Howdy howdy, Dodge here checking in with my first post!

You may remember me from #161 as “British Voice Guy” from the voicemail section where I was able to give both Zach and Chaunce English accent boners. 

OK now we have the formalities out of the way I am staring a blank blog page and wondering what I should say and how to introduce myself. . . 

May be let’s start with the trail I am walking, The West Highland Way. One of Britain’s most popular long distance trails coming in at an astonishing 96 whole miles. The trail starts in a small suburb in Northern Glasgow and works its way along the shores of Loch Lomond before heading into the highlands, winding its way through passes and valleys finally coming out at the foot of the mighty Ben Nevis (Britain’s highest peak) and into Fort William to finish. What’s not to love about the idea of every single minute of that!

(Photo credit : https://www.westhighlandway.org/the-route/)

Now a bit about me. Husband and father aggressively heading towards the 50 years old milestone I have in recent years renewed a love of backpacking and being outdoors. From an early age I was attending scout camps, Duke of Edinburgh award expeditions and for a short time a spell as a volunteer in a search and rescue team covering a local national park. I walked, climbed and backpacked in most of the great UK parks.

And then…..a quiet spell. I fell in love with my wife, we got married, had a daughter and backpacking gear was packed into storage and followed us in unopened boxes from house to house, never stirred and seemingly forgotten. That was until about five of years ago when I discovered a small little book by a relatively unknown author called Bill Bryson….Something about taking a shit in the woods. It stirred that feeling inside of me to get back outdoors, to those hills that I love so much. I then binge consumed an unholy amount of content from a podcast I found hosted by these two folks from the Denver area and with encouragement from my wife (who had taken up distance running for mental and physical fitness) I decided that it would be good for my soul….and a somewhat expanding waistline and sought greater knowledge on the more grander walks.

I have long been aware of the longer UK trails, the Pennine Way, the South West Coast path (almost literally on my doorstep) and of course the West Highland Way. I’d crossed parts of it on other journeys in Scotland and always penciled into my long term memory storage under “that sounds fun…one day maybe”. The idea of a challenge appeals to me, I am highly motivated by having a target to work towards be it an event, a weight or in this case a trail. So with that in mind a couple of years ago I walked the, actually slightly longer but much easier logistically for me, Coast to Coast:Two Moors Way. A 120-ish mile path that goes from one side of the coast in south west of the UK, through two moorland national parks, Dartmoor and Exmoor, before finishing on the other side of the coast.

The walk took me six days (and one brutal knee injury with about 15 miles to go!) to complete. I did it for charity raising several thousand pounds for a cancer research organisation and despite hobbling in the last few miles I enjoyed it more than is easy to put into words!

It took several months to recover from the injury. I’d actually damaged my LCL in my right knee and although I was able to avoid surgery I had to go through an extensive physiotherapy regime to recover the strength something that is honestly still a work in progress.

But I was smitten with trails. And next on my list is the West Highland Way which I have been working towards for the last year after an abortive attempt in 2024.

Which brings me full (and rambling) circle back to why I am here. In late May I shall be driving up to Scotland, embarking on the West Highland Way and blogging it here hopefully for your pleasure so please stay tuned. I am currently getting some training day hikes in at the moment whilst I figure out some changes in my gear set up, more on that will follow, but if you got this far then thanks for your time and I shall keep you all updated on how it is going.

Happy trails,
Dodge