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This July ten friends will be walking the the 78 mile long Dales Way footpath. Yes, 78 miles. In six days. And what’s more it was our own idea. Many are predicting it will be the end of us.

We are doing the walk in aid of The Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity set up by our close friends Neil and Rachel in memorial of their three year old son Joseph who in April of 2005 died suddenly in his sleep.

The Joseph Salmon Trust supports parents who have lost a child by providing financial assistance to those who need it most. This may be to help with funeral costs or to allow the self employed a break from work while they come to terms with their loss. Grieving families have enough to deal with without worries about where they will find the money to say goodbye to their child or pay the next electricity bill. Nothing we can do can make their situation better, but we can do something to stop it getting worse.

All the participants are paying for their own food, accommodation, and equipment, and so any donation goes directly to the charity itself.

Any amount you give, no matter how small, will go towards making a big difference to somebody in the darkest hours of their torment. You can donate by credit/debit card by clicking here:

Or you can post your donation directly to the Trust at:

The Joseph Salmon Trust,
PO Box 1538,
Huddersfield,
HD1 9LB

Thank you.

Dan: I’ve decided to drive down to the train station as i couldn’t be bothered to walk. That can’t be a good sign.

The past few days have been a mad whirl of last minute organizing for the walk. Here are some of the highlights:

Oli has informed me that he is only taking one t-shirt for the entire six days. He says that it a special one that is made from wicking material that draws away sweat and is chemically treated to repel odors. However I don’t believe that and think it’s all an elaborate ploy to ensure that he always gets his own room due to no one wanting to put up with his stench.

Rich Bassinder rang me up and asked me if I wanted a fourway. I politely declined but told him what he and the other walkers got up to in their own tents was between them and the STD clinic. He quickly clarified that he meant a fourway electric plug socket, but I remain to be convinced.

Greg sent me an email telling me to kick ass and be prudent. I have no idea what he means by that but I have decided that if I do kick ass I shall take his advice and do so in a financially responsible way.

I have amassed a pile of bags in my lounge which rivals Everest in hight. Theoretically they are all supposed to fit in the car for Kerry to drive from place to place. I can’t work out if I’m proud or ashamed of the fact that the battery rechargers for our various gadgets are heavier than the combined weight of all our clothes.

So here we go, this is the last I’ll see of you for 78 miles. It is also the last time I’ll be nagging you for money because as soon as my feet hit the Dales Way I’m going to stop concentrating on fundraising and start concentrating on not dying.

As I type our total stands at £2802.66. That is money that has been transfered into the Joseph Salmon Trust’s bank account. There is still a fair bit of cash floating around that has yet to be collected or handed in, so we’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for an official final total. There is still time to donate, so if you have been putting off giving why not do it now. If you have already donated, thanks again for your generosity.

I’m handing this blog over to Neil while I’m away. The plan is that he will post youtube versions of our video diary (that we will be mailing to ITV Yorkshire every morning) and also a feed from my twitter account so I will be able to text the blog from the road. You might have to refresh the page each time you visit in order to get the most up to date twitter. Don’t be surprised if it all goes wrong however as quite frankly Neil is an imbecile.

If it does end up not working then you can follow my twitter here and hopefully watch the videos here or here.

Wish us luck!

ITV Yorkshire have put together a special weather bulletin just for the walk. There can’t be many other charity events that can boast there own private weather service.

It only cost us £1750 of the £2350 we’ve raised so far.

Only joking, they did it out of the goodness of their hearts. Many thanks to Jo Blythe and the rest of the team.

Oli has just emailed me pointing out that I am the top two results on google for “I’m a very sweaty man”. What he was doing googling that in the first place is entirely his own concern, and it would be remiss of us to speculate.

There are now six days left until we set off on the walk and the fundraising is going extremely well. On Sunday I mentioned that the total stood at £1394 ($2794); today it reads £1979 ($3965). Does anyone feel like giving us that extra little push to take us over £2000?

Again, my thanks go out to everyone who has donated. Your generosity has been fantastic.

Today’s good egg award goes to Greg Lee from Greg and Deb on the Web. Throughout the entire process of planning the walk he has been incredibly supportive and encouraging, but it is for his help with putting together the press releases that I’m particularly thanking him for.

He’ll no doubt say that he didn’t do anything, and that I’d done it all myself. But never-the-less the knowledge that someone who churns out that stuff for a living was looking over my press releases was very reassuring. Especially as he gave it me straight - when something needed changing he told me about it. So in celebration of his good eggness I am resurrecting the Greg rating system.

I give him 5 Gregs

Also thanks to Whit who wrote an excellent plug for the walk on his blog. Thanks man.

Only 8 days left to go until the walk and for some strange reason I’m still unfit and overweight. I just don’t understand it, I’m drinking loads of Diet Coke so the pounds should be falling off me.

