Following that I have my eye on an adventure race in October (10k, 25k MTB, 1.5 kayak), and hoping to do both the Mudman duathlon and HellRunner (running only) events in Novemeber.

I did the Spring Mudman in March this year and HellRunner last year, both very hilly courses and with 6 days of one another. That’s going to be tough so I need to step up the training now.

Heading out shortly to up the ante on my mountain biking skills and endurance, heading over to Leith Hill for the first time. It’s come recommended and sounds great from the reviews.

Also catching up on some duathlon reading thanks to a handy Google Duathlon RSS feed.

A few interesting posts popped up recently…

Clark off-road duathlon 3
A first time duathlete, with limited bike experience, but sounds like a good (elite?) runnner. Reminds me of my first duathlon… I was different - I thought I was good on a bike but hadn’t trained properly. You get some top athletes at these events so without proper training you’ll get left behind. That was my experience not that of this blogger, SEABISKWIT.

The “Joy” Of Climbing A Hill On A Bike
Not a duathlon post, just mountain bike related but well worth a read none the less. Very quotable article, I liked this bit: “Suffering is at the heart of every hardcore cyclist’s connection to the sport—not just the acceptance of suffering, but the whole-body embrace as if you’ve just found your lost child—and nowhere will you suffer more than on the hills. They are the ultimate proving ground of the cyclist, road or mountain, and we can’t help but be drawn to them.”

Also check out the photos on the Mountain Biking in the Most Beautiful Places on Earth post about riding in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains.

Now, time to hit the road.

A cracking cover, slightly reworked from the original. Early days Maiden signer Paul Dianno wrote the lyrics about “a friend” who loved a bit of LSD.

Unchain the colours before my eyes,
Yesterday’s sorrows, tomorrow’s white lies.
Scan the horizon, the clouds take me higher,
I shall return from out of fire.

Tears for rememberance, and tears for joy,
Tears for somebody and this lonely boy.
Out in the madness, the all seeing eye,
Flickers above us, to light up the sky.

Unchain the colours before my eyes,
Yesterday’s sorrows, tomorrow’s white lies.
Scan the horizon, the clouds take me higher,
I shall return from out of fire.

Found via Metal Rock’s on Twitter.

Will get back to posting a proper update sometime soon. There are snowboarding trips from the end of season to cover and some recent wakeboarding - highly recommended for snowboarders looking for some summer fun.

I’m not familiar with her work - as to be honest, I know very little about the acting world and don’t watch many movies - but it’s always sad to hear about people dying, especially where skiing or snowboarding is involved.

One thing that has surprised me though is that no news report I’ve seen has mentioned whether Natasha Richardson was wearing a ski helmet at the time of her crash at Mount Tremblant.

Update: she wasn’t

There are many who argue that ski helmets aren’t for everyone:

“I’m sticking to the piste, so I don’t need to wear a helmet”

“I don’t fall over anymore, so I don’t wear a helmet”

“Helmets just ain’t cool, so I’m not wearing one”

“They don’t fit with my goggles”

All lame excuses as far as I’m concerned. Helmets save the lives of skiers and snowboarders.

I’ve been nursing a broken rib for the last 2 months after I caught a massive edge in whiteout and an avalanche tranceiver acting is the filling in a piste-torso sandwich. I don’t catch edges! But I did that day.

My point is you never know when you’re going to find yourself wanting for safety equipment.

Excuse the rant here - but lets all enjoy ourselves, push our limits, but without being reckless and respect the mountain.

Over the years, the name “Jeremy Jones” has become synonymous with “helicopters in Alaska” because he’s the No. 1 name in steep terrain, and helicopters are the No. 1 way to access steep terrain. It’s easy math.

These days, though, Jones is increasingly aware of what he does, why he does it and whether there’s a better way to do it that doesn’t leave a Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint behind. He’s weaning himself off carbon-based travel as much as possible, be it in the backcountry (snowmobiles, helicopters) or getting there in the first place (planes, automobiles). He might not be riding his mountain bike from Lake Tahoe to Alaska—yet—but he is doing everything in his power to show that world-class freeriding can be achieved by more responsible means.

Some cool riding footage inbetween interview segments, and more info over here.

Monterosa has a reputation as a “freeride heaven” attracting a serious croud of dedicated powder hounds. At the time we went, despite there having been no fresh snowfall in 10 days, Alagne had the biggest base of anywhere in Europe with over 5 metres.

