Macmillan Way

I have had some correspondence with the people at Macmillan about my recent walking of their route and realise that my "Summary" may have created a somewhat melancholy impression of the walk which I did not intend. My comments were aimed at fellow long distance backpackers who I reckon would understand the points I was making without  them being put off at the possibility of doing the walk, and I reckon the accompanying slideshow demonstrates that there is much of quality in this route. I emphasise that I throughly enjoyed the Macmillan Way, but as you all know there are always challenging aspects in any long distance walk, the overcoming of which form part of the satisfaction of the achievement.

Here is a copy of a letter I have sent to the people at Macmillan who have the difficult task of maintaining this valuable LDP.

Hi Jenny,

Thanks for your reply and I am sorry to have dampened your spirits. My “summary” was intended to give an objective view of the walk, mainly for a group of fellow bloggers and friends who do a lot of serious long distance backpacking who understand the problems I encountered and would most likely be amused rather than put off. The last thing I would want is to discourage people from walking the Macmillan Way, but in retrospect I see that some of my comments may be off-putting for the less experienced, and that is something I would regret.

The Macmillan Way has a lot going for it with variation of scenery and the attractive Cotswold villages and a number of fine ridges, and in my opinion compares favourably with similar routes I have walked including the Viking Way,  the Severn Way, the Wainwright Coast to Coast and the Sandstone Trail. All of those routes also had overgrown footpath problems and a fair amount of cropfield boundary walking. The MM has provided a route through worthwhile country which would have been less accessible before its conception. It is a route that would undoubtedly be fulfilling for any reasonably fit walkers. 

I enjoy long distance walking because, after a couple of weeks it becomes like a way of life, so different from day walks. One  can observe the changing nature of countryside, cultivation, and local accents. There is so much to see in our country, and I certainly don’t see my objectives as robotically ticking off these routes - I am just an independent walking enthusiast, and that enthusiasm probably leads me to be more analytical than others.

As I mentioned in a comment, when I had put the slideshow together and ran it through I realised how much of quality there is in the Macmillan Way. Whatever the impression my piece gave I would like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the walk and would recommend it to anybody. 

It is obvious that much work that has been done in many places clearing paths by volunteers. If I lived closer to the path I would be happy to contribute myself. I did acknowledge at one stage that even a path that has been cleared can become pretty badly overgrown again within a week at this time of year.

Your task of looking after the 290 mile route is not enviable in these days of cuts and austerity, and I am sure there must be frustration at complacency and lack of funding, and lack of enthusiasm encountered from local authorities and some landowners.

I can empathise with your aims for the walk and the overwhelming value of your charity. My wife of twenty seven years was diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease in 1994 and died on Boxing Day 1997. I give a monthly donation to Macmillan along with several other worthy charities.

I really do wish you and your husband well with your continued stewardship of the Macmillan Way. I have now received the Boston/Barmouth guide which I have studied with enthusiasm, and I have every intention of walking that route later this year if certain circumstances permit.

I am posting this letter on my blog which I hope may add clarification and encouragement to the less experienced after my previous summary.

With my very best wishes,

Conrad Robinson.

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No photos with this one.

Sent from my iPad

Lakeland Great Outdoors and Scarpa - thumbs up

Followers of my recent MacmillanWay walk will have read about the problem I had with  Scarpa Cyrus trail shoes.

After returning the shoes to my retailer, Lakeland Great Outdoors at Staveley near Kendal they were returned to Mountain Boot Company at Newcastle upon Tyne who I presume are the UK distributors for Scarpa. Initially Mountain Boot refused to refund because there was no manufacturing fault, but further communication followed emphasising that my complaint was a matter of "fitness for purpose".

I have now been contacted  by Lakeland Great Outdoors saying they have have come to a mutual agreement wtih Mountain Boot enabling them to give me a full refund.

I would like to say that the whole of this matter was handled by Lakeland Great Outdoors' Sales Manager, Geoff Jackson in a professional and courteous manner and I would have no hesitation in shopping there again.

Others may wish to look more carefully next time they are buying trail shoes - here is a copy of the formal complaint that I needed to make to Lakeland:

Lakeland Great Outdoors Ltd

Plantation Bridge

Nr. Staveley

Cumbria LA8 9JA

Dear Sirs,

I bought a pair of Scarpa Cyrus trail shoes from you on 15th April 2015 (£129.80). I have an issue with this purchase and have taken legal advice and I understand my contract is with you as retailers and as such I must therefore claim against you, so please accept this letter as my formal complaint.

