So the trip is long over and it’s back to reality. The trip seemed to last a lifetime, and being away seems a lifetime ago. I must be on my third lifetime in a month.
There are plenty of photographs up at https://www.facebook.com/HittingTheHills. Few of them are of me, which is one of the benefits of being the person holding the camera.
There had been suggestions of developing a Hitting The Hills board game, and I dabbled with the idea of putting together a comic; the issue with both ideas mostly being that I can’t draw. As a result there may yet be a book of the comic of the blog of the trip. If I ever get around to writing it then it will be completely fictional. Well, almost completely. Names will be changed to protect the guilty.
This blog isn’t going to be completely ignored while I procrastinate on writing an epic novel that will almost surely result in me very nearly, but not quite, becoming a real writer. I’ll also be slowly reviewing the odd bits of kit we took, putting together a kit list, uploading a breakdown of the miles done per day and so on.
The book will have to be mostly fictitious. It’s easy to forget bits of what happened, and it’s strange what you remember. There are things that I neglected to mention in the blog, or didn’t seem so important or funny at the time; for example almost injuring myself stretching on the first day, or my uncanny ability to find fried food, even in the wilderness.
Some things are hard to describe. There are moments that I wished I had captured on camera. There was the time when we were shuffling up to Culloden camp site and we were asked by the lady running the campsite where we had come from. Upon replying with “Inverness” her response was “Oh, well, I don’t feel sorry for you now”. Whereas my response of a “well screw you” glare and a comment of “We started in Glasgow last week” was adequately venomous, the wounded look on Heley’s face had more than a hint of malevolence to it. A snapshot of that moment would have become an internet sensation, and I’m sure something a little like this was going on in Heley’s head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28S-aOWtFdo
With over £1100 raised so far, and still hoping a few more people cough up some pennies, some aspects of the trip have been a success. The club has really grown over the last few months, and it’s great to see other people getting involved and helping out more.
In other ways the trip was less successful. Both Heley and I are on the long term injury list. We didn’t manage all the miles and I’m still gutted that I didn’t get to the finish line on foot. There will be other dramatic adventures though. Perhaps I’ll try the 267 miles of the Pennine Way or the 2181 miles of the Appalachian Trail. My sense of adventure has certainly not been dulled by the failure.
Who knows, I might wander up back into the hills this winter to catch up on the bits of the trip I missed… and besides, the Cape Wrath Trail starts not far from Ben Nevis, and it’s only 200 miles long, that’s just a wee stroll.
Cows!!!