The Support Team

An undertaking as big as walking from Land’s End to John O’Groats is made much easier if one has the support and encouragement of a support team and I’m particularly lucky that Sandra has effectively put her life and swimming ambitions of hold for this summer to help me achieve my ambition.  Next year it will be my turn to support her but that is a different blog.

 Sandra is going to be walking a lot of the route with me, either as full days or half days, but even if she’s walking half days along the route she’ll still be walking the same distance as me.  Confused? Let me explain.

 The Plan calls for me to walk every day, except rest days and for the van to be moved from campsite to campsite as progress is made so that I’m doing the minimum of repetition, deviation (although there will be a lot of hesitation).  This means that the van will need to be regularly moved and that’s one of Sandra’s tasks.

 Some days she will walking Land's End to John O'Groats with me, some days she’ll be walking part of the way with me and then walking back to the van to either move it to a new campsite or pick me up and some days she’ll be doing her own thing.

 And, of course, there’s Arthur, my faithful thieving hound whose main duties seem to be hoovering up anything remotely edible wherever he goes and keeping me company when Sandra’s off doing other support jobs, like shopping, cooking, cleaning and washing and nipping back to check on the house from time to time.

Sandra and Arthur, the support team without this attempt wouldn’t be possible.