And so it begins...

Last August I was looking at pictures of a friend's holiday in Ireland on Facebook. She was driving around the Wild Atlantic Way, a newly launched driving route that runs the entire length of the West of Ireland - from Donegal in the North to Cork in the South - and the weather was fairly foul. The thought occurred to me that all that beauty could be missed as you sped by in a car and wouldn't it be better to walk it.  It was an idea that seeded itself in my mind and grew and took hold of me and I was unable to shake it. I found myself pondering on how plausible it would be to take off from my life - my job, my family and home - and go for a really, really long stroll.  I mean it's 1500 miles long.  How long would that take?  How many miles would I be able to walk in a day? How many days could I walk in a row? Where the hell would I sleep? I started looking at websites, measuring out distances on google maps, daydreaming about what it all would involve. I figured out it would take four months.

The more I thought it through, the more I realised that for the first time in twenty-one years, since I had my first child, that I might be able to wangle it.  I could take a sabbatical from work. My kids were old enough to take a sabbatical from me. I knew my husband, who is awesome, would support me. I actually could do it. But on my own? Now I had doubts.  So I broached the subject with two of my dearest friends.  Maybe we could do it together? Alas taking four months out of your life is not easily managed.  Maybe we could just do a bit together? Or cycle it for a week to cover more ground? But I wanted to walk and I wanted to walk it all.  

So I started to go for hikes across the South Downs gauging what it did to my body (in particular my feet!) and slowly building up my fitness. I'm 49 and overweight and haven't done much exercise in ... well, donkey's years, and every attempt at fitness - running, cycling, even yoga - resulted in injury. So I took it slowly and carefully. I started to buy equipment. I got a tent for my birthday, a backpack for Christmas. I bought base layers and hiking shoes and waterproofs and fleeces. I went for walks - lots of walks. At first I'd have to have two hour hot baths in epsom salts afterwards - just to be able to move again. Every muscle ached. My body creaked. I sweated (and not in an attractive glowy way - rather in a pink-faced, swollen, looks-like-I'm-having-a-coronary way. But the weirdest thing happened - I LOVED IT!

I'm not sure when I made the actual decision to go. It just sort of morphed from an idea to reality by osmosis. Telling my family back in Ireland and getting permission to take the time off work made it concrete. I was doing it.  I AM doing it. This year. I'm going to walk 1500 miles around the western coast of Ireland.

These are the stats as they currently stand: I figure it'll take 16 or 17 weeks to do, walking 15 miles a day, 6 days a week. This is an optimistic estimate. I'm an optimistic kinda girl. I'm also practical, so I've built in a bit of contingency for getting knackered or pissed off or wanting to take a week off and go home and hug my husband, my kids and the dogs. I figured I'd need to start at the beginning of May if I was going to be finished by September. The only problem with that was that the busiest time for my job was the first three weeks of May.  I couldn't just take those off. That's when I had the fantastic idea of doing the walk in stages. I have a week off in February and two weeks off over the Easter Break.  I can walk the first bit of my walk in two parts then do the rest from May 21st to the end of August. That's right.  I'm starting of my walk in the Inishowen Peninsula in the wilds of Donegal in FEBRUARY.

So there you have it. In just under two weeks it's all kicking off. The adventure will be unfolding here and on Facebook. I'll be sharing how I'm getting on with my training; what I'm hoping to achieve; my thousands of reasons for doing this, as well as raising a bit of money and awareness for a great charity: The RNLI. Please stop by and join me here as I wander. I'd love the company.