Introduction

Me (Ashley Middlewick) and two mates (Chris Thomas and Tom Smith) have recently embarked on the challenge of completing the Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk in 9 days. I personally have never done any proper walking/hiking whatsoever but decided to do it as it would be a nice way to see the Lake District, Peak District and Yorkshire Dales. I had run 5 Marathons before and had done a few training walks around London so thought this would be easy in the given timeframe. Chris had done a bit of hiking before (the Duke of Edinburgh awards back in his school days) and Tom had also done some but none of us had done anything on this magnitude.
 Tom organised most of it (getting the Ordinance Survey (OS) maps, sorting out coach times/ emailing anyone who was potentially interested in doing the walk. It was tricky to find dates which suited everyone due to work commitments, other holidays etc but we eventually agreed on getting the National Express coach up on 04/10/12 from London Victoria, starting the hike the following day, finishing the hike on 13/10/12, then coaching it back home the following day and returning to work the day after (Monday). Unfortunately one of our mates (Matthew Binks) had to pull out due to our constantly changing dates. Eventually probably about 3 weeks earlier we all agreed on dates and on our £200 per person budget, and that was pretty much everything sorted bar a few items. Then 2 days before Tom realised his boots, sleeping bag and sleeping mat had been thrown out so had to go and buy these things the day before we left - awful. Anyway Tom managed to get what he needed and then we went mental in Sainsbury's getting food for the 9hr coach journey the following day.