 So you can read some more chapters of your book if you like. Yeah, yeah. Here we go, all right. Okay, it's eight o'clock. Hello, hello everyone. Welcome. Thank you for joining us this evening. Just a few things before we get started. I'm sure many of you have already attended a talk on Zoom, so you'll be familiar with all the various bits, but obviously this is a live interactive talk and we want as many questions as possible for James really, and in the talks I've done before, they've really made the talk really interesting. So normally you give us loads of interesting questions, so please don't be shy, fire some questions across this evening. And we will be, I'll be monitoring the chat function on Zoom and the Q&A and also live on Facebook as well. So if you're watching on Facebook, put some comments down below and I'll be looking at those as well. So I'll be trying to multitask whilst chatting to James, but I'm not very good at that sort of thing, so bear with me, especially if we get any tech issues. So thank you for joining us and welcome. And it's a real privilege to have James here this evening. It was probably about 12 months ago and I think we were due to have James talk in store actually, and we were looking to sort of get him in March and obviously that didn't happen. So we've returned to this, which I think will be no less interesting for everyone, so it's great. James doesn't really need any introduction, but I will anyway. And he's a British adventurer, high-care award-winning author and innovate ambassador, as you can tell from his t-shirt. And he was best known before 2020. I think he was sort of made a name for himself by climbing a thousand and one mountains across the UK and Ireland. His book Mountain Man, which he was just reading earlier and he's got a few copies behind him, is a must read and you can also find him writing for TGA, TGO Magazine and Trail quite regularly. And he's also featured on the Outdoors Fixed Podcast from January last year. So if you want to listen to him talking about his previous job and his life before the Wainwrights, then that's a really good listen. But tonight we do want to talk to James about his climb of the Wainwrights. 214 peaks in 14 days, 11 hours, five minutes and 45 seconds. 45 seconds is really important, I think. And that was, he basically smashed the previous time by 10 days, I think. Is that right, James? Yeah, they're about, yeah. Okay. And he essentially was hiking for 13 hours a day. So it's pretty grueling. So really, James, my first question would be why? I asked myself that on many occasions during the actual challenge. I think, well, as everyone did, I was living through the kind of first lockdown. We had a bit of cabin fever, itchy feet was kind of living a more indoors lifestyle than I'm used to. And I was kind of really keen to go on a big adventure sometime in the summer when the restrictions were eased, if you recall. And I decided to do the Wainwrights in a single walk. And it's something that I'd always been really intrigued by. I'd seen these ultra runners, people like Steve Birkenshaw and Paul Tierney, who have done these big rounds of the Wainwrights, Sabrina Vergy as well. And it always seemed to me like the most amazing kind of journey through the Lake District. I'm not a trail runner myself. I can't run marathons or ultra marathons like these guys. They'd be lapping me very easily. But I do love a kind of long distance, long distance hike. And so and a kind of hardcore, hardcore hiking challenge. So I decided to go for it last summer. I think basically, do you remember when the weather was just incredible all lockdown? So in Cumbria, we just had the longest run of amazing sunshine that I've ever known. And I live in Cumbria. But I was sort of stuck at home with this amazing weather. Sadly, when I started to actually do the challenge, the good weather immediately ended and the bad weather arrived. So it was a slightly more traumatic experience than I'd hoped. But so be it. Brilliant. And you, so let me get this right. You did it self supported, not unsupported, which previous people have done it. So you set the fastest known time for doing it self supported. Yeah, previous people have done it. And could you tell us a bit about the difference between the two? Sure, sure. So, so say all the runners, they do it as a supported challenge. So they have support crews that help them along the way. And that can be in kind of a variety of different ways. It could be paces, could be people cooking the meals, driving a camper van around that they sleep in, people giving them massages, sawing out the logistics, whatever it is. So those guys have got the kind of overall records like the, like the, the kind of under seven days records for completing the Wayne rights as a run. But my approach was completely different. So I did a self supported challenge, which was where I didn't have a support crew, didn't have any pre arranged help whatsoever. And I was just taking on this challenge myself, just me versus the mountains wild camping every night. And also resupplying via the stash boxes of food that I'd left around the Lake District to pick up as I went around. That's the kind of main difference between self supported and unsupported. So unsupported means you carry everything you need on your back from the very beginning. So you would have to have all your food in your backpack from day one, which I didn't do. I had about two days worth of supplies each, kind of any one time in my backpack and then was just picking up these, these boxes of supplies as I, as I went around. So that was the definition of self supported based on the, the, the FKT website, the fastest known time website has kind of