2020 The Great North Walk
Crying emoji
For those of you who have been following my online map on the Great North Walk you would have noticed that on Sunday, day 2, the interactive map came to a grinding halt. This wasn’t because of a fault in the system but rather a decision on my part to call it quits. I pulled the pin on the hike at around 11:00am having covered around 9.5km for the day (1/3 of my planned distance).
This decision is something that was extremely difficult for me and involved a number of factors. Ultimately it came down to two reasons; the heat and my mindset. While other hikers revel in the heat, I tend to be cold powered, preferring a daytime temperature of around 15 degrees which is why I typically do my long walks towards the end of winter. I just find that I tend to overheat so easily in the hotter weather. On Sunday, day two of my hike, I started at 7:26am and was averaging a speed of around 3km per hour which was less than the 3.75km per hour I usually average on a long distance hike. Initially I was travelling much faster in the cooler temps but as the day grew on and the temperature climbed, I was getting slower and slower. When I decided to pull the pin the temperature had reached 28 degrees and it wasn’t even midday. I was taking so many breaks I wasn’t likely to reach my campsite until 7 or 7:30pm.
My apologies to those who were following along with me – I was so buoyed by your support. I will release a podcast of this very short trip tomorrow during which I will discuss my full reasons for pulling the pin.
For those of you who have been following my online map on the Great North Walk you would have noticed that on Sunday, day 2, the interactive map came to a grinding halt. This wasn’t because of a fault in the system but rather a decision on my part to call it quits. I pulled […]