I explained to the sales assistant (somewhat boastfully) that I wanted the shoes to walk The Macmillan Way from Boston, Lincolnshire to Abbotsbury, Dorset, a distance of 290 miles. This is a recognised English Long Distance Footpath marked on the Ordnance Survey map following public footpaths and bridleways and some Tarmac roads.

I am a an experienced walker having completed many long distance walks including Land’s End to John ‘o Groats, The GR10, and the GR5 as well as completing all the Munros. I suggest that nobody of experience would dispute the advisability of  wearing good quality trail shoes for the above mentioned long distance walk. 

I tried the shoes in the shop and wore them briefly outside and had no complaint regarding comfort and fit but I wanted to preserve them, specifically because of the long distance of the walk, which I started on 20th May 2015, and finished on 10th June 2015.

After a couple of miles from the start of the walk on 20th May 2015 the soles of my feet became painful, which is a problem I have not encountered before. In my opinion ANY walking footwear should be capable of sustaining comfort for a distance of more than two miles over normal terrain. When I examined the shoes closely I found the soles had no cushioning apart from some uncushioned footbeds. I struggled on wondering if I would be able to continue with the walk until I got to Stamford on the third day which was the first place of any size. By then I could not have continued with the walk at that stage wearing the Scarpas. I was able to buy a pair of shoes from an outdoor shop which were well cushioned, and cured the problem immediately, and lasted for the rest of the twenty one day walk with no further painful soles of my feet. I had to post the Scarpas back home at a cost of £13.75 (I have the postal receipt). 

I returned from the walk on 10th June 2015 and returned the shoes to you on 12th June 2015 and you offered to return them to your wholesaler with my complaint. The wholesaler has since returned the shoes to you refusing to accept any responsibility. I have the original receipt in my possession and you accepted the veracity of my purchase when I returned the shoes.

I am not complaining about a manufacturing defect.

I am complaining about the "fitness for purpose" as required by the Sale of Goods Act. 

There is no question of the shoes being the wrong size, they fit my feet properly. I had equal discomfort on THE SOLES of BOTH feet, not because they were being pinched in any way, but because there was no cushioning. As I stated replacement with shoes that had good cushioning cured the problem immediately.

I would appreciate a rapid  acknowledgement of receipt of this email, and look forward to your considered reply which I would hope to receive within fourteen days.

Regards

Conrad Robinson

Discovery

I enjoy not the toil of gardening.

After walking for three weeks I returned to overgrown grass and weeds. A gruelling half day foray had the basics under control, but writing this post arises from a not so subconscious deferring  of the need to get out there and do more.

Fronting my road is a bank producing daffodils. That foray brought out my petrol strimmer, a rash indulgent purchase a couple of years ago, to scythe the now wilted stalks and two foot high grass (gardeners have told me you have to leave them to let the nutrients flow back into the bulbs - a likely story). It takes all of ten minutes to cut back the main growth and that is the annual, only use I have for that machine, which is a devil to start, and then has to be cleaned afterwards, and because of infrequent use I had to buy special, expensive two-stroke mixture that has a two year shelf life. I found that ordinary mixture, if left in the machine coats its innards with some sort of lacquer and it was only after being used once it had to go back to the supplier for a carburettor strip down and clean costing a significant percentage of its original price. When I retrieve it from its home under the house I look at it with hatred and the pessimistic thought that it is not going to start again.

For years I have wished I had more knowledge of wild flowers, especially as I tend to visit wilderness regions where rarities may be found. I envy two fellow bloggers, Beating the Bounds  and http://phreerunner.blogspot.com/Phreerunner for their botanical knowledge.

Identifying birds is relatively easy - they fall into categories that are logical and easy to remember and so ordered in bird books. Botany has a similar system (yes, I know about Linnaeus), but it is not so obvious, not to me anyway. Even though the mysteries of plant classification confound me I do have a treasured book which I admire for its beauty alone and the shear dedication and artistic and literary skills of its authors. Marjorie Blamey, at the age of  eighty-six (circa 2003) finished painting the entire British and Irish flora with results that surpass any photography by light-years. Richard Fitter finished writing the text, which is acclaimed for its clarity, at the age of ninety-one, and Alastair Fitter, Richard's son, a professor of biology, produced UK location maps for all the plants narrowing down identification enormously. Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland - Marjorie Blamey, Richard Fitter and Alastair Fitter is a classic.

