Thick 'n' Fast as written an account of his walk from Land's End to John O'Groats. Well worth a read. You can also download a PDF version here.

Land's End to John O'Groats - 1200 miles across GB.

I left for Land's End a little later than anticipated. In days, because I had a rather debilitating cold and in hours because I was quite hungover having spent most of the previous evening being educated in fine art and ranting my own brand of politics over way too many G&T's with a friend in Falmouth.
For those unfamiliar with Land's End, it is the most Southern tip of England, lying firmly amongst the gorse and windswept cliffs of Cornwall. It is also a travesty of post-WW2esque seaside tat. As I was ferried along in a little 2 seater sports car, the top down, the fresh sea wind spiriting the last of the spirits out of my system, we discussed what interested us both about the landscape and how I believed it to be quite similar to several of the Channel Islands.

Land's End: Large, monstrous hotel, amusements and the odd despairingly vacant fun fair ride. Like Blackpool, just smaller, without the kids.... and shit. 
 
After the obligatory photo of the road sign (John O'Groats 857 miles or something similar) at which some hunch-backed murderer look-alike tried (unsuccessfully) to extort 6 pounds out of me for a 'professional' photo, I set off along the cliff path. This run-in with humanity set the tone for most of the trip. I could easily find enough malcontentedness within me to write several books on the subject, but for your benefit and perhaps my sanity I shall limit this tale to a simple overview, some brief insights and a rather predictable county by county approach.
 
Often people, particularly teenagers go 'back-packing', a term I loath and am loath to use as I once was one of them; 'the great washed' as they could be referred to. These people, (as did I) will often discuss their travels with anyone considered patient enough to listen to them and tell of how they learned some very profound lessons about different cultures and more importantly 'themselves'. Now, I don't own a multi-coloured poncho or a Vietnamese hemp inflatable peace blanket but I can assure you that you don't need to go on a whistle-stop mystery tour of Angkor Wat's back passages to learn some cultural lessons. They are right here, next door to you, in abundance.
 
I am not in the business of flowery adjective ridden descriptions and do not have the time or literary energy of Thomas Hardy so here is a run down of things I learnt on this trip about England, Wales and Scotland in area form. Yes I know it's lazy but I just walked 1200 miles.
 
The South West:

• Cornwall is quite big and very long.
• People kept telling me that if you walk the whole of the South West Coast Path that was the equivalent of going up and down Mt. Everest 23.9 times whilst dragging behind you a disgruntled sherpa on an arthritic mountain goat. I can't quite remember the claims (obviously), but you get the impression. To be fair it is hard, very hard, because it is a thin path, there are lots of boulders and you constantly have to go in and out, up and down headlands. This has a deep psychological effect on you akin to Sisyphus pushing the boulder.
• The sea views are really beautiful but if I'm honest the novelty does wear off after a bit. Camping on the side of the cliffs however never loses its novelty.
• Cornwall is full of strange people who look sinister, whole villages in fact are not villages but sleeper cells of genetically mutated farm-hands waiting for the opportunity to inflict their redundant language and pastry covered meals on us all.
• It is indeed possible to cross Cornwall eating nothing but pasties for sustenance.

 
After walking through Cornwall I couldn't believe how long it took me to get through Devon, it felt like just a day.

• Bideford is somewhere between purgatory and an inexpensive timeshare in hell.
• Forestry or woodland is the best place to camp for cover and water, however badgers do not necessarily agree with this theory.
• Exmoor is Dartmoor's homosexual cousin.
• Pubs in the South West stock some of the best beer in the UK although apparently opening from 11 until 11 is far too much, even if you are paying your Eastern European staff in seeds. When you are walking, pubs are never open at convenient times for a pint, like 8am. Although I probably got more walking done thanks to this.
• The Quantocks are reasonably long but thin. A hill cunningly disguised as more than one.

 
I thought when I started the trip that my whole body would feel quite tired at the end of a days walking but I was wrong. What actually happens is that your body is fine but the soles of your feet are in an agony so severe that I simply cannot explain. I had never felt a sustained pain like this, where everyday I would limp for the last 4 hours. It's not like if you break an arm. You get a little morphine, dribble onto your new cast and bar a couple of knocks you know for sure that everything will be fine in a couple of months. This was a daily and progressively worse pain, for which as far as I could see the end would only coincide with my arrival in John O'Groats. In fact the pain did subside eventually, after about 3-4 weeks. I had one week of bliss then what happened was this: The soles of my feet had hardened up so much that I began to lose sensation in my toes. Firstly it started in the big toes and then worked further down until all of my pinkies were dead. I could move them, but all I could feel was pins and needles and then eventually pretty much nothing. I am now regressing back through the symptoms of deadtoeitis and am currently back in the pins and needles stage.
 

