On May 13th this year I will set off on a walk across Scotland, from the the west coast at Laga Bay on the Ardnamurchan peninsular, to Montrose on the east coast.
On this walk I will pass through some of the finest scenery to be found anywhere on these islands. The walk will take me around 13 days to complete covering a distance of almost 350km (220 miles) with, if all goes to plan, a total ascent of 13,460 metres (more than 1.5 times the height of Mount Everest).
I will be in good company during the walk as around 300 other people will be setting off at around the same time from various points on the west coast of Scotland. We will all be taking part in what has been labelled the World's biggest backpacking event...The TGO Challenge.
TGO is a hillwalking and backpacking magazine and they, along with RAB are the sponsors of this unique event.
"The Challenge" (as it has become known) has it's own website and details of the event and other useful information, including a sometimes lively forum, can be found here....TGO Challenge website
The gist of it is, you plan your own route across Scotland, from west to East, starting at one of the designated start points. You can chose to plan either a high, or low level route, or maybe mix it up?, and you can finish anywhere on the east coast between Fraserburgh and Arbroath.
The event kinda gets under your skin a bit, once you have completed your first Challenge, you get the taste for it and the multiude of route options are intriguing...this will be my 5th crossing of Scotland..and my 5th TGO Challenge.
More on this later.
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