4 of us on this trip, all good snowboarders of a similar standard and all keen to get away from the pistes. With only a weekend at our disposal and not being familiar with the area, we hired a guide for the first day. It’s the first guided day I’ve had and can say without question it was well worth the investment.

Up 2 lifts from Gressoney central station, a short 10 minute hike later we were strapping in for our first run of the day with our Guide, Rudi leading the way. Unfortunately, due to the lack of recent snow and some warmer weather, a layer of crust had formed on top of the snow. Very few spots of soft snow on this first run, but what the hell, we were snowboarding - and this place clearly had some great terrain.

Fortunately, things only got better from there - and we were treated to perfect blue sky without a cloud in the sky until late afternoon. I don’t know how he did it, but Rudi ensured that from then on we only rode soft snow. Sure, it wasn’t fresh, but not all of it tracked. And most importantly, he got a handle on the ability level in our group and kep on pushing us. By the end of the day, we had all dropped cliffs much bigger than we had before.

On the run down before lunch in Champuloc, Rudi had taken us of a completely untracked run with cliff drop after cliff drop and some deep deep powder.

An hour or so for lunch to recharge the batteries on some local wine and cuisine, and a short cat ride back up the mountain and we were off again. More of the same that afternoon. Hiking away from lifts, riding powder, looking for untracked stuff, avoiding the crust… and taking on cliff lines.

By 4pm, we were buzzing off a great days snowboarding… collectively one of the best we’d ever had… and retired to the bar for several hard earnt beers.

Gressoney is famed for its freeriding opportunities and NOT the nightlife. There seemed to be no more than one or two bars in Gressoney La Trinite where we were staying, but that was adequate for us. We knew snow was on the way that evening, and the next day would be a whiteout - so we enjoyed the beers and set the alarms late for the next morning.

It was a pretty casual day on the mountain. Visibility was indeed pretty bad, especially in the Alagne valley - which was a shame as we had the sense that there are some great runs there - if you can see where you’re going.

Ironically, the day was further tainted when I caught a massive edge in the whiteout and landed with my tranceiver slamming into my rib cage. Not 100% sure whether I broke anything but 2 weeks later its still hurting.

None the less, we did manage to get some good off piste in that day before heading for home.

One more trip report to write up - 10 days snowboarding in Montgenevre - to follow soon.

I’ve been wanting to add something from the mountains, ideally taken by me whilst snowboarding, as the scenery is so spectacular and I’d love a daily snowboarding reminder. Unfortunately, I still don’t think I’ve taken anything good enough. Though I do like the helicopter shot I took in Zermatt in December 2007.

I think I’ve found something suitable this morning whilst reading The Stoke, taken by Sean Orfila, a Revelstoke resident and photographer.

Pretty cool!

Also thinking about getting this classic Cervinia poster, as Cervinia feels much like my home resort having been there so many times.

In the meantime, the only snowboarding memorabilia in my house is my old FTWO Sonic snowboard which is acting as a makeshift headboard behind my bed, though this is purely a short term function measure. Honest!

So what snowboarding reminders are hanging on your wall?

Full disclosure: I was paid to post this video, which I accepted because I did find some cool stuff within the site. Honestly, I turn down (read: ignore) far, far more approaches from companies than I post, and will only post stuff I think is worthwhile. Feel free to criticise in the comments here, or otherwise let me know what you think about the videos.

For the last 4 years, I’ve always started the season in Cervinia, either late November or early December, 2 months before most people (in the UK at least) even start thinking about skiing/boarding. Cervinia is one of the highest spots in Europe, sharing a ski area with Zermatt’s glacier, so you can always be sure of some early season ridable slopes. For the last 2 years now, we’ve been blessed with full on powder runs right down to resort level.

This year, the locals have been saying its the best snow they’ve had in 15 years or more, and the whole of the Alps has had a great start.

We arrived on the Wednesday night, hit a couple of pubs and found the place to be eerily empty. First lifts up on Thursday morning - and throughout the day, the trend continued: few people on the mountain, no lift queues, plus exceptional visibility in the morning with clear blue skies, slightly clouding over later on. And the snow… not perfect, but still powder to be found on the edge of the pistes with a big dump forecast overnight.

We got the 3 big lifts stright up to Plateau Rosa, and rode all the way down to Zermatt, taking the Riffelberg Express lift up, and sessioned the 6-seat chair lift for a couple of hours. Some sweet off-piste with the pow nicely softened from the morning sun. Great fun hitting the natural terrain, some big rollers, jumping off a hut burried under the recent snow.

We took a variety of runs around the area, including the train up to Gornergrat, before riding back down to Furi.