very detailed definitions of supported, self supported and unsupported. So it all gets a little bit technical and a little bit geeky, but, but basically I just went for the self supported record because I, A, wasn't fast enough to get the supported record and B, no one's been stupid enough to really try and do it. Self supported very quickly before. So that was my, that was why I went for it. Like said, like says, brilliant. And you've spoken before about the sort of dizzying highs and crushing lows, 50 mile per hour winds. These, these pictures don't really tell the story, do they? These are the sort of Instagrammable shots that you take, isn't it? Yeah, I'm guessing we're all from the five minutes when the sun came out as opposed to the, the 14 days where it was raining. But it, after, after sort of, because it was five months ago, wasn't it? It was last September when you, August, September when you did it. So looking back now, do you look a bit through rose tinted spectacles and think, wow, that was, that was great. Or do you still feel a bit of the pain and, and sort of think, hmm. Yeah, I feel a little bit of the pain still. It was certainly as soon as I finished it, I was really quite broken by it a little bit. It would be way more kind of grueling and challenging, certainly mentally than I'd, than I'd perhaps anticipated. I mean, it is true though, over time, you do begin to kind of forget the hardships and remember the good moments more. And obviously we've been in another lockdown recently, and I have been sort of romanticizing this, this fortnight that I was able to wander around the late districts every day. So, so the rose tinted glasses do kick in quite, quite quickly. I have to try and remind myself of the hardships, but, but there were, there were, there were great times as well. It was just a real roller coaster. And really it was all to do is the weather I felt incredibly vulnerable to the weather. So because I was sleeping in my tent every night, because I was walking long distances every day by myself, because I was doing it self supported, so I couldn't dive into a hostel or a hotel or just go home if I felt like it, just felt this kind of real vulnerability to the, to the weather. And so when the weather gods were kind to me, I was the happiest man on earth and having a really amazing time and wild camping with amazing scenery and feeling this sense of escapism and tranquility and the beauty of the late district kind of surrounding me. And then other days I was walking for 13 hours and it didn't stop raining all day. And it was, and I was exhausted and tired and miserable. And after all that walking during the day, then I had to set up a soggy tent and sleep in that and try and cook myself some food and all the rest of it. It was quite, got kind of quite miserable in the middle when it rained a lot. And as you know, the, the Lake District weather can be rather brutal at times. So that certainly kind of tested, tested my resolve. But glad I managed to pull through it anyway, because I did feel like throwing in the towel at least on a few occasions. Proper endurance with the, the weather. And then one of the, one of the things I was going to ask was the fact you were doing it solo, was that, you sort of touched on it there, was that, did you find that liberating or was it limiting at times? I mean, it sounds, sounds a mixture of the two really. But yeah, it really is a mixture of the two. It's a double-edged sword. There's times where that sense of kind of tranquility and escapism is, is more enhanced and more amazing really, when you're alone, because you're, you're kind of, I don't know, just amplifies that feeling. And also there's something wonderful about just relying just on yourself and going through tough times and pulling through that gives you kind of a real sense of accomplishment and sense of achievement and all the rest of it. But at the same time, if you're really struggling, if you're down in the dumps, if you're feeling negative, then you, you don't have a kind of friendly face to perk you up. You don't have a teammate like the trail runners to kind of tell you a joke and perk you up or give you a bit of a motivation or give you a kick up the backside if you need to kind of pull yourself together. So that was, that was kind of quite, quite challenging. And yeah, so it was a real, real double-edged sword. Thank you. Just, just to zip into a few questions, actually, because there's just relevance to some of the things that you've been saying from people. One question from Jackie was, you were talking about storing of your food parcels and did you find any of those missing when you came back to them? I didn't know. So I, I didn't kind of leave them just sort of randomly in on a path or halfway up a mountain. I'd kind of place them in kind of place them strategically around the lake district. So they were in places like the wood store of a YHA that I was walking past. I asked like some random households whether I could leave a plastic box of food in their garage or their barn in just below Hallam fell. I had a box behind a pew in a church like that's always open, had one behind a pub. So they were kind of a bit strategically placed and I didn't have any, any issues with them going missing. The one behind the pub in near, near Ambleside, that, that was actually in a different place than I'd left it. So when I got there, I had this kind of sudden like five minute panic to try and find this box of food and couldn't find it. And I thought this might mark the end of my kind of adventure, but luckily I found it had someone had moved it to like a different little outhouse, but I did, did find it. And each box actually getting to each