• Bridgewater is a town best entered under the influence of alcohol or a finely tuned blend of narcotics. At least then you can fit in amongst its inhabitants.

 
As I neared the end of the Parrat River running out of Bridgewater, I had a choice to consider; do I take a 3 mile detour the wrong way on access roads, or do I chance a one mile walk up the M5 to the next junction and then jump the fence to follow the Huntspill? The M5 of course.
Now, the police may take several days to arrive at your house if a burglar breaks in, murders your butler and buggers your cat, but they sure as hell roll up quickly enough if you take a leisurely stroll down a motorway. I must have been going for about two minutes before the blues started flashing at me. Luckily and rather coincidentally the bloke who jumped out and lectured me was an old school friend from boarding school so I got away without having to be taken down the station and rubber gloved.
 

• The Mendips are quite pleasant but like the Quantocks, they are simply pretending.
• Thatcher's cider has a farm shop where you can drink as much cider as you can afford. They also have an orchard out back where, if like me you have partaken in a camouflage and concealment course, you can illegally pitch a tent so you don't have to stumble too far whilst smashed on pear cider.

         
During my jaunt across Somerset a very kind woman cycling down the road on her push bike spotted me having a fag with my feet up in the air, feeling sorry for myself. We had a quick chat where she invited me in for a cuppa if I could just wait 20 minutes. I told her I had to push on but thanks. She chased me to my next footpath point in her car an hour later with two cheques for help for heroes for 40 quid from herself and her husband. This wasn't unique by any means on the trip. Hardly a day passed that somebody didn't buy me a pint, slip me a tenner, feed me or offer me a room for the night.
As usual I have already slipped back into the God-awful trend of obsessive news watching and all I have to say to the domestic journalists of this country is the following: This country is not 'going to the dogs', kids are not 'feral' nor is everyone with a dodgy beard that has the heavy scent of BO and a tent which smells of badger wee out 'to steal babies'. I personally didn't meet one person in countryside, village or town, in three countries that had anything other than normal human interest and goodwill towards me. I have tired of listening to the depressive rhetoric of a bunch of city dwelling career politicians who've been towel-whipped through Eton and soggy-biscuited through Cambridge, condescending to and patronising me. This is the reason I choose to live in the countryside and don't spend my Saturday evenings talking loudly about the rental price of my shoe box off King's Road in Bougis on a Saturday night. Ponces.
 
Wales/England/Wales...erm England?

• The Wales/England border is about as clear as our reasons for being in Iraq. I was in Wales and then briefly in England so many times I didn't know whether to roast a lamb or shag it.
• Offa's Dyke is not the ancient King of Mercia's private lesbian secretary; it is a ditch. It was a wonderful walk though, from the winding Wye Valley, across acre upon acre of farmland and up to the 700m heights at Hay's Bluff in the Black Mountains. There are an enormous amount of stiles though.
• Shropshire has some beautiful hills in it.
• Much Wenlock is a town inhabited by people on the very cusp of death and frequented by people from the Midlands spending their holidays buying scale furniture for doll houses.

I arrived at a pub in Much Wenlock after having spent most of the day walking down Wenlock Edge, which is effectively a long edge, near Wenlock. I met a group of ex-Bristol Uni students there who were on holiday in a cottage which one of them had bid on whilst drunk at an army auction and won. I tagged along back to Ironbridge with them, which has a bridge in it, made of iron. The oldest in the world I understand. I then helped make a roast and got utterly smashed with them on wine, port and beer and finally slept alongside their homosexual spaniel 'Lord Wordsworth' on the floor. I would have left early but there was a rather uncharacteristic thunder and lightning storm. After a bacon sarny and countless cups of tea I was off again.

• Shropshire is a gem of a county. The hills are tremendous and it seems, like Herefordshire, to be far less populated than other counties.
• Staffordshire is quite dull, except for Cannock Chase apparently, but I didn't go there.
• Derbyshire is where you really begin to feel that you are in the North of England. Gruff, middle-aged men begin harping on about common sense a lot and motorcyclists believe they are at the TT in the Isle of Man.

I spent the night in Hebdon Bridge, which I am reliably informed has the highest rate of lesbians per capita in Great Britain. I can attest this to be true as I passed a large group of them, smashing down pints of lager, on some sort of get together outside a pub in the town centre. Hebdon bridge is also the 4th 'quirkiest' town in the world, although frankly I am not convinced that this can be proven. Presumably there is some sort of administrative international board for this. The Board of International Quirky Townships or 'B.O.L.L.O.C.K.S' for short. It was very 'New Age' though, but not as much as Totnes.