Just before getting on the last section of lift required to get us all the way to Furi (last section not ridable) and the lift up to Trockener Steg for lunch, one of the patches in the base of my old F2 Sonic had started coming out. Pretty bad workmanship, as I’d only done half a day by this point and mostly on well groomed pistes and powder, and certainly hadn’t hit any rocks. I cut out the flapping section, but wasn’t long into the afternoon that the whole thing had come out leaving the base exposed.

I managed to get a good repair job done overnight that lasted the rest of the trip fortunately, but am due a new board now. If you follow me on Twitter you’ll know I’ve been trying to decide between an Arbor Element, K2 Zeppelin or K2 Believer. I might post about the dilema in hope of solving it!

So, after crying into my spaggetti about the demise of my trusty old stick, we then faced a freezing t-bar ride back in the direction of Cervinia, and the long ride back down to resort… with a hole in my board. Surprisingly it wasn’t too noticeable.

We knew the next day was destined to be a white out, so treated ourselves to a big night on the beers and a leasurely start - getting our first lift at 11am. It had dumped big over night, and was still snowing at times. The snow was great, but you really couldn’t see much. A bit of snowboarding around Plan Maison before heading over to the right hand side of the mountain and sessioning the Lago Goillet lift all afternoon. The sun came out - bright blue skies - against all forecasts we’d seen. And with the powder topping over the last 20 hours or so we were treated to an excellent afternoon’s snowboarding, staying out til last lift.

The avalanche risk was level 4, so we had to be cautious and not tuck into all the untouched off piste around us, but there was still plenty that we let ourselves get involved with, and no signs of any slides in the area that day. But the 3 or 4 hours we spent doing that one lift over and over again have to go down as some of my favourite ever.

Buoyed up by a great afternoon and more snowfall due over night ANOTHER booze-fuelled night out was on the cards. Unfortunately the next day was a total right off in more ways than one. Bad hang overs and terrible visibility, as the snow kept coming down. It’s such a shame when you can’t see anything but know the powder is in such great shape. We had a few enjoyable runs, especially round Cieloalto, and you can never really complain about chest deep powder, can you?

A more relaxed night after day 3 on the slopes, taking in a few football matches in the Yeti (Blackburn v Liverpool, Man U v Sunderland, and Lazio vs Inter) before heading to bed ready for our final day - forecast perfect blue skies. It didn’t disappoint.

We got the lifts straight up to Plateau Rosa again, riding back down the Theodulpass to Plan Masion. The pisteurs were out working on the Indian Park, which like everywhere else on the mountain had been buried under the recent heavy snow, so we had to give the park a miss this trip unfortunately. Maybe next time.

From Plan Maison, there was no question where we’d be going. Straight back to Cime Bianche, the Lago Goillet lift and the Gran Sometta runs where we spent the afternoon a couple of days before. The snow had had a little more time to settle, so it wasn’t as fresh as before but it was more stable allowing us to pick new lines and cover more ground than before. That afternoon was every bit as enjoyable as the previous one and goes down in my all time great snowboarding moments.

We spent all afternoon playing in the pow, picking lines, jumping ledges, dropping cliffs, pulling spins, face planting, head planting, cartwheeling and backflipping. So much fun, and a great way to wrap up our early season trip.

Back down the hill, a quick run down the line of the Bordoney lift and we were done. Time to dig out the car and head for home.

Ending sidenote: Usually our Cervinia trips had been big group afairs, anything from 6 to 20 people. This time there were just 2 of us, which made a refreshing change. Whilst I love the big groups, you do tend to get slowed down, waiting for people to get ready in the morning, waiting on the hill for the slow riders, and innevitably get shamed by having skiers in your group! With just 2 of us, we could ride at our own pace (fast), basically do whatever we wanted, when we wanted. I’m all for at least one trip a season like this - no more than 3 or 4 people all of the same ability and intentions.

Snowjet have done a write up, with photos and video (see below) from their ski trip to Cervinia a few days ago.

There are also some cool photos recently uploaded to Flickr such as this:

I might post some updates via Twitter so keep an eye out and follow me if you’re a Twitterer. Cheers!

snowboard.co.uk fetched £20,000 and ski.co.uk reached a mighty £80,000.

Compared with some other major .co.uk domain purchases in the last 18 months these might be a couple of bargains. cruises.co.uk sold for £560k in February 08, smashing the records.

Fly.co.uk went for £87,500 back in September 07, bought by ASAP Ventures, who then went on to pick up recycle.co.uk in November 2007 for a then record price of £150,000.

