After pulling an all nighter to garuntee both that I’d sleep tonight, and be well rested when waking tomorrow, and also that I’d make it to a 10am meeting at work, my mind sortof decided to collapse in on itself. Azemute and I had been trying hard to fulfill a shopping list of things that we needed to take with us, and slowly our office had begun to overflow with things scattered here and there; all related to this project.
Around 1pm, during lunch, the OCD/stress effect got to me, out of a general feeling that we hadn’t done enough preparation, mostly stemming from the montain of stuff that wasn’t yet put into a bag – out of sight, out of mind as the saying goes.
I was mostly stressed at the fact that we still did not have a tent, nor any sort of emergency food product, and that every army surplus store I could find in the Plymouth -> Cardiff area that wasn’t 50miles out of our way was complete crap. I owe my boss a rather huge debt of gratitude for saving our bacon by describing, off the top of his head and in great detail, the location of an army surplus store in Soho. I feel the need to shamelessly plug them now, because, they were oldschool and awesome. We picked up a two man tent for 25 pounds, and two 24 hour ration packs for 24 pounds total, along with some water-proof gear and other bits and pieces. So, if you’re looking for army surplus that is actually army surplus, go check out Surplus Plus.
Needless to say, after picking up those few things, my stress levels plummeted dramatically. We’ve now got 3 bags packed full of stuff (tools et al), and are confident about the trip tomorrow – Azemute shall be around more later (after sleeping) to post a few pictures of our luggage situation and the logistics that went into it.
I’d intended for him to post about the routing too, being the navigator, but, he demanded that I sit down and write a post, and so that’s what I’m doing. :3
My original intent was to break our routing down into stages, with each stage lasting 1 day – similar to the dakar rally stages -, however, distraction took place due to getting ready for the trip in general, and so I only got two completed thus far — the stages form the larger overall journey.
Stage 1 is from Plymouth -> Glyncorrwg (185m – 3hr 29m)
Stage 2 is from Glyncorrwg -> Islawrdref (184m – 5hr 25m)
Each of the above terminates at a camp site that is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, for us to chill out and relax at. Stage 2 also includes 3 special sections: The Black Mountain Pass; Devil’s staircase/Llyn Brianne loop and the Elan Valley.
My general view is that Stage 1 will be very simple for the car – it’s mostly motorway driving, as can be seen from google’s guestimation of 3hr 29m -, and that we’re unlikely to see any mechanical failures until the more challenging specials of stage 2.
Hopefully, we can get the other two stages figured out tomorrow while on the train to Plymouth, at which point we’ll generate overview maps showing our routing. The plan is also to upload gps plots at the end of each day so everyone can see how far we’ve actually made it.
Anyway, at this point, I’m rambling, it’s nearing 1am, and I need to sleep so that I’m capable of driving tomorrow when the adventure begins.
