A brief reflection on The Great Woggle JOGLE (according to Phil)
The Great Woggle JOGLE has been part of our life for quite a long time now. It was a monumental challenge on many levels. Finishing it was amazing but also a little sad- I can understand Forest Gump a bit better now (a dated reference to a film of the 90s which totally confused the majority of the team who were all born this century).. I could have kept on going and I’m not sure I want to stop, though being able to plug stuff in is pretty awesome…..
Early on we met Becky the Traveller at the Outdoors Expo. Becky is an outdoor adventurer and we got chatting. As an old hand she said that the easy part is the journey- by the time you’re at the start you’ve done most of the hard work. Being a polite bunch we smiled, nodded and agreed not really believing her, thinking but we’re doing this with kids. We now know she was totally right- the planning was insane and really challenging! Working out the route was tricky to say the least. Jen tried to find the flattest and shortest (requirements in that order) route and unbelievably there wasn’t one that people had done and shared on the internet.
Logistics were a major headache- most cyclists will do the journey in less than 2 weeks and most walkers in around 80 days but how do you calculate how long it would take to do a mixed route especially with a 9, 11 and 14 year old? We aimed for 4 hours of activity per day and guesstimated 20km walking and 50km cycling should be about right. Strava, our official record of the route, reports that most days we were doing less than 4 hours activity (despite some of the days lasting 6 hours!) so we got this spot on.
Learning and using social media was seriously tricky, totally challenging and something we still haven’t fully cracked (what is the difference between Facebook and Instagram and why does the same post go down so differently?!). How do you spread the word and encourage people to support and donate to total strangers who claim that they are going to do something epic? We were so heartened that people began to get behind us and began to support us, offering us accommodation and support across the country.
Trying to work out what kit we needed was a bit of a headache- we had to be able to be entirely self-sufficient should we not have anywhere to stay. This included food, cooking, sleeping, washing and bike maintenance for up to 7 team members and any team support. Ultimately I succumbed and started making lists!
By the time we were ready to leave I was totally exhausted having walked over 7 miles just loading kit in the van. However, it was massively exciting to finally be leaving and off we went. By day 2 of driving it was less exciting, but arriving in Scotland was amazing until we realised just how big Scotland is. After driving for 10 hours we were still only in Inverness and we still had 5 more hours ahead of us. By the time we got to Wick it hit me- we had an awfully long way to go to get to the finish point. Compartmentalising it helped though- by just focussing on the day ahead rather than the whole journey the overwhelming anxiety was subdued.
I was constantly amazed and proud by just how determined the team were. We started out with days far longer than we had ever managed in our training (which had not been particularly rigorous!) and the kids managed to carry on day after day despite aching all over. We slowly got into a routine of getting up (much later than planned- I had envisaged we’d be off early and have long, lazy afternoons to relax), packing up, making breakfast and lunch, then setting off and finishing in time for dinner (most of the time).
I was also very grateful for Jens navigational abilities (mine aren’t great if I’m honest). She would generally lead and navigate and I would be at the back moving at the speed of the slowest ensuring we didn’t loose any of the team. This was fine until the speeds of the two groups diverged and the lead group would disappear over the brow of the hill and we would hope that they would signal at any turns.
Cornwall was properly tough with some really challenging hills- thank goodness we had done Scotland first as otherwise I suspect we wouldn’t have made it out of Cornwall! It was quite an end but it did show us how much fitter we had become as we may have been slow but most of the hills were ridden!
Would I do something similar again? Yes, absolutely (though work might not be so forgiving next time!). However, I’m sure it won’t be long before Jen comes up with another mad project!