Today’s good egg award goes to Gary from Jerry Chicken who has put one of his fantastic watercolors on ebay All proceeds of the sale will go to the Joseph Salmon Trust. It’s too late to bid I’m afraid as it quite rightly sold within the hour. Still, there is always next time.

The man has talent I’m sure you’ll agree.

Not only that, but he has also publicly announced that he’ll do an entire series paintings using photos we take whilst on the walk as a reference and sell those too.

As I say, a good egg. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of Gary and so can’t honor him by sticking his head in an egg cup like I did for Avitable. I’m afraid he’ll have to make do with this picture I stole from the internet.

Thanks go also to Rol, Ed (Zoe’s dad), and (un)relaxeddad who have all given the walk a plug on their blogs today. Cheers guys. I especially liked Ed’s description of us as “Dan and his Lunatic Fringe” - I’m very tempted to get some t-shirts printed.

It’s now only 10 days left to the Dales Walk and I have an aching knee, a bad back, and a growing sense of impending doom. But I’m also extremely excited.

I’d like to thank everyone who has donated money so far. Of the £1394 that we have raised nearly £900 of that has been through people responding to appeals on this blog. That’s around $1800 in pretend money. If you ever needed proof that the blogging world is a real community then you’ve got it right there. I’m humbled by people’s generosity.

You can find a list of everyone who has given here. I’m aware that I’ve missed some people out. This is not because I didn’t receive their donation, or because I don’t appreciate their contribution; it is because I have the organisational powers of a dead wombat. If I’ve missed you out drop me a line (dghughes28(at)yahoo.co.uk) and I’ll rectify things.

I’d also like to thank everyone who has mentioned the walk on their blogs. This has contributed greatly to the donations I’ve received and I am truly appreciative. Just off the top of my head I can list Phil, Whit, Xbox4Nappyrash, VegasDad, Jeff, Jo, NYCWD, Dave, Gail, Sam, and Gary. There are more, I just can’t think of them right now.

Special thanks go to Avitable who just today posted a competition on his blog, the prize of which is a donation to the walk in the winners name of $100. This goes on top of Avitable’s already extremely generous donation to the charity. He’s a good man and I have decided to honour him with my coveted Good Egg Award:

If you haven’t donated already, then please consider doing so here. If you have already donated money but are looking for a way to help even further then you could possibly mention the walk on your blog or website (even if you’ve done it before). The more people know about it the greater the chance of attracting more donations.

Just to remind you, we are raising money for the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity set up by my close friends Neil and Rachael in memory of their son who died at the age of three years old.

The Joseph Salmon Trust supports parents who have lost a child by providing financial assistance to those who need it most. This may be to help with funeral costs or to allow the self employed a break from work while they come to terms with their loss. Grieving families have enough to deal with without worries about where they will find the money to say goodbye to their child or pay the next electricity bill. Nothing we can do can make their situation better, but we can do something to stop it getting worse.

There is still a lot of money to come in for the walk. Most of the participants are doing their fundraising offline, and so the final amount won’t be known until all the cash is counted. We’re pretty confident that we are going to break the £2000 ($4000) mark, but we’d love to get even more if possible.

Again thank you.

In further preparations for this walk, I’ve been shopping on the net and in real life, and I’ve bought kit.  Lots of kit.  But not yet ENOUGH kit.  I have:

• A rucksack (Berghaus Freeflow - with back and shoulder vents.  Sweaty men should take note)
• A water bottle (Platypus 2litre)
• Waterproof trousers (Berhaus Deluge - great name)
• Waterproofing for my jacket (Nikwax TX Wash-in)
• Fixed tent poles

Thanks to the persuasive powers of the mighty Sandip, the landlord at The Grove (2 Spring Grove Street, Huddersfield) has generously agreed to donate the proceeds of a cask of beer to the walk.

As well as great boost for our fundraising efforts this is also an ideal opportunity for us to try and garner some more publicity for the walk, the pub, and for the Joseph Salmon Trust.

I have arranged with Ian the landlord for us to go down on Saturday the 14th in order to take a few pictures for a press release to send to various papers. The last press release we put out was featured in the Huddersfield Examiner and the Ilkley Gazette, and was also the catalyst for us being interviewed on radio Leeds. As a result the profile of what we are doing was raised, and the charity received a number of offers of help.

In addition with the work we are doing trying to get sponsorship from businesses it would be good to show that we are willing to try and give or supporters publicity for their generosity.

The more people we can get there the better. So let me know if you are able to come or not. If nothing else it will be a good excuse to have a few beers.

I was doing some blog maintenance and I happened to look at the Dales Walk countdown on the sidebar of the blog. 1 month 17 days. That’s not long at all.

I’ve got quite a few bits of information I need to get out there, so this is going to be rather lengthy I’m afraid.