To get to the real inspiration for this post my travails had me finding a new wild flower that had appeared in my absence in the daffodil banking. Off I rushed to consult Blamey (in absence of my understanding of the system) page by page, until identification was made. I know the flower is not rare, but it was new to me, and unfortunately it is now past its peak ("gone-over" - a wonderful euphemistic gardening phrase), but the delicacy of the green stalks with their black hairs contrasting with the richness of that burnt-orange in the flower-heads was better than munching good quality dark chocolate.

Fox and Cubs (Pilosella aurantiaca)

Macmillan Way Slideshow

Here is the link to the full slideshow WITH CAPTIONS of my Macmillan Way walk:


CLICK HERE


Click on the first proper photo to start the slideshow. The little arrow to the right advances the photos manually (so you can gaze at each one for as long as you want).

Macmillan Way - summary

As a rock-climber you look at a crag and see “lines” of ascent, maybe following a series of cracks, or taking a central route up a fine slab, or following an overlapping edge, all providing aesthetic satisfaction.

It is not quite the same with a long distance walk, but for me having a focus has an attraction. The Pennine Way generally follows the high ground up the Pennines. The Severn Way (and other river routes) follow the course of a river, coastal walks have their own ambience, and other walks link furthest points of the compass from coast to coast, and of course canal walks are entirely dedicated to their raison d’ètre.

The Macmillan way doesn’t really have a  focus. It pieces together parts of other established routes, often using uninteresting,  previously rarely used public rights of way to make the links, usually round or through the middle of crop fields or over rough pasture trodden into ankle twisting unevenness by horses and cattle. It has its exceptions which partly make up for the mundane with the levées and salt marshes at the outset and a number of fine ridges elsewhere and plenty of old pack horse lanes with atmospheric historic associations and even Tarmac that has covered old Roman roads.

Another problem is rapid growth of vegetation in summer. Even paths that have obviously been cut earlier have re-grown, and repeatedly I found myself battling through head high nettles and cow-parsley (or stepmother’s blossom), and that combined with many stiles, often in bad repair, and the need for careful navigation slow average speed enormously. It is all too easy to get on the wrong side of a hedge and end up in a cul-de-sac field forcing retraced steps. At my age I know I don’t walk as quickly as I used to, but I found it frustrating taking nine or so hours to walk my average fourteen miles per day.

Quite a number of the old lanes have been trashed by 4 x 4s, tractors,  and worst of all horses - the latter leave a spread of cylindrical deep holes almost impossible to walk over. Horse riders I spoke to blame “The Hunt” for  this, and undoubtedly they must contribute, but there is much general horse riding in these areas - of course, I admit that they have as much right to pursue their activity as we walkers do ours.

Not taking the tent, and staying in historic country pubs and a number of classy B and Bs was a luxury I had decided to take regardless of cost and that made up for much of the above mentioned travails. I could not afford to do that on a regular basis, but it certainly made this trip worthwhile.

Both my knees are dodgy. Although they are  reasonably ok whilst walking they stiffened up badly once stopped in the evenings and were strangely more painful in bed, but would be recovered again next morning.

Perhaps my age has influenced these comments and I will certainly give careful consideration to future plans with these thoughts in mind.

This may read like a pessimistic account but I enjoyed the trip having met interesting folk, done plenty of people watching, and walked through a large tranch of the country I have not previously visited. The Cotswolds were of significant interest and an eye-opener - like a separate country ring-fenced for the wealthy with villages preserved as if in the 16th century except for the inhabitants, but with agriculture as big business, modernised by expensive machinery, large fields and high yielding crops. The sense of being close to semi-concealed seats of power with all their security and the wonder at how such people have managed to accumulate such wealth gave me an eerie feeling - it reminded me of The Prisoner.

The Macmillan Way guide could learn a lot from Cicerone Press who have developed the most practical format. Macmillan is full of phrases like: turn right, and soon..., or ...after some distance..., rarely are any specific distances mentioned. And even though they highlight historical and anecdotal notes in different text it is still irritatingly inserted into the walking instructions and there may be a dozen lines of this before you pick up the walking instructions again which also include phrases along the lines of: ...at the top of the hill, look back for a good view of the lake, turn right... Walking instructions should be  explicit and specifically that and nothing else. We can decide for ourselves when to look back at a view. There are other inconsistencies such as: ...keep the hedge on your left, then ...keep to the right of the hedge.

It is not a fault of the guide, but it has become well out of date and they have published an ancillary list of corrections, but this is so badly done it is confusing trying to see where the new text should be inserted into the original.

I am working on the photos and hope to produce a Dropbox slideshow with captions shortly.