I don’t know who has picked up these great domains, but will be interesting to find out what the plans are for them.

The XTF was hosted at Hawley Lake, Camberley on an army training ground. A series of events were taking place including a 10k run, triathlons (full and sprint), aquathon,full and sprint duathlons.

I’d not competed in a multisport event before, but enjoy the occasional bit of distance running and bit of off-roading on my mountain bike. To boot, I’m a crap swimmer, ruling out a triathlon, but the duathlon sounded right up my street.

The full duathlon is made up of a 10k run, 24k mountain bike and 5k run to finish. There was a sprint option also (5k/12k/2k) but seeing as I’m new to this and don’t have a pace benchmark, I thought I’d go for the endurance event.

Raceday arrived on Saturday. I haven’t got a car, so had to get to the venue by train from London and cycling to/from the stations at either end. By the time I got there I’d already cycled about 8 miles. Probably not the best start.

Arriving at Hawley Lake at around 8am, there was a heavy mist. You couldn’t see more than about 10 yards ahead. It was quite cool as well, with loads of moisture in the air - great conditions for running. That said - we were having a bit of an Indian summer in London at the time, so warmer weather would be coming.

I’d had some problems with my bike the night before. Doing a last minute chain cleaning operation somehow caused an issue with my front gear changing system (railiuer??) and any changes on the front rings were unreliable to say teh least. I got it looked at by one of the on-site tech’s, but with little joy. Time was getting on so I racked my bike, fitted the helmet cam I use snowboarding to the handlebars and took my place by the starting line for the first 10k run.

I am a slow runner and it takes me a good few miles to warm up to a decent pace. So I let pretty much everyone (about 60 participants in total) get ahead of my whilst I found my feet. I think its fair to say I was representing the n00bs in a field of fairly seasoned athletes.

2 laps of a 5k circuit, with the second feeling much easier than the first, through woodland, some muddy tracks, a bit of sand and gravel and a few hills, but nothing too bad.

Then on to the interesting bit - 1 minute transition (should have been quicker) - and on the bike heading to do 4 laps of the 6k circuit.

If I’m honest, I’ve always thought I was pretty good on a bike. But, I also know that I don’t ever really do any decent off-road mountain biking on difficult terrain.

The first lap of this cicruit was a massive wake up call! The track was really varied: narrow sections through trees, mogully terrain, steep downhills and some long uphill climbs, mud, puddles, and one nice concrete downhill section back to the start.

Half-way through lap 1, I was having serious words with myself for underestimating the course and not training properly for this terrain. My core muscles were screaming out in pain. It was fun though, and was thoroughly enjoying it by lap 2. I think my third lap was pretty quick, though was slowed down by a fair bit of traffic by lap 4 with other competitors getting in my way. Most of the course is narrow with only a few over taking opportunities.

I later found out I made up about 8 places during the cycle section, which pleased me.

Getting off the bike after the 4th lap and transition for the final 5k run was also pretty challenging. By now my legs were aching badly, and the mist had cleared revealing a beating sun.

Any hopes of making up any more places became a thing of the past. It was all about getting round and finishing now, with my only real fear - finishing last - a distinct possibility. Barely saw another person during this section.

My split times tell the story well.

10k run: 57 minutes
24k bike: 1h 30 min
5k run: 40 minutes

And very pleased not to finish last. About 45th out of 60, which I’ll take gladly!

So… a few lessons from this:

1. Train for the terrain. Flat land cycling didn’t prepare me for this terrain. I love doing it so need to make a little more effort to get out of London and get off road.
2. Stamina. The last 5k was hard work with not much left in the tank. I need to build up my endurance.
3. Speed. Overall pace was a bit lacking. Will include some sprinting in my training as well.
4. Duathlons are a lot of fun.

Next up is Hell Runner next weekend. Training has suffered a little recently as have been a bit under the weather. Have got a couple of 10+ milers under my belt so should be fun. Images like these though get the nerves going a bit.

Its going to be cold, wet and muddy for sure, and a longer distance run that any section of Tough Guy or the duathlon. If the course is the same as in this write up it should be doable though.

Snowboarding trips booked
Had a good week last week - I booked my first two trips of the season. Firstly the annual early season pilgrimage to Cervinia for 4 days in early December. Secondly a 9 day stay in Montgenevre over New Year. Going to be a big group of us which should be fun. Also a few of us are planning on taking in a day at nearby off-piste Mecca, La Grave.

