The Ridgeway - Ultralight 2008

This is the root article for a series of articles about how I went about and then completed walking The Ridgeway which is the oldest path in the UK with a history dating back 5000 years.

Most of it is an exposed ridge with parts also passing through forest. It has the feel of being "away from it all" and on-trail supplies of water and food are relatively scarce but at the same time it is also never more than a few miles from civilisation.

It passes through much of ancient britian with Avebury - the largest stone circle in the world as the starting point; through ancient hill forts and

The terrain and style of walking required and the distance (at a nominal 85 miles) are typical of long-distance paths in the UK where 1-2 weeks is the normal time taken to through-hike them.

The idea behind doing The Ridgeway was to properly test ultralight techniques building on what I learnt from last year and over the winter. I wanted to use The Ridgeway as a proving ground for kit and technique that would be used later in the year for a much longer ultralight hike.

I wanted to prove to myself where the sensible limits were for kit and techniques in the UK. Last year my attempt to Ultralight The Cotswold Way were not a great success - in part due to a lack of physical fitness, in part due to poor (but not unusual) weather and in part due to my kit being trimmed too far for the conditions - it would have worked fine on a stateside summer hike but was a failure for what passes for summer in the UK.

As a result of this some of my kit has become heavier and some lighter.

Given that I was pretending that this was the first week of a multi-week hike and that I was pretending that it was more remote than it actually was I was quite strict with how I used food and water sources (no cheating). I did not have set distances to travel each day, instead I allowed my body to dictate these things.

The goal was to complete The Ridgeway in about a week and be mentally and physically ready to do it all over again.

Basic Objectives

1. Field-test my current ultra-light kit
2. Complete it!!!!
3. Training - to rebuild fitness and endurance
4. To be comfortable regardless of weather
5. To be nice to my body and learn to listen more to it - to let it dictate pace and distance
6. To push my own boundaries and comfort zones

The Plan

Before I set off I wrote down how I thought I would go about things including why I had chosen to take various pieces of kit. More...

The Kit

After all the planning I documented the kit that I actually took with me and the weights of everything to the nearest gramme.

I was kitted out for 3-season weather since a typical April in the UK can have temperatures in the range of -5°C to +20°C and anything from baking sun to hail and snow. That's a lot of weather to cope with. I decided to pack kit that would be comfortable in the range 0 °C to +15°C and tolerable outside of that. I also assumed prolonged rain and strong winds were possible. More...

The Kit - Post Trip Analysis

Ironically, the only kit that broke wasn't made by me! At the end of the trip I felt that some items were still on the limits of usability for the UK - at least outside of peak summer. Other things performed really well. More...

The Diary

I kept a diary during the week-long trip and made a note of anything I thought might be of interest. More...

The Gallery

Coming soon...