box was really quite a wonderful moment. It was, it was kind of a, yeah, just this like massive box of treats, basically. And obviously I was very hungry walking around these Wainwrights all day, every day. So every now and then I got to one of these boxes and just gorged myself on the, the treats and food that I had in there. Can remember one occasion where I ate, I think it was like four double decker chocolates, just, just one after the other as I picked up this box. So certainly that's one benefit of doing a good challenge is being able to eat whatever you want. That's quite, quite pleasurable. Yeah, imagine like Christmas every, every few days I guess. Yeah, basically. Yeah, exactly. Brilliant. I wanted to talk just a bit about sort of planning, you know, you're touched on it there, but in terms of route planning and logistics, and a few people have asked about this, how, where do you start with something like this? It's obviously, it's a massive undertaking. I mean, I've got, I've got actually the route that you did on one of the slides here. This is your route. So maybe you could just talk, talk about how you came up with this route, perhaps? Yeah. Well, it was, it was easier than you might think because I didn't come up with this route. It's, this route was created by Steve Birkinshaw, the guy just there who came to see me when I was just coming over Blancathra. So you can tell by my face, look at my eyes. I was so tired by that point. I was half asleep, I think. But, but yeah, Steve, who broke the record, I think it was back in 2014, he meticulously planned this route, which is meant to be the fastest and most efficient way of completing the Wainwrights. And he very kindly provided me with the GPX. And I think it's on his website as well. So it's kind of a publicly available route. And all the other runners and people that have taken on this challenge have followed almost exactly this route that he created. So it's a very clever route, very kind of intricate and complex and weaves in and out. But it is a very efficient way to do the Wainwrights in a single round. And I did, when I was planning it, I was looking for places where I thought I would be able to shave off time or make it easier for myself. But each time you kind of solved one problem, you created another one. If you try and grab one peak at an earlier location, an earlier time, it just creates a sort of issue further down the line. And, and Steve really did create a phenomenal route. And so, so yeah, I was able to kind of follow this. And what I did was just use this route and then look what I thought would be a kind of feasible distance to travel each day and then figure out where approximately I would be camping and figure out then where I needed to place these boxes around the Lake District. So just very kind of approximately, I knew that I would have two days food and I would walk 50, no, say 60, 70, 80 kilometers in those two days. And I would get to that box at that point and then I'd be able to resupply my backpack and carry on. So I kind of planned it all out, planned it all out in that way. And, but yeah, big thanks to Steve for doing all the, the, the legworks, creating this, this kind of intricate, intricate route. Yeah, that's quite some planning. And again, we've, we've sort of touched on, touched on the food boxes, which quite a few people are commenting about those. And in terms of planning what you eat and how much you take with you on any single day, I mean that that's pretty, you know, it must be quite, quite something as well, you know, you're obviously going to get enough calories in. So maybe just talk us about, talk us through you kind of, this is a, this is a daily meal, is it? Yeah, so let me see. Is that, yeah, that looks approximately a daily, daily meal. I, I mean, I didn't get it exactly right. I don't think I, I kind of made these estimates before I was going on the challenge and I, and didn't always get it exactly right. I, what I tried to do was think when I go on, say a normal, just overnight wild camp, like a one day, one night wild camp, what do I take with me? And I'll have like a coffee in the morning and a porridge and maybe some dried fruit for breakfast. Then like, what would I have for lunch and what would I have for dinner? And, and kind of then just multiply that out over the, the length of my whole journey. So there was kind of some logic to my planning. I didn't speak to or get any advice from a qualified nutritionist, which perhaps I probably, probably should have done. But, but yeah, kind of, yeah, I just tried my very best to kind of predict what I wanted to eat. And yes, I just planned it out each meal and then just had that ready for each day. So a breakfast was a coffee and a porridge. I was always having crackers with either peanut butter or Nutella or something like that for lunch. And then loads of dried fruit, loads of kind of trail mixes like raisins and nuts. And then of course, loads of chocolates and sweets. And then for dinner, I was eating these, these kind of like expedition meals, different, different kind of expedition meals, just boiling them up in the evening. So that was my plan. The main mistake I made I think was I actually carried too much food. I just ended up not eating everything that I carried, which was a bit strange. I think some reason sort of lost my, slightly lost my appetite somewhere along the, along the way. And I did lose a bit of weight. I lost like five kilograms over the course of the journey. So clearly was kind of burning more calories than, than I was taking in. But, but yeah, I, so I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm kind of exactly an expert on, on how to plan it. But, but I just