London Freeze

Image gallery at Telegraph.co.uk
The London Freeze - the UK’s first snowboarding world cup event or something like that - rolled into town a couple of weeks ago. A huge real snow ramp and kicker was errected outside Battersea Power Station, and some of the world’s top riders competed for some points and prizes no doubt! I didn’t make it, my bro tells me it was a good event. You can catch some footage on Freesports on 4 Freeze - Channel 4 - Friday Nov 7th @ 01.50am. I guess that is tonight / tomorrow morning! If you’re not staying up late for this then there will be repeats over the Xmas period. Possibly also footage online.

Metro Ski Show
I popped along to the Metro Ski & Snowboard Show a couple of weeks ago. Checked out a load of this seasons new boards on the Snow & Rock stand. Credit to the guy that was working on the stand - was pretty clear I wasn’t going to buy anything but he was more than happy talking me through the snowboards and offering up suggestions. He also tried talking me into going for a smaller board for my next one, whilst I’d been thinking about going bigger than the 161 I currently ride. Got to say, I’m loving the sound of the Lib Tech Skate Banana, which brings me neatly onto…

Snowboarding gear section
With a passing interest in (read: am trying to talk myself into) getting a new snowboard, I though I’d add a section to compile profiles of some of this seasons new snowboarding gear. I’ve included spec, some reviews including video reviews collated from YouTube from the likes of skis.com and sierrasnowboards. There are also affiliate links out to places where you can buy the gear online.

There’s about 8 or so snowboards profiled so far, with more to come. Watch this space.

Dramatic stuff, and a timely reminder as the Northern Hemisphere season approaches that its not all just fun and games out on the white stuff.

The Metro Ski & Snowboard Show kicks off tomorrow. It always signals the start of the ski season and is a great way to get a taste of what’s to come, watch some pro riders on a massive kicker, check out some holiday options, check the latest gear and pick up some bargains from last seasons over stock.

I’ve got a pair of tickets to give away here that will get you in on a weekday or evening. As there’s not much time to get the tickets out, I’ll pick a winner by 2pm on Wednesday 22nd October and get the tickets out in the post ASAP, so hopefully they should arrive on Thursday. They are valid to use on either the Thursday or Friday.

Get your entries in as soon as you can to stand a chance of getting free tickets to the Metro Ski Show! I’ve added one of my favourites to get the ball rolling. Bet, bet, bet now!

Part 1: Part 1 with Jamie Nicholls and Wayne Taylor (AKA Snowskate)

Part 2: Featuring Boo and Matt Macwhirter

Part 3: Featuring Friends of AKA (Ben Wall, Joe Tyler, Tyler Harding, Rick Campbell, Boxy, Katie, Debs, Tony, Sam, Lloyd and Hamish) Will Smith and Andy Nudds.

From Lochranza, Arran we took the ferry over to Claonaig, bus to Kennacraig, and a second ferry to Port Ellen, Islay, home of Smokey single malt whisky!

The night before on our beach-side camp, I had done serious damage to a rare bottle of Linkwood, and in return the Linkwood had left me with the mother of hangovers.

Arriving into Port Ellen, we needed to finalise our route, so headed to the Ardview pub to get our plan together.

Prior to setting off on our trip, I’d emailed Armin, who writes at IslayBlog.com, for some advice on routes. Armin provided some great advice, and we had fancied taking a route from Port Ellen round the coast to Port Askaig. Given some of the difficulties we’d had in our first couple of days in Arran, we decided that we’d be hard pushed to complete that route in time without some serious hard work. A couple of beers later, we decided to head into the Oa, following the coastal path from Port Ellen.

It wasn’t much more than about an hour or two before we were losing track of the path and to make matters worse the midges were out and biting. Coupled with the beating sun (usually a welcome surprise), and the lingering hangover, and the afternoon marching on into evening whether we liked it or not, we were becoming more keen to find somewhere to set up camp.

That’s when we found this beach…

….at the foot of a waterfall.

Unsure whether it was doable, a few of the lads went down to check it out. Result. Plenty of space for camping above the tide line, plenty of potential firewood to keep us entertained also.

Set up camp, and started on the fire. Baked potatoes and rib-eye steak on the menu, courtesy of Port Ellen’s butcher and the grilliput.

Great times.

We woke the next day to light drizzle and some menacing clouds. Headed back into Port Ellen to re-stock on supplies, and headed East past the distilleries of Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg, where we headed inland towards Loch Uigeadail (I think).

