Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

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Southern Upland Way – Final statistics

Here is my little spreadsheet of my walk:-

      Book 231.02 0.00 3.50 2.44 458,777.00 2781 215.2 42324 24996
      213 GPS Data   Data from Fitbit    
Date Start End Miles miles Moving Stopped mph inc stops Steps Floors Miles Calories Active
                         
Wed 15-May-2013 Portpatrick Chlenry Farmhouse, Castle Kennedy 13.5 18.38 5.87 1.58 2.47 40354 261 19.26 4215 2313
Thurs 16-May-2013 Chlenry Farmhouse, Castle Kennedy Bargennan 26.5 26.53 9.15 1.67 2.45 56948 222 26.15 5086 3101
Fri 17-May-2013 Bargennan Dalry 24 27.09 8.27 1.75 2.70 56417 277 26.63 4707 2954
Sat 18-May-2013 Dalry Dalquhairn 18 17.39 6.43 1.75 2.13 38703 281 17.96 3720 2170
Sun 19-May-2013 Dalquhairn Wanlockhead 18 20.73 7.40 1.88 2.23 44167 272 20.75 4259 2568
Mon 20-May-2013 Wanlockhead Beatock 20 21.49 7.48 2.42 2.17 46224 329 21.65 4336 2628
Tues 21-May-2013 Beatock St Mary’s Loch 21 22.00 6.95 1.75 2.53 45571 284 21.29 3949 2385
Wed 22-May-2013 St Mary’s Loch Traquair 12 13.22 4.18 1.25 2.43 includes walking from town twice & wandering in town 37293 201 17.77 3670 1837
Thurs 23-May-2013 Traquair Melrose 18 18.60 5.98 2.08 2.31 39233 320 18.63 3800 2238
Fri 24-May-2013 Melrose Longformacus 25 26.49 8.27 1.58 2.69 53867 334 25.11 4582 2802
Sat 25-May-2013 Longformacus   17 19.10 5.92 1.08 2.73        

Southern Upland Way – Portpatrick to Castle Kennedy

IMG_9367Today with George (who I first met 50 years ago whilst doing the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme at Parkgate Iron & steel works) I started the Southern Upland Way. This is a 212 mile coast to coast walk across Scotland starting in Portpatrick near Stranraer.

This is the first time I have pre-booked the trains at either end plus the ten b&b’s in between. Another first is I’m  using my new Polar H7 heart monitor with the iCardio app on the iPhone.

icardioWhen we left George’s house in Kendal it was hammering down with rain. However, by noon when we arrived at Portpatrick all was clear but with a very cold wind blowing hard.

The walk is, so far, well marked although with a fair bit of road/track walking today. The moorland bits were very boggy with no refinements such as gravel or paving slabs like on other National Trails. The Via Ferrata bit is a chain handrail alongside straightforward  steps in the rock.

We did 18.38 miles in 5hr 52min + 1hr 35min stops  according to my GPS as we went into Stranraer to grab some fish & chips before our b&b. This is the rather magnificent deluxe Chlenry Farmhouse (which offers a big meal with wine for £35 each…)

Tomorrow is Bargrennan some 25 miles away

All the day’s pictures are here

The trip statistics are here 

The trip on Everytrail is here 

Quantified Geoff

Today I’m off to Amsterdam for the weekend to spend time & learn more about the Quantified Self. Something I have been very interested in since discovering John Walkers original Hackers diet & Eatwatch programme on my old Treo600. This, coupled with the fact I had an eye problem which necessitated many visits to Addenbrookes  Hospital to ascertain if it was genetic or glaucoma, made me realize how important good longitudinal studies are.

The apps and things I currently measure are:

Screenshot_09_05_2013_19_53-3Daily Body Weight

Using Fatwatch (iPhone rough equivalent of Eatwatch) and Withings scales. I now have 1950 readings from the past 8 years from the chart you can see a highly skewed distribution of weights.  One side affect of this is that I now know I have spent 1109 nights away from home in the past 8 and a bit years 🙂 Since I only weigh myself at home!

Screenshot_09_05_2013_23_38Sleep

I tried Zeo & SleepCycle but didn’t get on with them. I now use the Fitbit and Snorelab. Fitbit has an API which enables me to draw nice charts from all the data it collects. The shows shows a normal distribution centred around  440 and 460 mins (about 7 1/2 hours) of sleep in the past 416 days.

IMG_4227Snorelab has no API 🙁 so hard to do nice graphs over many weeks, although I might enter all the data into a spreadsheet by hand. Obviously you can do screen shots like the example shown. All it has proved is that I snore a lot! mainly when I first go to sleep.

 Exercise

Screenshot_10_05_2013_08_51I am a keen walker as you can tell by reading this, and looking at my step counts on the chart.

I did a post on the different ways I measure steps etc here.

Etc

Other things I have measured are:

  • DNA through 23&me,
  • Moves,
  • Daily Mugshot,
  • Blood pressure using Withings,
  • Quicken for home finance.

and probably a few more after the weekend!

 

 

A sculpture day

Auguste Rodin - Adam - 1881Yesterday I did an excellent walk with my Jesus Green Pool swimming friend Chris. I have been wanting to visit The Henry Moore Foundation site at Perry Green, so when a 25% discount voucher appeared in the post & also prompted by Chris wanting to do a longish walk for him 🙂 (but a walk Sally & I would consider a bit short at 13 1/2 miles) . I finally made it there.

We took the train from Cambridge to Bishops Stortford (equally fast frequent trains from Stansted airport & London). First part of the walk is along The Stort navigation past locks & narrow boats plus two nature reserves, although Chris didn’t have much time for bird watching, apparently walking and twitching don’t mix). After leaving the river and crossing the main line (trains every 3mins so don’t hang about on the level crossing)  we made our way over to Thorley with its delightful church we had a bit of confusion at Thorley Wash after crossing the A1184, but we took the track, rather than through down the private drive, which then transforms into a delightful old coach road.

We arrived at Perry Green and made straight to The Hoops for a pint & salad, a tad pricey but excellent quality.  Straight after lunch it was across the road to see the Moore / Rodin exhibition of  sculptures, totally stunning! & a must see. I thought artists were meant to be poor! However, according to Wikipedia he was paying a million pounds a year in income tax! Maybe we overpay for public works of art 🙂 The staff said it was OK to take photos outside so you can see some of them on Flickr.

A lovely walk back via SideHill full of bluebells (Chris pondered wether they were Spanish or Native) past enormous houses and then a lovely walk into Bishops Stortford through the sports grounds of the college ( a snap at £24,000 per year for boarders).

Chris treated me to tea and a chocolate brownie at the Host restaurant in Stortford. Then it was back home. an excellent walk on a perfect day. The walk is on Everytrail :
Bishops Stortford circular walk to Henry Moore  Centre at EveryTrail