Evening everyone

Thank you for all your awesome comments and messages about our Scotland’s Great Trails charity fundraiser we are starting soon.

We have received lots of messages of support and loads of questions. Thank you!

I’m going to try to answer 5 of the most common questions we have been asked.

What trails are you hiking?

We will be hiking all of the official Scottish great trails as defined by the website Scotland’s Great Trails that you can view here, along with a complete list of all the trails and their corresponding websites https://www.scotlandsgreattrails.com/ If the trail has not been awarded the status of a Scottish Great Trail it will probably have to wait for another year. If a trail gets awarded the status of a great trail before we compete them all, we will add it to out list aim to complete it before the end of the year.

Are you doing the Great Glen Canoe Trail?

Yes…! We will be canoeing this trail, and the best thing is, Sarah will be doing this one with us. That's because I don't have the canoeing skills needed. Sarah is a qualified level 3 canoe (and kayak) coach. We will always put safety first, and I wouldn't attempt this one without Sarah! Eve and I will also be hiking the Great Glen Way.

Are you going to hike the trails we have completed before?

Yes… we have competed some of the trails before such as The West Highland Way, but we will be hiking them all again this year. This is because the challenge is to hike ALL of Scotland’s Great Trails (hopefully) by the end of 2023!

Are you doing all 29 trails in one go?

Yes and No... We will be linking them when and where we can. I have also said ‘no’ because we have a number of unavoidable things that we can't put off, so we will have to return home periodically. This includes a trip to Torquay for an award ceremony for JOGLE, my key note speaker booking for an awarding body, Eve has some hospital appointments etc... Also, some of the trails pass within a few miles of home so we will probably base ourselves at home for these, especially during the winter weather! Also Eve really missed our animals last year and I after loosing our dog Tilly, she doesn't want to be away from them for too long

What order are you doing the trail's in?

In all honesty we don't know, and we will probably keep the order dynamic depending on what's going on nearer the time. We are planning on starting with the Great Torssachs Path which begins in Callander. We also know we will not be doing the West Highland Way until April as Conic Hill is closed for trail maintenance.

I hope this helps to answer some of your questions but if you have any other questions please ask! If you don't want to ask in the public comments, just drop me a message and I will get back to you.

So, today... we have been fanatically organising and sorting. We only finalised the Scotland’s Great Trails challenge for 2023 a couple of weeks ago. We originally had a different challenge planned for this year but Eve wanted to swap it! As such we are behind in the planning phase or at least where I would like to be at this point with only a week to go until we start! It's stressful but in a good way, as we have a target and can focus on a goal!

We have also done a few odd jobs, like sort out Eve’s home education corner in the living room to try and get ready for more on-trail education. We have been trying to look at books etc that I can carry with me when we are hiking. I really need to get her a better tablet for the walk as her current one is old and a bit battered as it went everywhere with us last year. We really would like something like an Apple iPad mini as we will be spending so much time on the trail this year, and she is getting into reading, coding etc... but they're just so expensive!

We have ordered a new map of Scotland so we can do the whole ‘map time’ posts again to track out progress.

There is definitely a feeling of anticipation in the air with a feeling of excitement and nerves. It's an odd feeling that we haven't experienced since the few weeks before we started our JOGLE end to end last year!

Right, I think I've waffled on enough for this evening.

We will see you all tomorrow night, have a great evening and I hope you all have a fantastic weekend planned.

Keep safe.

Ian, Sarah & Eve