What with my more mundane life style firmly back on track and my waistline slowly returning to more typical dimensions, recent events have been a little more encouraging. Though regular work is still hard to come by I am nevertheless not entirely idle. Certainly the garden is looking a little more presentable, even if many of the weeds are still failing to motivate me enough to really want to dig them all out.

So what has become of GB Coast Walk and any news it might still generate?

• At the SIA Awards dinner in Birmingham last week I was nominated and unexpectedly won their Community Star Award. It was a real honour to be invited and to sit in a room full of such hugely inspirational people. In truth I was a little embarrassed to receive the award and felt more than a little fraudulent for the recognition I received for completing something I had rather selfishly dreamt of doing.Yes the charity side of the walk became increasingly important with every step I took. Yes I felt pressured to raise as much as I could and indeed my fund raising frustrations sometimes got the better of me. But maybe it wasn’t me who deserved the thanks but all the people who gave money in person and via my Virginmoneygiving page who really needed thanking. The page is still open for anyone who still fancies chipping in. Hopefully the £16,000+ raised to date will help make a difference and I can only thank good friends Graham (SIA) and Rik (MSNTC) for all their support, encouragement and inspiration along the way. The only thing that really caught me off guard is that I wasn’t expecting to win and hadn’t prepared an acceptance speech. My incoherent and shaky handed mumble on stage was a little out of character for those who know my usual ease at standing up and talking, so I kept it to a few words to save further embarrassment.

• As you may or may not know, this site was also up for Simply Hike’s outdoor blog of the year award. It didn’t quite win but apparently it was very close with only the odd vote in it. However, Simply Hike have honoured me with a Finalist’s award and apparently I get a trophy. So once again I thank all of you who voted for GBCoastWalk and I hope that you can still find something on this site to keep you interested as I intend to slowly develop it into more of a reference site for British Coast walkers…. ideas welcome!

• The routes now published on Viewranger are receiving quite a bit of interest and I hope that they continue to do so. They are all available for download and the links are all live on my ROUTES page. I think that the per mile cost is very reasonable, with my favourite routes a little more expensive than some of the others. I have identified my Top 20 and Top 50 routes and might well do some more work on these to promote them further.

• I have now produced a manuscript from my original blog and corrected it for typos and grammatical ineptitude. I still hope that I can get a book published of my walk last year and include all of my favourite photos.  Though completely expected, it is a smidge depressing to get repeatedly rejected by publishers or agents and even more depressing to not even get a response. Nevertheless, I understand that they have huge piles of poo to delve through and my work is probably just a small part of that steaming heap. If I cannot find someone foolhardy enough to pick up my photos and rambling tale I will dip into google and see if self-publishing with my limited expertise is a viable option……unless anyone has any good leads or ideas???

• And…. what of my walking? Well apart from short strolls with the dogs every day I did manage to venture out with a few friends and a tent into Derbyshire. I can’t say that the weekend was great for anyone’s health. I proved that I’m a bit of lightweight these days as I hadn’t drunk as much beer as that nor had I played drinking games for 30 years. But we did cover a few undulating miles of Peaks and dales and my stomach muscles still hurt from laughing so much. I have to admit that they look like a posing bunch of ageing rock stars in the photo, but look a little closer and I reckon there is evidence of hard breathing and a tad of perspiration.