tried to be quite methodical. Think what I would have for breakfast, what I'd have for a morning snack, what I'd have for lunch, what I'd have for an afternoon snack, what I'd have for dinner, and then multiply that across, across the days. I also, yeah, tried to keep it healthy with having lots of dried fruit and, and what I craved was fresh fruit and more variety. One mistake I'd made is that each day I was having quite similar things. And over time, just quite quickly, I was really craving like fresh fruit or fresh food and I was craving kind of variety. So I should have kind of mixed it up a lot more, I think. One thing that did help is that I did have quite a few kind of energy specific bars like protein bars or energy bars. And I love these little things as well. They're called Lucho delitos, Columbia energy blocks. It's this like mix of sugar and fruit in a block. And I don't really like the, the kind of energy gels that runners have. I don't really like that kind of sickly taste. But I was using these, these kind of like fruity energy blocks from these guys. And that, that was kind of quite nice. But my favorite thing overall was just being able to eat Nutella out of the jar. So that was the best thing about the adventure. It was an excuse to eat that. So what kind of, what was your aim then to eat sort of 4,000 calories or something like that a day or was it something like that? Something like that. I kind of judged it more by eye rather than, rather than the calories. But, but I mean, I know some people that do like really long through hikes, don't necessarily take a, take a stove or, or, or kind of cook hot meals. But by going for these, these kind of expedition meals, these dehydrated or freeze dried meals, that gave me kind of a really good hot, hearty meal every evening, which I did really kind of benefit from and enjoy. And these are really great for kind of having quite good calories. And, and, and yeah, I really enjoyed doing that. And I don't, if I did it again, I don't think I would ditch the stove. That was definitely a, definitely a kind of positive like a hot drink and a hot, hot meal every night really kind of boosted, boosted my morale. And as I say with the food, maybe I could have been more scientific or technical about it. But actually, for me, it was more about morale, more about kind of like eating things that I enjoyed and made me feel happy and gave me some sort of pleasures in life. And, and it was a big motivation, motivation. It was kind of, if you're struggling, it was nice to think, oh, if I get to this summit, I can eat some, some jelly babies, or I can eat some M&M peanuts or with some dairy milk or whatever nice treats I had in my backpack. So, so yeah, I'd just say food is a good motivator when you're in the mountains, that's for sure. It's definitely surprising how nice those dried meals can taste when you're on the side of a hillside. Yeah. Yeah, hunger makes them taste incredibly good for sure. Sometimes eating them at home and they never taste as good as when you're tired on top of a mountain. Continuing with the theme of gear and what you took and a few people have been asking around this, you just talk us through it. Obviously, you were, when you were packing for this trip, you were trying to save as many grams as possible, move as quickly and politely as possible, I guess. So what's here? Obviously, I can see what's here, but I mean, just talk us through maybe what, what you'd sort of take here. Yeah. So my main goal was trying to keep my base weight as light as possible. And so I wanted to have a camping set up that wasn't going to weigh me down and slow me down. And so I went kind of as minimalist as I could. I think I had my base weight down to about six kilograms or slightly over six kilograms, then the food and water on top of that could have maybe tweaked it and got it a little bit lighter in hindsight. But I think I did pretty well. So I started with the tent, which was the Nordisk Telemark ULW1, which is, it says on here, 770 grams. So it's kind of like a two-skinned tent, pretty, pretty bombproof and decent amount of space, but still only weighing 770 grams. So I mean, I know that I could have gone lighter, say, if I'd bivvied only or or taken a tarp or something like that. The weather was so bad that I was super grateful to have an actual proper tent. So that was kind of really great. And then kind of alongside that, I just had an ultra-light sleeping mat. I've got the Neoair Uber light there, which we blow up. That's, I think, one of the lightest sleeping bags you can get. It's quite thick, really. It's really quite, still quite comfortable, but weighs not much at all. And then as a sleeping bag, I actually use this, which is a sleeping quilt. So it's not, it kind of has an open design. So there's a footbox that you can rest your feet in, but it doesn't fully enclose around you like a traditional sleeping bag. It's a little bit more like a duvet. You kind of wrap it around yourself. And that saves a lot of weight. So this is kind of really quite pretty warm and warm enough for what I needed, but super light. So all my kind of choices were just really trying to kind of shave grams off and get my kit set up as light as possible. And I know everyone's got good ideas, and I'm not saying that I had it kind of down to an absolute T. One of the kind of frustrating things is you have to either, you have to kind of, it gets way, way, way more expensive, the lighter you're trying to kind of get things, but which is always a challenge and a bit of a balancing act. But I think I did pretty well. My kind of cooking set up was super light as well. So I've got this tiny little stove. I don't know whether everyone can see