FKT: Matt Girvan - Scottish National Trail (United Kingdom) - 2020-09-25

Athletes
Route variation
Standard route
Multi-sport
No
Gender category
Male
Style
Self-supported
Start date
Finish date
Total time
13d 19h 35m 0s
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Started at the Border Hotel, Kirk Yetholm, 5:34am on Friday 11 September 2020.

Finished at the Cape Wrath Lighthouse, 1:09am on Friday 25 September 2020.

Total elapsed time 13 days, 19 hours, 35 minutes. Original schedule was for 15 days, so I was very happy to finish early in 14 days.

 

Solo, self-supported attempt. Carried all my own gear, base weight approximately 7 kg. Friends and strangers paid me brief visits on the trail on about four occasions (mostly to surprise me, based on tracking my GPS), but I was careful not to accept support of any kind, or to have them accompany me on the trail at all. I purchased food in towns along the way (generally carrying 0.5-3 days' worth of food at a time) and either collected water in towns or from natural sources in the countryside (only had to carry 0.5-1 Litre most of the time). On one occasion I accepted food from a stranger, but this was unplanned and therefore it isn't considered 'support'. I also deliberately avoided returning to my flat in Edinburgh, as this would have been considered support.

 

I did my best to follow the 864 km route listed at https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/scottish-national-trail.shtml

There were a few minor detours required (e.g. Union Canal repairs, diversions around forestry work), but all of these kept the length the same or slightly longer. Whenever I left the trail for food/accommodation, I made sure to return to the same point I left it to avoid missing any of the trail proper. I used a Spot Gen3 tracker with tracking interval set to 10 minutes. There were several times when it went for quite a while without successfully sending locations, therefore there are some straight line sections on the map.

 

Accommodation: 9 nights wild camping. 3 nights in bothies/huts. 2 nights paid accommodation (Kilsyth and Blair Atholl). 

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