Jo - United Kingdom Trails Journal - 2019

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ULA OHM with new panel

Preparations

I’m a bit of a procrastinator. With a week to go, I still have not yet made it through my preparation list.

Months ago, my husband Kerry, and the other half of our walking duo, made the decision to not invest in a new backpack even though the one he had, a ULA Ohm, was fairly beat up from our 3000 mile trek from Canada to Mexico on the Continental Divide Trail (CDT). He felt that a repair to the large net back outside pocket, which was shredded, would be sufficient. I contacted ULA to ask if I could purchase a scrap of the netting to repair the damaged panel and even though I offered to pay, Chris (an owner of the company), sent me a piece of the net material without asking for anything in return. Talk about customer service!

So now I sit here, having had at least 2 months to ponder how best to proceed without having completed the fix. The good news is that I hope to finish that task today. (See photo).

Among other items to resolve this week is acquiring some pounds sterling. It turns out that we can order cash from Bank of America but they charge about 5.6% compared to the less than 3% my English cousins say they pay locally. We can also use our debit card in country at an ATM, so I think we’ll do that to have a small amount of cash on hand, and use a credit card for the rest.

Another pressing issue is the phone. We have Verizon locally, and they charge an arm and a leg for service overseas, so my cousins suggested we swap out the SIM cards...I’m a little worried about getting all this technology to work as we won’t know for sure until we plug the cards in after we arrive in England.

Navigation was another concern. We’re comfortable with map and compass but have come to like the preciseness of GPS. We’ll be carrying maps, but I discovered that Guthook has the Coast to Coast trail on its app so we plan to use that too, eschewing the Garmin Etrex that we usually carry.

We have a back pack list we use but I still need to modify it for this hike. We won’t be carrying cooking items as mostly we plan to eat as we go and carry enough to get us to the next hot meal. On our long trips we typically don’t carry a change of clothes but I think we will for this one. Getting caught in a laundry in England with nothing but a bath towel might take some explaining that I’m not sure I’m up to!

Just thinking out loud here...would really enjoy suggestions (see guest book).

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