that just a little canister top stove. And then like a super lightweight little titanium part. So all I was doing was really boiling up boiling up water and adding it to these expedition meals or making a coffee. So my kind of cooking system was super lightweight. And then the other way I saved loads of weight was I just didn't carry any spare clothes. I just had what I was really what I was hiking in, which was my like shorts, socks, lightweight t-shirt, lightweight kind of mid layer. Then I had kind of waterproof trousers, synthetic insulated top, and a waterproof jacket, but I just didn't carry like multiple spares of underwear or socks or spare t-shirts. I just didn't do that. And that kept the weight down, weight down loads. And luckily, because I was resupplying by these stash boxes, I did put like a spare t-shirt and a spare pair of socks in those and pick those up every every like three or four days or something. So that was kind of that made it a little bit more possible. But but yeah, it just just kept it kind of absolute as minimalist as I could to kind of keep keep the weight down. It's always this tricky balancing out between like comfort and weight. So you can you can kind of go super super lightweight, but you might be compromising your comfort or how well you sleep or how well you keep yourself dry. So I was always trying to kind of balance that balance that out and wanted to be able to sleep well and enjoy the camping while also kind of not having a really heavy backpack that was going to slow me down. So so those were pretty much my my kind of challenges and goals. What footwear did you use? Did you get blisters or anything like that? Because changing your socks is so important to avoid. Yeah. So use these shoes. These are a lovely brand new pair that are I think one of the new colors that have just come out. It's the innovate Rocklight G345s. So yeah, I did the whole challenge in these and my style is to go kind of really fast and light. So obviously, as I was saying, I was keeping my backpack really light, but then all of my clothing was kind of as light as possible. And and so yeah, I like to kind of move fast and light in the mountains and these these boots are kind of super for that. They they're super lightweight. They're like a trainer really like a trainer like comfort. So they were super super comfy from the very beginning. Good waterproofing, good bit of kind of little bit of extra ankle support than just a trainer. They've got this graphene grip on the back bottom the on the outsole, which innovate is known for which kind of a really good grip. So so these kind of served me really, really well. And I did the whole challenge in two weeks, 500 and 30 kilometers, if I remember correctly, all in one pair of shoes. The slightly kind of funny thing with it was that on my very first night of camping on this trip, I slept in Millican Dalton's Cave, which is on the side of Castle Crag next to Derwent Water in Borodale. And there's two guys in there and they were out kind of bivvying for the night and they'd made a fire in the in the cave like like many people do. And I'd spent a bit of time earlier that day wading across a rather deep river in Borodale. And so my my shoes had been completely drenched because I was in kind of thigh deep waters. And so I put these pair of innovate shoes next to the fire to try and just kind of vaguely dry them out. What I bought was a safe distance from the fire. Lo and behold, I managed to on the first day of my challenge, melt a massive hole in the bottom of these two pairs of shoes. So that was a very calamitous and idiotic thing to do on night one of your challenge. I couldn't quite believe I'd been so stupid. Luckily it didn't damage the sort of structural integrity of the boots, even though I'd literally managed to kind of burn a huge hole into them. And yeah, I managed to do the entire challenge with those shoes. So that kind of worked out well in the end. But yeah, if you're going on an adventure, don't burn a hole in your boots or shoes. That's if everyone takes away one snippet of advice from me, that could be it. They should add that to the marketing stuff around the shoes, as well as waterproof. Yeah, I should have asked to innovate what kind of like fire temperature limits it's suitable for or whatever. I was going to ask just a few people again have sort of asked this question in terms of what other stuff did you take with you? You're on your own music to listen to, books, things like that? Or did you just not have any space and literally? So I carried my phone obviously for safety partly, but then I had Spotify on my phone and I had like books downloaded on my phone as well. So rather than carrying like multiple separate things, I was trying to do everything digitally through my phone. So yeah, I had books that I was reading, had some Netflix programs downloaded, and I had some motivational Spotify playlists and a few podcasts. So I had kind of entertainment in my pocket. So I kind of like to kind of not use my phone too much while walking. So I generally kind of like to hike all day and kind of escape from my phone and get away from it all. But it was nice every now and then when I was struggling or the rain was really bad to be listening to a podcast or listening to some music to keep me going. How I kept my phone charge, I've just seen a few people asking that. So it wasn't too complicated really. Like obviously I spent most of the day with it on airplane mode. So that means that the battery is lasting longer to start with. And so I could still use my apps for navigating and they still work without access to 3G or 4G because everything was downloaded. I could still listen to Spotify without