As you probably already know Dave has agreed to act as quartermaster for the hike, and he, Oli, Kerry and myself had a planning meeting last Sunday where we discussed various practicalities of the trip. The following was decided: If you disagree with something or think you have a better idea then let me know.

Kerry has kindly agreed to be our sherpa. However she will only be available from the beginning of Day 2 of the walk, so we are going to have to carry some stuff with us.

This is how we envisage it working:

Day 1 - Meet at Huddersfield train station in morning and take train to Ilkley. Walkers to carry walking gear and change of clothes with them. Buy lunch from shop/pub. Buy tea from shop/pub. Sleep in B&B.

Day 2 - Walkers to carry walking gear and previous day’s clothes with them. Kerry will go to bunk barn(a) where we will be staying and drop off sleeping bags, food, and bag of clothes. Have breakfast at B&B. Buy lunch from shop/pub. Make tea at bunk barn(a). Sleep at bunk barn(a).

Day 3 - Walkers to carry walking gear and lunch with them. Kerry will pick up sleeping bags, food, and bag of clothes from bunk barn(a) and take it to bunk barn(b). Make breakfast and packed lunch at bunk barn(a) in morning, make tea at bunk barn(b). Sleep at bunk barn(b).

Day 4 - Walkers to carry walking gear and lunch with them. Kerry will pick up sleeping bags, food, and bag of clothes from bunk barn(b) and take it to camp sites where she will also drop off the tents. Make breakfast and packed lunch at bunk barn(b) in morning, make tea at camp site (bbq?). Sleep at camp site.

Day 5 - Walkers to carry walking gear, change of clothes, and lunch with them. Kerry will pick up sleeping bags, food, bag of clothes & tent from camp site. Make breakfast and packed lunch at camp site in morning, buy tea in shop/pub. Sleep in Youth Hostel.

Day 6 - Walkers to carry walking gear & previous day’s clothes with them. Have breakfast at Youth Hostel, buy lunch/tea from shop/pub. End of the walk. Some people are planning on staying on at windemere. We are unsure at this point how we can get people home but it is likely to be a combination of lifts and the train.

It sounds complicated, but hopefully it will all go smoothly. Kerry wont be staying with us at the bunk barns, but will be with us when we camp.

Some further points regarding logistics

Tents. Kerry and I already have a tent that will comfortably sleep at least 4, and two tents that will comfortably sleep two. That means that we only need enough tents to sleep a further four people, which we’ll be able to dig up from somewhere. If you ahve a tent let me know. I understand that people probably would like to have a tent to themselves, and this is fine up to a point. But the space in the car is relatively limited and 10 individual tents would be quite hard to fit in with everthing else.

Bedding. We will need to take our own pillows and sleeping bags (and towels) to both the bunk barns and to the camp site. Ten pillows would take up a lot of room in the car so it would probably be better if you just took a pillow case and then stuffed it with your clothes.

Bag of clothes. Similarly if you could keep your bag of spare clothes and stuff relatively small in order to conserve space in the car.

Food. We are going to be self catering for a relatively large proportion of the trip. Dave is organising this and he envisages making a big vat of chili or bolognese or something similar rather than cater for people individually. Let him know if there is anything you don’t like. Kerry will be doing the shopping for us, and we thought it might be a good idea if everyone gave her about £50 at the start of the walk. She would then act as banker and buy food and any booze people ordered for us and deliver it. She will work out who has spent what (with cost of food being shared equally but cost of booze calculated individually) and give any left over money back at the end of the trip.

Walking gear. I’m no expert in this, but i found a list of “essential walking equipment that you might want to consider for inclusion in your backpack:

• Walking boots
• Waterproof jacket and trousers
• Suncream
• Spare socks
• Walking stick/pole
• Hat
• Torch
• Whistle
• Plastic bag to keep stuff dry
• Insect repellant
• Water
• Sunglasses
• First aid kit
• Mobile phone and charger

Anyone think of anything else? I’ve got a set of maps of the walk, but feel free to buy more if you want to. I’ve also got three walkie talkies with pretty good range so we can keep in contact with each other if there ends up being a slow walking group and a fast walking group. Sandip has a GPS device, but if anyone else has one or wants to buy/borrow one then that would be great.

That will do for now. I’ve got some other things I want to ask you about but I’ll do that later today (you are going to be hearing a lot from me today I’m afraid).

Please let me know by email, text, or comment on the blog if those arrangements sound ok to you. Also I’d like to know if you have a tent we can use or any other bits or bobs (GPS etc) that might come in handy.

On another note Oli sent me some photos that he had taken during the meeting. His captions amused me somewhat so I thought I’d share.

At least I didn’t get a bit of lego stuck in my foot!

And finally, a photo in focus, and with a big smile. (are you actually sitting on Amy?!)