by previous hikers; Mahoosuc Notch, the ‘hardest mile of the Appalachian Trail’. I woke that morning on the northern side of Baldpate Mt knowing that today was the …
Continue reading “AT Sobo Part 9 – Mahoosic: ‘The hardest mile of the Appalachian Trail’”
Maine was done! On to the glorifies of New Hampshire. What an adventure thus far. The days after Mahoosuc Notch turned into a blur of dark pines and rain. I spent one particularly favourite night in a beautiful wooden split-level shelter by a silent deep pond. I sat, listening to rain hammer on the roof …
Continue reading “AT Sobo Part 10 – Leaving Maine, heading into New Hampshire and the whites”