being on 4G because it's all downloaded. I could still read a book because it's still downloaded. And then I was just charging really just from these, I've got them down here, these portable power packs that I'd literally just bought off Amazon. They're not even that expensive, but I think they cost about 20 quid. They're 20,000 ma h. I think it can charge my phone. I've got a Samsung phone about five or six times fully charged. So I mean they're a little bit heavy and I did carry two of these around and then had some spares sort of along the way so I could let the power last for longer. But these were great. I could charge my head torch from these, I could charge my tracking device from these and charge my phone. So I had two of these and I just had these kind of small lightweight little cables and that enabled me to charge my phone really, really well and it worked really well for me. So that was a good strategy really. I know that obviously reading map and compass is really important but I've always been more at the kind of not sure the right words but the kind of cutting edge of using modern technology for navigating and just using that on my phone was kind of really, really great and meant I didn't have to carry loads of maps and I've kind of developed a kind of really quite foolproof method for using a phone to navigate around the fells without having too many difficulties and it worked really, really well for me. Obviously it's always vital to have maps for kind of a backup and in case you had any kind of malfunctions but for me I literally was just walking hard and fast and just glancing at my phone every now and then to check I was walking in the right direction. I wasn't spending hours and hours kind of taking grid references and I mean compass bearings and looking at maps and sort of letting the navigation slow me down so that kind of worked really well for me and yeah these power packs are a great option I'd say. Great tip. In terms of obviously the picture there is of you in the tent and you obviously wild camped for most of the time. Wild camping I think had a bit of a got a bit bashed last summer because of the number of people who were going out sort of wild camping and not really respecting the environment. What would you say to or how do we sort of deal with that and what would you say to maybe those people maybe not say to those people but how would you go about sort of dealing with this sort of wild camping that's not for I guess. I mean obviously it hit the kind of press and there was a lot of kind of negativity around how busy the national parks were and lots of problems with wild camping last year and I guess the way I saw it was that there's kind of a very big difference between kind of responsible wild camping and irresponsible camping so if you're going with a group of people and camping by the side of a lake rather kind of blatantly and making a fire and drinking loads and partying and leaving loads of rubbish or whatever then that is clearly quite bad behaviour and is reprehensible and no one really that loves the Lake District or loves mountains should or would behave in that way. I would say though that kind of true wild camping is a very responsible activity and it's responsible if you adhere to the kind of well known and well developed kind of code of conduct really which is all about leaving no trace so that's kind of setting up camp late packing away early and leaving early in the morning making sure you leave no litter not making fires leaving no kind of impact on the environment always camping high above the kind of intake wall on open access land performing toilet duties in a responsible manner all of these kind of things are really important and I think that kind of if you follow those leave no trace rules that that is kind of is a responsible activity and just about a kind of awareness of how to do that and just being kind of competent or just aware of what the rules are and just and just using common sense really and so my kind of impression was that the the problems were just a kind of minority of people that were kind of abusing the kind of the national parks and behaving in a kind of antisocial way but the vast majority of kind of true wild campers would never dream of kind of behaving in that in that manner so certainly when I was on my trip I didn't see any like negative behavior certainly high in the fells anyway I didn't barely saw another wild camper I was camping in very kind of remote and off the being track locations and I didn't see anything kind of negative I did see one place where there was a massive family tent low down on some national trust land with a load of deck chairs out and some rubbish like in a plastic bag hung up in a tree and that kind of walking past that gave me a slightly sort of uneasy feeling it certainly wasn't very subtle subtle camping that's for sure but but all in all I got the impression that that I didn't know it's too much anyway and that I'm sure it's kind of a minority of people in just some honeypot areas that are kind of abusing the abusing the the kind of beauty of these local areas I guess great thanks thanks for that James how are you for time are you okay for another time yeah okay I just wanted to go over just loads of questions that have been coming in because we have quite a few some of which you kind of answered but um already but um Jason Aisley asks um he says he thinks what you've done is fantastic he's attempting the 214 unsupported record um this year maybe in July he's hopeful he's walks most of the major paths in the UK um he's done the GR 20 he's a qualified mountain leader yeah fully understands what's ahead um but what what do you think would be his biggest