There was fairly consistent rain by now and it got heavier throughout the night. By morning it was torrential. We headed back to the road and headed into the Ardbeg distillery for shelter, tucked into some hot food and dried out for a couple of hours. We had a booking at Laphroaig that afternoon too, where we enjoyed plenty of free drams, did a really interesting tour of the distillery and became land owners via the Friends of Laphroaig scheme.

Really have to give Laphroaig some serious credit. The people there were exceptionally hospitable. Our trip had come to an end, we must have been stinking - 5 men, 5 days without showering, sleeping in tents, walking all day - and no complaints. They kept on pouring the whisky for us, and even drove us to the airport for our flight when they couldn’t get a taxi arranged for us.

Great way to end the trip.

• check out new gear by most of the major brands
• find out about ski resorts
• occasional holiday bargains to be had (try haggling)
• definite bargains on last seasons gear

Find out more on the website and watch this space for a chance to win a pair of tickets.

Also watch out for the London Freeze… more on that soon too.

Well, APH have updated their research and things have changed! RyanAir now costs a bomb, so much so that its more expensive to put a snowboard on a flight than a person these days. Where possible I’m going to be avoiding RyaAir this season. BA is often working out at a similar price with a much nicer service all round.

Thanks to APH, who specialise in Gatwick parking, for compiling the research.

I’ll split this over two posts, as there’s lots to cover. So on with part one: the Isle of Arran.

Heading up from London on a Wednesday night, we got the sleeper train at around 11pm, tucked into a few beers in the bar before hitting the sack, arriving into Glasgow at about 7:30am the next morning. Really easy way to travel.

From Glasgow, train to Ardrossan where we took the ferry to Brodick, Arran. From the ferry we could see sunshine to the south of Arran, and a massive cloud hanging over the top half of Goat Fell - our chosen route, a nice mountain to walk up to get us properly warmed up for 5 days of hiking.

We set off from Brodick, spirits high, and it wasn’t long before we started ascending the Goat Fell path. I think it must have been around half way up where the weather started to get worse. The closer we got to the top, the heavier the wind and rain. Waterproofs went on, hats and hoods up when the hail started.

With a history of knee trouble from running and snowboarding, I treated myself to a set of trekking poles and I was feeling the benefits already.

When we reached the top, visibility was terrible. We had earmarked a nice route down via the Glenn of Sannox, but despite our compass and OS map, we failed to find the right path. We must have spent a couple of hours not dropping any vertical as we walked along a ridge - mostly with a path, but with poor vis’ so you were never too sure. We were going roughly in the right direction, but eventually decided to veer off the path and head down the mountain in a more direct route.

I wouldn’t say I regret the decision (though I’m sure its not to be encouraged), but we managed to decend down a fairly steep slope into Sannox Glenn. Must have taken 90 minutes or so, using a combination of grabbing onto heather bushes and using the tekking poles for support, and innevitably slipping on your arse every now and then, but we eventally got to the bottom.

There had been plenty of rainfall at the top of Goat Fell that day, and lots of little streams had worked their way down the mountain, rendering the glenn too wet to set up camp in. The only choice was to cross the main river and find somewhere further from the mountain. By this stage we were all pretty soaked anyway. It was also pouring down with rain.

I made a pointless gesture by taking off my walking shoes and socks and rolling my trousers up above my knees as I crossed the river at a point about 2-3 feet deep. A soggy 15 minutes walk later we found a bit of land raised well above the riverside path, rocky but dry enough for us to pitch up.

Cooked up some food, drank some wine and hit the sack after a good start to the trip. Hadn’t gone 100% according to plan but we were happy and had earnt a good drink and a good sleep.

Day two: nothing much doing for breakfast, so we packed up and headed into Sannox, stopping at the golf club cafe to refuel heartily before heading onto the coastal walk up to Lochranza, from where we were due to get the ferry over to the Kintyre peninsula the next morning.

The walk today was much less taxing in the main and the weather far more favourable with some great sights along the way. I’ll let the photos do most of the talking here I think.

We were very lucky with the weather right into the evening. We found a great spot for camping a couple of miles outside of Lochranza, with a nice spot just on the edge of a beach with awesome views of the sun setting over to the mainland

More photos on Flickr

Next up: camping and walking in Islay

I did roughly the equivalent of half the distance in each section: 5k run, followed by about 12k on the bike and finishing with a short run of about 1-2k or so.

My legs are feeling good after an intensive 4 days walking the coastal paths of Islay and Arran last week, but I think I’m going to be pretty tired after the event next week. Looking forward to it though.