• The Pennine way is pretty spectacular and probably the best walking South of Scotland.
• Northerners aren't as hard as they claim. In fact, I took great pleasure in judiciously letting slip how much harder I was than them, although several did attempt to claim that they used to carry the bodies of their cholera ridden working-class chums through burning coal mines when just 6 years old "man and boy, you Southern shandy drinking poofter" etc...
• In an old, Northern mining town working man's club, it is advisable not to arrive in technical clothing with walking poles and order a G&T in a public school accent.

I met up with an old friend from TA known as Andy Reed or more recently as Swift Justice, who I imagine as a crime fighting super hero. Swift missed most of the Pennine way due to a work/holiday mishap. He met me as I was dressed in muddy clothing, dragging my sorry, soiled and shoeless feet about a pub just South of Hadrian's Wall. We set off, with countless army ration packs that our unit had been all too happy to give away. The walk across Kielder Forest and then the Southern Highlands, particularly between Traquair and Melrose was quite spectacular and the bottles of whiskey that Andy had brought softened the hard work.

• Unfortunately, the industrial lowlands of Scotland that stretch across Edinburgh to Glasgow are almost impossible to avoid. Even the Union Canal and Forth and Clyde Canal are peppered with young offenders' institutes and other eye-sores.
• Glaswegians are difficult to understand, even more so on their 8th can of Tennents as I found out when I stopped for a can and some Hula Hoops with a bunch of them on a fishing trip. They were there fairly early, as all three had police tags on and had to be back home by 7.30pm!
• The Falkirk wheel is an incredible piece of machinery that moves barges between two canals, lifting them up around 15 metres in the air and depositing them in the other canal. Impressive? Yes, but shouldn't the government be spending money on something we actually need? I can't really see that 20 old people a year who fancy a trip down a trickle of water whilst being overtaken by snails should be granted a multi-million pound engineering marvel and take precedence over say...dredging moats or refurbing your servants quarters. I know mine could do with a lick of paint.

Just North of Glasgow I started out along the West Highland Way. I had heard quite a lot about it and assumed that it would be quite a difficult path. In fact it is the easiest walking I've ever done. I was very disappointed by the first few days, following an old railway track and not a lot of scenery. When I arrived in Bridge of Orchy everything changed. Suddenly the looming silhouettes of the central Highlands came into view. Snow peaked caps atop the kind of terrain I had no idea existed in Britain. It was quite incredible. The Devil's Staircase turned out to be slightly over-hyped (having just climbed Scafell Pike the hard way, I can assure you this is true) and the rest of the walk to Ft. William went very smoothly, although I did my second longest day of the trip that day, walking just over 35 miles.

• The Scottish Highlands are incredibly remote. At one point I didn't see another soul for three days.
• I can honestly say that I was dumbstruck by the Highlands. I had no idea we had places of such majestic beauty so close to us. It is somewhere I want to get back to at the earliest opportunity.
• Being caught in snow, in the middle of nowhere is fun... but not for long.
• The Mountain Bothy Association are God-like saints who have now saved my bacon on two occasions.

It took me a little longer than I had hoped to get across the Highlands and as the mountains got progressively smaller I felt a certain sadness that I was leaving. It had been a hard week being hit by 'four season in one day' weather and spending the majority of the time very wet indeed, muttering like Mutley under my breath about the likelihood of there being a superior being and why He/She had it in for me so badly. As I skirted around Lairg I popped into The Crask Inn, where I spent the evening in the bar with a lovely chap from Ireland named John, who it seemed was funded by Cork University to arse about on hills; apparently it is also known as Geology! He very generously sponsored me several whiskies and breakfast the next day.

• Approaching Loch Choire from the Crask Inn is one of the most jaw-dropping sights around.

From Kinbrace to John O'Groats the walking became much more predictable. I had a hard nav ex coming over a moorland plateau from Kinbrace but after that I used a mixture of B-Road and estate access road all the way to the end.
As I approached John O'Groats I was holding it together really quite well and it wasn't until I saw the stupid sign post that I burst into smiles. I was quite overwhelmed by the knowledge that it was all over. Another epic adventure come to an end. I made it rapidly to the nearest hotel where I over-indulged with some locals and tourists in drinking and eating and hit the hay in a real bed. So what's next? Anyone up for Mongolia on horseback?