obstacle to overcome um tricky one um I mean for me the biggest challenge was was a mental challenge um so physically I kind of never done anything quite this kind of intense and hardcore but physically I found that I coped quite well I kind of adapted to it and my body held up kind of really well but the thing that I really struggled with was this kind of doubts in my own mind and these the certainly when the weather was just like really really against me and I mean it was it was traumatic weather that I went through for quite a while um that was what I struggled with that kind of mental battle of knowing that at any point I could just walk down to a valley and call my girlfriend and I could be home in a few hours and this was really just like annual leave for me so I wanted to enjoy it as well I wanted to have fun so it was kind of a real the doubts and uh and the kind of mental battle was the big big challenge for me um one of the thing as well I think I would say is that the roots created by Steve Berkinshaw who's a who's a fell runner so it's very kind of direct a lot of the the roots and often kind of off piece like not on path just going like straight down the side of one man's and then straight up the other side and so I found the kind of terrain and the kind of lines of ascent and descent quite quite kind of challenging and I know that's kind of that's a fell runner's thing that's something they love doing and they're they're kind of experts at that but as a hiker that that certainly struck me anyway that that the root is quite quite kind of challenging because you're always trying to cut these corners and go for the most direct direct options so so that's something to kind of uh be ready for as well for sure and I guess you need to be quite cautious as well because sprained ankle and that's it isn't it so it's yeah did you have any injuries during I didn't have any injuries really uh well I had those sort of some niggles like a bit of a pain in my right foot for a while um sort of strained it somehow I'm not sure but but nothing major really um but like like physically as I said I held up pretty pretty kind of well um a hike with poles so I always got these like leaky poles with me um that are pretty pretty awesome and pretty bombproof so I I kind of think I was helped in that regard they they kind of helped power me up hill and steady me on the downhill as well so that that definitely kind of helped me avoid any slips or tumbles or twisted ankles so I was pretty pretty kind of grateful to get through it unscathed unscathed physically massively scarred mentally so there's a few people asking what what's next what's your next uh big challenge is it a year off and then you're looking to 2022 or are you have you got something in mind um just kind of mulling mulling things over obviously the last year has been kind of a rather strange one and uh yeah certainly after the Wainwrights challenge I felt like I'd uh been in a washing machine for um 14 days and it was just really quite battered and bruised and exhausted by the entire experience and slightly uh slightly kind of felt like the mountains had gone from being your your saviour to your tormentor um so kind of at that point I was telling myself never to do a big challenge again uh but I enough time's gone by now that I can consider another one I'm not sure I'm kind of really intrigued by doing some long distance treks like A to B treks and uh and not necessarily kind of super long ones but maybe maybe some of the national trails uh like Cape Wrath trail or something like that definitely would like to do something like that this year gonna depend on the the restrictions and the and the rules at heart I'm a peak bagger though so I love ticking boxes and doing lists of mountains and so kind of maybe uh the the strange thing with peak bagging is that the more mountains you climb the more you kind of learn of these other lists of mountains uh that exist and and the the more you do the more you realise that you've yet to to climb so um I've been looking at the marillons in England and Wales for example um and surprisingly there's loads and loads that I haven't done so kind of contemplating maybe trying to start ticking those off and a lot of them are kind of quite smaller and kind of around southern England so um that that possibly that I'll see what watch this space I'll I'll I'll see what I fancy but uh but no kind of concrete plans at the moment okay we'll watch the space and um Chris Chris asks in terms of keeping hydrated presumably you sort of filled up on streams and things like that and did you use kind of water filter and things like that or yeah tablets or uh yeah so I just had um what did I carry I think I had two um platypus kind of super lightweight two litre water bottles that I carried around and I um and yeah I just filled up in streams and I used a uh what is it now a um yeah like a water filter um to to kind of um filter the water uh the name of it is uh escaping me for some reason at the moment um and I yeah so I just filtered the water as I went I mean for many years I actually just drank water straight out of the streams in the Lake District and um never had any problems and there's kind of lots of occasions on this challenge that I wanted to wanted to do that um but when I was doing a peak bagging challenge in Ireland it back in 2018 I was just drinking water out of the streams and and I'd done it for years without any problems but I got seriously ill for about a week in Ireland from obviously drank some infected water or some dodgy water and so ever since then I've always always filtered it um I've remembered now I just had one of the little life straws um that um you kind of suck