Winter.

It’s getting cold here in Bristol. This morning was icy in the boat, although having the door open all night didn’t help. Ooops. It turned into a beautiful clear day though. I went down to Cornwall with Katie last week and did a bit of work for her uncle. The blurry arty photo is taken from his porch. Trevose head, near Padstow in the distance.

We’ve been thinking about how to get to the US fro our hike. Our ideal way would be to work our passage as crew on a yacht so, in February, to improve our chances of getting that sort of work, we’re sailing from Malaysia to Sri Lanka with Phil Watson on his catamaran Pumpkin. Phil is an experienced sailor, an ex royal marine and owns a Wharram Tiki 38, a kind of glorified Kon-Tiki raft. Ideal for ocean passages in the tropics. It’ll make a nice change from the british winter.

Another alternative to sailing to the US is to pay for passage on a freighter. Which sounds kinda romantic. Although 2 weeks being rattled around inside a cavernous steel drum, enveloped by diesel fumes, may be closer to the truth. Perhaps we’ll travel aboard the Queen Mary 2, enjoying games of deck quoits, relaxing in the pool afterwards with bikini clad staff bringing us cocktails. Hmm.. Dinner with the Captain and all that. We’ll see..

Pictures..

Here’s a local scene, a gloomy walk along the riverside some blue sky but a strong wind and heavy rain will be here later. Heading back to our boat.

A Plan

Here I am, trying to decide if I should plan for the CDT (Continental Divide Trail) or not. You know, plan an approximate itinery, town stops, resupply points, gear.. etc, etc…. I suppose I will, well, of course I will, considering the extent of the journey- 3100 miles!! The fact that it’s going to take us around 6 months to complete and the isolation of some parts of the trail, does kinda indicate that planning would be helpful. Before anyone starts getting concerned, wondering what this idiot is doing, I should point out that my wife and I have hiked a bit before. The AT (Appalachian Trail) in 1997, the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) in 2006, The Bibbulmun Track a couple of times and for something to do I hiked the AT again this year. These trails all required different levels of planning. For our first long hike in 1997 we, well I.., planned a lot. I read every book and watched every video I could find about the AT. As it turned out most of this planning was useless. Sure I enjoyed reading about the trail but nothing really prepares you for walking for 6 months except, well, walking for 6 months. Along any of these trails things happen at a pretty slow pace. So there’s plenty of time to ponder the next town stop. Plenty of time to plan the next couple of weeks. Plenty of time to wonder what you are doing and also, of course, plenty of time to just wonder. More on planning later..

Press Play..

Well, for the time being I’ll be known as greenhiker. A halfhearted attempt at an interesting name. It’ll do for the mo. The reason for setting up this blog, pretty easy so far, is to get a system sorted out for our, ( Katie and me), hike along the Continental Divide Trail. We are planning to hike in ’08. Ideally northbound, but that will depend on the winter snowfall. Too much snow means we’ll start in the north and hike southbound instead. Anyway…. as far as blogs go, we would like to have something that can be updated from the trail, either from a smartphone or a small UMPC, (More on that later). We also need to upload photos, have links to a flickr page, google earth stuff and anything else we think will make the site more interesting. As long as it doesn’t involve too much work.. So, I’m going to upload some photos, try a few templates, and generally play around with this site for a while. Back later..