About this blog

The journey from John o'Groats to Land's End took place in 14 sections, starting in 1996 (a week or so each year). The idea came to me in 1995 and I completed the British JoGLE Watershed in June 2009.

I was joined by a number of relations and friends from time to time. Most notable among my walking companions were my son Tim (7 sections) and nephews Peter and Jonny.

After walking the first section in 1996 I discovered that Dave Hewitt had already pioneered the Scottish Watershed (to Cape Wrath) in 1987, and had published his excellent account Walking the Watershed in 1994. We have been in touch since then, and he has been a great encouragement.

A simple definition of the watershed is that any rain falling to the left of the path finishes in the North Sea or English Channel, and anything to the right flows into the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea or the Bristol Channel.

I believe that this was the first walk along the full length of the British JoGLE Watershed. I became aware just after I completed the journey that the late Mike Allen walked a slightly different version (from Land's End to Cape Wrath) between 1988 and 1994, so he will have covered the same ground apart from the most north-easterly 220km.

There have subsequently been several walks and publications about parts of the JoGLE watershed, including Peter Wright's 2010 Ribbon of Wildness account of his Scottish section walked in 2005, which has brought the subject of watershed walking in the UK to a wider audience.

I hope you enjoy this blog. I'm planning to publish a full account in 2013/4. A summary of the walk appeared in The Angry Corrie volume 76 in 2009.

Malcolm Wylie.

Tuesday 9 July 2002

Day 68 - meeting Wainwright at Nine Standards Rigg

As we were getting breakfast in the morning, a shepherd took us to task for camping on private land without permission. He was unimpressed by our defence that the Watershed had required it, but let us off with a warning.

The morning was slow going across Causey Moss, and then it rained quite hard for a few hours. The Watershed turned SW just after the innominate trig point, and we made our way up Brownber Edge and then up to Nine Standards Rigg - whose distinctive cairns had been clearly visible on the horizon from our camp site.

This is a significant place, as the Watershed crosses Wainwright's coast-to-coast here - in fact they coincide for 1km, horribly eroded. We then struck off to the right, and went up to High Seat, quite close to the young Eden River.

Onto map 98. We made our way south to Ure Head, and had to navigate carefully on the way down between the Eden and the Ure tributaries. After a long descent we reached the B6259 at the head of the Eden valley. We knocked at the nearest cottage to find out about where to buy food, and finished up buying from them - a wonderful mixture including home-made rhubarb pie! We scrambled up the other side and camped on the fells at 770955.
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