into and and kind of filter water as you drink it so um that's what I used as I went along and that was pretty pretty kind of a simple and straightforward approach I wasn't uh so I was just kind of drinking as I was going around and and uh and just kept it quite straightforward but the Lake District's quite wet so there's an absolute plethora of streams it wasn't difficult for me to uh to find water um so so that that worked really well Brilliant uh Chris asks could we repeat the podcast mentioned at the start yeah it was Outdoors Fix podcast and um what was the one thing you wish you'd packed um that you you didn't I wish I'd packed um I wish I'd packed much bigger variety of food I did did say that earlier so kind of when I was sorting out my food I just went to my local supermarket and just thought oh yes I love those cereal bars right I'll just buy loads of multi-packs of those and I'll have two of those a day um what I forgot to realise was that after about three or four days you're quite sick of that flavour or that type of cereal bar so I should really have had a much much kind of bigger bigger variety um what else would I have wished I could have had um I'm not too sure on that one actually everything was pretty pretty pretty good um James you have a few people have asked this actually uh what was your your favourite peak or view or or kind of day really and and why um so I had a few kind of really great days it was all based on the weather like I said before so the naturally the days where there's a really bad storm blowing through and it's howling gales and and horizontal rain kind of flying into your face for 12 hours uh I have no positive memories of those days whatsoever that was more just head down and try and try and kind of um get through it the the kind of favourite moments for me were were when I was wild camping and um and had good weather and and they were kind of really really the best moment so kind of two spring to mind or certainly a few there was one on home fell I so it was quite a kind of small little fell and had this beautiful view of the Langdale Pikes in the distance so they've kind of the classic jagged profile of mountains on the horizon Harrison Stickel and and um and all the rest of them and the sky was it was a beautiful sunset and the sky was kind of turning all these different shades of pink and salmon and peach and orange and and I was just kind of sipping on a hot chocolate outside my tent uh the mountains look beautiful and I just had this kind of real sense of escapism and tranquility and just felt like I was really kind of squeezing every last drop out of life which which felt amazing and and those moments as well felt amazing because I'd come through some really bad bad days as well before that so I'd had some really tough weather and really wasn't enjoying it and then kind of have your just reward at the end of it felt felt even more special so it's kind of difficult to say there are some best views that's sort of objectively speaking it is always subjective based on how you're feeling personally and how uh and how you're being treated by the weather so kind of encourage everyone to kind of find their own special moments in their own special places it really can be different for everyone and um and if you do kind of take on a challenge like walking the wainwrights set even just over many years or over a lifetime everyone will have their own kind of bespoke and personal intimate moments in the mountains and those are the kind of most special ones uh and and yeah so so for me on my challenge some of the kind of real classic mountains like being on great gable looking over was water that was rubbish for me I didn't see that view it it was it was it just wasn't there like blend catheter wasn't great for me helvelin wasn't great for me I didn't get didn't get great weather on those so some of the kind of classic ones or or the peaks always get named in the best best mountains kind of weren't weren't necessarily the best ones for me it was sometimes the smaller ones or the lesser known ones where I had kind of enjoyable enjoyable kind of special moments so think that's how it works out for everyone really yeah absolutely and I think that's that's a good place to sort of um start really and I and I apologize to everyone for we haven't got to your your questions and um but I hope I hope you you got loads out of listening to James speak and thank you so much James that's been really really interesting just a um just before we we sort of switch off but we have got a couple more talks coming up we've got one on Monday key skills for mountain weather forecasting on Monday evening which um could be useful based on James's experience I think you know if you can avoid the rubbish weather then it's always always helps and um and next Thursday we've got a talk um with Laura Kennington all about endurance and mental resilience so hopefully you can join us for those and um keep you entertained join these what hopefully uh our final few weeks of lockdown but um it remains to be seen yeah that was really good James and really appreciate you joining us and you know we've gone on for nearly an hour so uh it's great thank you very much and thanks to everyone for joining us as well we didn't get around to uh answering everyone's questions if anyone wants to kind of just drop me a message on social media or whatever then I'll try and try and get back to you uh if I can yeah that's great and um this is how you can contact James that's his website um Instagram Facebook and Twitter as well so brilliant well uh yeah and enjoy spring in uh in Cumbria and we'll uh hopefully see you see you in the hill sometimes I will dear thank you thanks James bye