I just wanted to encourage more people to keep journals of their long distance hikes and publish them on the Net. It makes a fascinating resource for others thinking of having a go. An excellent site is www.trailjournals.com. All the html and hard stuff is taken care of and you'll be up and running in no time.
Thanks Jon, for including my latest journal on the West Highland Way on your links page and for giving both journals a max 5 stars. Yippeee! Folk can get there quickly on www.trailjournals.com/whw. My Offa's Dyke hike can be found at www.trailjournals.com/odh. Thanks a lot and get scribbling guys.
I agree, this is something I wish I had done. Not just for long distance but for any of my outings that were at all interesting. I keep a logbook, but it is a masterpiece of brevity and understatement. This is a typical example: "Aug 6-17 Alps, Club meet. Strahlhorn traverse PD- from Fluhalp hut, finishing at Brittania hut. Egginergrat III+ with TH and AR. Benighted."
I think if I had written "Touching the Void" it would have just said "Siula Grande with SY. Tricky descent".
Tee hee, here is another one; "The Fissure at Ailefroide. (Me, GB, MW, HW, TH). Got benighted at the top with no gear. Had to cross the ravine in pitch darkness. All the ropes got tangled up. Eventually TH, JM and RP came to find us and caught us crawling aong on our hands and knees trying to feel the track."
I kept a bit of a log of our trip to the Alps this summer - started writing it up properly (legibly - since my handwriting is terrible) and it brought back some great memories.
Most of the stuff I wrote about was the daft stuff that happened - like Jon C having a slight regurgitation moment, or the Croteen taking pictures of my face when I saw my TAR was fubar'd. The route descriptions were quite brief.
Perhaps that just shows what I enjoy more about my trips? I dunno.
I think Simon's right. The observational, humorous and human side of the journal is much more fun than route descriptions and technical data which IS trainspotterish. In my journal, the page on Ben Nevis was mostly concerned with taking the piss out of all the people who seemed to think the only things you needed for an attempt on the summit, on the hottest day of the year, was a can of coke and a baby on yer head. I felt sorry for the poor little buggers, nearly phoned the NSPCC.
