#walk1000miles – August 2017

Some believe that today marks the official end of summer with the arrival of autumn; accompanied by the usual comments of ‘Wot summuh?’, when in fact, all the good stuff seem to come and go before rain-ridden August.

September is often a drier month than its predecessor, even as the temperature begins to fall with the leaves and daylight hours. Effectively, I have four months left in which to complete this year’s #walk1000miles challenge…

This was August 2017:

02/08 – 2 miles – Walk to Work
03/08 – 3.25 miles – Wrington, North Somerset
06/08 – 20 miles – White Horse Trail #7 (Brunel)
10/08 – 3.25 miles – Wrington, North Somerset
12/08 – 13.5 miles – The Roaches, Peak District
13/08 – 12 miles – Lathkill Dale, Peak District
14/08 – 13.5 miles – Dark Peak Bagging, Peak District
15/08 – 4.25 miles – High Tor and Matlock Bath
15/08 – 6 miles – Kedleston Hall (National Trust)
19/08 – 14.25 miles – [Somerset] Three Peaks Walk
20/08 – 4 miles – Wrington, North Somerset
24/08 – 5.5 miles – Congresbury, North Somerset
25/08 – 3.25 miles – Wrington, North Somerset
26/08 – 13.75 miles – West Somerset Coast Path
28/08 – 17 miles – Black Mountains, South Wales
31/08 – 4.75 miles – Crook Peak, Mendip Hills

Total for August 2017 = 140.25 miles

One-hundred-and-forty miles in a single month…

I think that has to be a personal record! I know I achieved 133 miles back in May but I don’t remember beating that in 2016. I am very pleased with that! A couple of long weekends have helped and also, improved my hill-walking fitness, I feel. I had a vision at the start of the month, to really ‘make ground’ in my bid for the one-thousand target by January and this will go a long way.

August began with what I call a ‘walk to work’ of only a couple of miles… When I actually live about seven-miles away. What this actually means is, I left my car at a garage in the same town (four new tyres and work on the front and rear tracking), walking all of thirty-minutes to work and then picked it up later. Otherwise, this would’ve involved ‘wasting’ a day’s holiday, waiting around at or near the garage and probably not walking very far at all.

I’m far behind with the relevant blog posts but, at the beginning of the month, Brunel Walking Group finished the Wiltshire White Horse Trail and I was one of three recipients of prizes for full completion of the ninety-mile circuit.

My weekend in the Peak District was fantastic. Weather was relatively good and I got to explore so much more of the countryside than in 2015. Blog posts on each walk will follow, in good time.

It’s been a strange few weeks, in the sense that I haven’t done a weekend walk with other people for what currently feels like a long time. I’m walking regularly with someone in the weekday evenings but, of course, these experiences are comparatively short lived. I could probably do more than wait for the walking group’s programme to provide convenience.

Most of these walks though, I’ve enjoyed being by myself.

I’m also pleased that I’ve finally returned to the Black Mountains, following my only previously visit in a cloud-covered December last year. It was worth paying the Severn Bridge toll for access to so many peaks and with so few other people around, compared to the Brecon Beacons. I walked a good distance and covered a lot of ground I’d never trodden on before.

Total for 2017 so far = 781.75 miles

There we are! Four months remaining and I can meet my challenge by walking a little more than fifty-miles in each one… Less pressure and, as I’d hoped; a ‘hard month’ now sits me close to the eight-hundred mark, with almost meets an average of one-hundred miles for each month of the year so far.

I have no doubt that I will complete the #walk1000miles challenge this year. If I do go on to walk The Ridgeway later this month, I’ll probably finish it in very good time as well!

Thanks for reading.