About this blog

The journey from John o'Groats to Land's End took place in 14 sections, starting in 1996 (a week or so each year). The idea came to me in 1995 and I completed the British JoGLE Watershed in June 2009.

I was joined by a number of relations and friends from time to time. Most notable among my walking companions were my son Tim (7 sections) and nephews Peter and Jonny.

After walking the first section in 1996 I discovered that Dave Hewitt had already pioneered the Scottish Watershed (to Cape Wrath) in 1987, and had published his excellent account Walking the Watershed in 1994. We have been in touch since then, and he has been a great encouragement.

A simple definition of the watershed is that any rain falling to the left of the path finishes in the North Sea or English Channel, and anything to the right flows into the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea or the Bristol Channel.

I believe that this was the first walk along the full length of the British JoGLE Watershed. I became aware just after I completed the journey that the late Mike Allen walked a slightly different version (from Land's End to Cape Wrath) between 1988 and 1994, so he will have covered the same ground apart from the most north-easterly 220km.

There have subsequently been several walks and publications about parts of the JoGLE watershed, including Peter Wright's 2010 Ribbon of Wildness account of his Scottish section walked in 2005, which has brought the subject of watershed walking in the UK to a wider audience.

I hope you enjoy this blog. I'm planning to publish a full account in 2013/4. A summary of the walk appeared in The Angry Corrie volume 76 in 2009.

Malcolm Wylie.

Friday 23 September 2005

Day 90 - red sky in the morning......

I was up at 6am to see this lovely pink sky and a slight frost, and set off by 6:30am in order to reach Daventry for my coach back to Cambridge. It was obviously too early for me, because I failed to notice a route-planning mistake I'd made - and I went jauntily along the Jurassic Way until I crossed a clearly-flowing-and-marked-on-the-map-stream. I carried on after an annoyed "rhubarb". [I subsequently corrected this on 1/11/07 by taking the minor road horseshoe to the north around the stream.]

I followed roads and footpaths through Crick, under the M1 and railway line, then over the railway tunnel and M45 near Kilsby. Onto map 152, a few more km of roads and footpaths (in heavy rain as indicated by the "shepherd's warning" in the earlier red sky) brought me to the end of this Section at 566652. Since I had started Section 10 in 2001 (out of sequence because of foot-and-mouth), the Section end/beginning had totally changed: in 2001 this point was open farmland, and in 2005 it was an enormous housing estate.

The stats for this Section were 146km and a paltry 300m of ascent (possibly a bit under-estimated).

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