So Nine it is - that makes this walk quite important to me, as the next, being my tenth, means an automatic acceptance when I next apply. Apparently it also confers upon me the title of "Legend" in Challenge circles, although I hasten to add that plodders such as I are distinguished from the real legends by the careful pronounciation of the term: "Leg - End".
I still blame Alan Sloman for all of this (see this post for evidence of his guilt) but at least I have come to understand his evangelism for the event. Now I am guilty of it too. I have already had my brother-in-law cross with me in 2004, and a potential victim for 2012 has already been selected. Time to hone your backpacking skills, Dave!
Planning a route is a real part of the pleasure, and a real intellectual challenge too, as you consider distances, ascents, terrain, possible weather conditions and your own mental and physical condition from day to day. It can be very easy, warm and cosy at home, dram in hand, to imagine great deeds done traversing high mountains. At such times it is well to recall being up to your knees in a freezing bog, in pouring rain, utterly tired out and inexplicably 'misplaced'.
Now that phase is over. The maps of Scotland are stowed away. The dining room table is once more used for dining, the PC for things other than boggling at Memory Map's stratospheric ascent figures. Christmas approaches with all its temptations ... oh dear ...
So the New Years resolution will be the same as always: get out, find a few hills and whip this sorry carcase back into shape.
