Bog walk

Grace and I decided for our final serious training before the big day we would do the Campsie Fells – the whole ridge, all 15 miles of it.

This has been on Grace’s bucket list for years, and finally she had someone mad enough to agree to do it with her.

We met at the Glengoyne distillery at 7.30am (I’m so looking forward to NOT having to get up at 6.00 on Saturday mornings!) parked one car there and happily drove to the Tak Ma Doon Road – I was blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.

Jess & Tazi seemed to have learned the importance of not just running off from the beginning of the day and conserving at least a little of their energy!

Not long after we reached our first peak, there was no path and we arrived in tussock capital of the world. All the training guides for doing treks or three peaks said you should leave a path and try to walk over tussocks, as this would increase your stamina. Well Saturday must have increased our stamina infinitely! I lost track of the time, but I think out of the 7 hours and 15 miles that we walked, 5 hours and at least 10 miles were over tussocks, heather and up and down peat bogs. Gortex boots are brilliant, but even they could not hold out against the bogs, and we both ended up with exceedingly wet feet. (Maybe the fact that at times we sunk up to our knees, might have had something to do with it!!)

Grace excelled herself at the end, I chose the easy option of walking round Dumgoyne, Grace & Jess ran over it! Indeed they arrived back at the river just about 5 mins after us. My only consolation was that she did not arrive before me!

On arrival at the car, we realised that we had left our nice dry socks and shoes in the other car which was parked 15 miles away. Ah well never mind, at least we were on solid ground.

I now know just how tired I’m going to be when we do the Three Peaks for real. I’m just glad that we are doing three Scottish peaks and not the official three peaks.

The next update will be the last one. We have no more training planned, just now hoping for dry weather on the 19th & 20th July.