Good news and bad news.

It is with some reluctance that I am announcing that in 2015 I will be unable to do the charity walk that I so desperately wanted to do. I am now resigned to the fact that I will not be able to afford either the time off work, or the cost of staying in guest house accommodation for more than one hundred consecutive nights. For this reason I am having to shelve my intended charity walk,  some fifteen hundred miles from Lands End to John O'Groats spanning one hundred days of walking and climbing, until the following year, 2016.


However, I most definitely will be able to afford a mere two weeks away from work and therefore I have now settled on walking The Coast to Coast again. In 2012 I walked the one hundred and ninety two miles from St. Bees Head on the west coast to Robin Hoods Bay on the east coast of northern England. Two years ago I completed this moderately tough walk with my good friend Helen Aitchison, also known as indestructible Mrs. Bootcamp. (probably only to me, but I know she doesn't mind the nickname!). It really is a fantastically beautiful walk, spanning no less than three of Britain's loveliest National  Parks.


Some pictures from last time.

High in The Yorkshire Dales, sunshine after the blizzard!                     The sign says it all...

And the snow came fairly hard on the heels of two days of torrential rain! This was on Orton Moor, pretty bleak when the weather is bad!

We did have an extremely mixed bag of weather though, here I am with Helen at around 3000 feet up on March 30th. It was 77 degrees farenheit, and only four days before the big snowfall!

 On the right, there we are at the finish of the walk, the literal and absolute end, as we are stood in The North Sea at Robin Hoods Bay. We had walked just under two hundred miles in twelve days of tough climbing, and raised over two thousand pounds for charity in the process.


So, in around a year's time I shall be doing it again, this time in the opposite direction, east to west. The start is in North Yorkshire and the finish in Cumbria. The route will take me through Thr North York Moors, onwards through The Yorkshire Dales, then finishing with four days' through The Lake District.

Again, I shall be hoping to raise much needed funds for charity, watch this space for more news coming soon!

                                                            Alec Hawkes     20.08.14