These boots were made for walking in Hello.

My work has a scheme with the local community where they raise money in various ways and donate as much as they can to charities that benefit the environment. A few staff based at our head office in the North East are doing a bike ride to us in Cumbria, I think it’s about 90 miles.
Nobody on my site is a cyclist as such, a couple use bikes to travel the 5 miles from their homes to work, nothing major. A lot of us do like walking however. So a couple of us have put our heads together and decided we’re going to do a walk instead. We draw our water from the river that runs alongside our site to make our spirits, and part of the tour is a video showing the entire length of the river. So we’ve decided we’re going to walk from the source to the distillery, about 22 miles. Only problem being that the source is high up in the mountains, so the walk would start with a trek to the tarn before the walk even starts! We’re talking about getting permission from the landowner to do a wild camp, then pack our stuff at in a car at the bottom the following day. A few logistics to work out, but I’m keen to get involved! That probably won’t be until the summer, when we’ll have nice long hours of daylight.

I thought I’d start getting some training in. 22 miles shouldn’t be a problem, I’ve done walks that are much longer before now. I just need to get into doing it again. I unfortunately can’t really train when I’m walking with John, I need to be walking at a pace that gets me out of breath, and he’s not at that stage just yet. Yesterday I decided I was going to walk around Derwentwater, which is 8.5 miles. I decided I would take my Sawyer water filter rather than a bottle of juice, so I could drink water straight from the lake. I’m never taking a bottle of juice on a walk again! The filter is about the size of a Snickers bar and uses a tiny squashy bottle that you can roll up. I took a tiny 2l rucksack, with a pack of nuts, a hat and the filter, and that was perfectly adequate. I drank about 1l of water from the lake and it tasted delicious. I averaged about 22 minutes a mile, which is great considering how long it as since I last did a longish walk (about 8 months I think.) I’m a bit stiff today!
Yesterday my work released a new whisky which was a distillery exclusive. The shop opens at 10am and I popped in on my way to
Keswick, getting there at 10.07. It was bedlam in there! About 40 people standing in the queue, the shelves had been stripped and as Rowan was unpacking boxes from the cupboard to replenish, people were asking for full boxes to buy (6 in a box). We actually sold out in the shop and someone had to go back to the warehouse to get more. We ended up selling over 200 bottles, which is great for the quiet season!
Today I’m helping out at an evening event. This is the third one of 4, it’s a tasting menu, pairing courses with our whiskies. They get the tour guides to serve the whisky because we know more about them than the waiting staff. I’m a bit nervous about dropping spirits on people, but my colleagues who’ve done it have all said it’s good fun. Plus I get a free feed! I’m working 3pm till 11pm, but I’m off tomorrow so I can chill.