Kayaking North - Lands End to John O'Groats

I have to say it's an awful lot quicker in a car! I was back in sunny Devon less than 24 hours after finishing, in a bit of a daze. It's quite hard to adjust to seeing things moving past you at 70mph, rather than 3mph!

I'm still a bit dopey, the last four days really took it out of me, so I feel like I've got jet lag. I wasn't aware that Scotland was in a different time zone....

Everything is now so much easier, things like making a cup of tea is back to being simple again. Rather than having to get two bags out, construct the stove, find some water, mix up the powdered milk, chip the soup out of the cup you should have cleaned, I just keep pressing the button on the kettle in awe at the technological marvel. The other thing that is now easier is all of this, I've uploaded some more photo's to the gallery so the end portion of the trip has some representation, I'll get round to describing the shots over the next few days.

Chatting to the lady in the burger shack in John O'Groats, she thinks they get between 3000 and 4000 finishers of the trip every year, most of them are on bikes, quite a few walking, some on unicycles, pogo sticks, and mopeds, and one chap who walked carrying 20 litres of water on his head! But she had never seen a kayak finish, so my first official verification has come from the burger lady, she wasn't that impressed...

Thank you to everyone who has donated to the two causes so far. I said at the start that this wasn't a charity event, I was doing it for me, and raising money was a bonus. But towards the end, as the weather decided to work against me, seeing peoples comments as they donated, and how people I'd met along the way had kept following what I was doing and then made the effort to donate, really made me put more effort in. I'd of probably been a day or to later without them, so thank you all again. It also makes the trip feel slighly less self indulgent, and if by me going for a paddle has managed to make a difference to the two causes then it's only because all of you that have taken the time and effort to donate. A genuine thank you.

I'm just about to start sorting through all my kit and looking back to review the route, so should anyone decide to repeat the trip they might learn a little from what I did. I'll post up here at some point all the gear I took with me, and how it performed should anyone be interested.

So one more post to come, and then that's it for my blog. You'll have to find something else to nod off to.....