This post was first posted in 2009 on Typepad, reposted here 14 July 2021
During the 12 days from Friday 3rd July to Tuesday 14th July I cycled the 954 miles from Land’s End to John o’Groats, along with my son Will, my daughter’s then boyfriend Matt, and supported by my daughter Michèle, along with help from my son Josh and Will’s friend Jess.
On Saturday, 19 June, at 7:30 in the morning I set off as a participant in a 108 mile (174 km). race along the Pennine Way. 38 and a bit hours later I finished the race, at 9:42pm on Sunday. I ran it slightly slower than I had hoped, but I was very pleased to finish 26th out of 111 runners. Here are some of the highs, lows, and whys about that race – and my target for next year.
But, first things first, I dedicated this run to raising money for my favourite charity, CoppaFeel!, raising awareness of breast cancer amongst young women in the UK. So far, thank
As I type this I am sitting in my room in the George Hotel in Hathersage, tired but happy. The hike from Cromford to Hathersage was 41.7 kilometres, which is almost exactly 25 miles.
It was not a fast walk, with heat, a rucksack, plenty of hills and a stop for food, indeed the walk took me just over 11 hours. But, the key thing is that I feel that I am back in the groove.
I have just come back from four months in Japan and one of the things I did whilst I was there was a couple of nice hikes near Mt Takao. This reminded me that a) I really like hiking and b) I have not done much hiking for years, especially point-to-point hiking with my kit on my back.
So, this weekend I have set out to rediscover hiking and to revisit the area where my love of hiking was honed as a teenager, in the Derbyshire Peak District.
My 24 hour journey (a 13 hour flight to Singapore, a 2 hour layover, a 7 hour flight to Tokyo, and then 2 hours of immigration and travel into Tokyo) starts with breakfast in the Singapore Airlines lounge, a benefit of being a Singapore Airlines regular flyer. Breakfast included a bacon roll, probably my last taste of ‘proper’ bacon until the middle of August – for the next six weeks, when bacon is on offer, it will be in the US style, thin strips without the meat part. In so many ways Singapore are my favourite airline, so I hope everything lives up to my expectations. The bad news is that the plane sounds like it is going to be very full. I have aisle seats on both legs (seat 59D on both legs – I often try to choose the same seat number, but for no real reason, just seems right), but it sounds like I won’t have the luxury of an empty seat next to me.
I am on my way to Tokyo to spend a month studying Japanese. I have an apartment booked for one month and I meet my tutor on Thursday. How will it go? Well, my optimism is high, but over the last 57 years I have not shown any aptitude for languages, so my optimism has to be tempered with some realism/concern. Tonight I am stopping at the Yotel at Heathrow, as I am flying Sunday morning, and getting from Nottingham to Heathrow on a Sunday morning is quite a problem. The Yotel is probably quite a nice foretaste of Japan as it is a capsule hotel, something we often associate with Japan. My room is about 2 metres by three metres and has a bed, a desk, an area to get changed, a toilet, shower, and sink. The internet is free as are coffee and tea. The bed is interesting, the good news is that it is comfortable, but the interesting thing is that my bed is over the bed in next cabin (in the picture you can see I step up to my bed, so the bed in the next Cabin will effectively be underneath me. As well as meeting my needs really well, the Yotel is great value (by UK standards), tonight is costing me £71.
For the last decade or more, Christmas Day at the Poynter household has had a special treat to follow it, Boxing Day Pie. Our pie is a combination of family bonding, tradition, and yummy eating. So, what is Boxing Day Pie? We take everything, well almost everything, left unserved from Christmas Day dinner and we […]
Last Saturday (May 25, 2013) I took part in my first 100KM race (the London to Brighton Challenge), raising money for the breast awareness charity CoppaFeel! (more on the charity later, but you can donate via my JustGiving page). Last summer I walked 100KM in the Oxfam Trailwalk and I ran in an 80KM race […]
At the end of May I am running a 100KM race, the London to Brighton Challenge (to raise money for the CoppaFeel breast cancer awareness charity), if you’d like to sponsor me, please visit my JustGiving page. Although I have run an 80KM race before, this will be my first 100KM, and it requires a fair bit of training and ideally mini-goals along the way. One of my challenges, in terms of my training schedule, was that April was a heavy travel month for me, with conferences and meetings in Vietnam, Japan, and Australia – so I was on the lookout for a goal in Australia to add focus to my training.
On May 25th I am aiming to raise money for a great breast cancer awareness charity called CoppaFeel by running 100KM (about 62.5 miles) from London to Brighton, in under 15 hours, as part of the London to Brighton Challenge.
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