Rest Day

No training today. Im working and later my nephews 18th Birthday BBQ.
Im no longer vegetarian. My diet was looked at as part of my fitness baseline and Im not getting enough protein to sustain the training I will be doing. Plus I dont thing there will be many nice little vegetarian bistros at 17,000 feet!

In the same way that it was an easy transition from meat eating to vegetarian, so the switch back is just as easy. Cant wait for my first bacon and mushroom sandwich. Thats the only real thing Ive missed!

Almost decided on the company I will be trekking with. I think it will be this lot: http://www.walksworldwide.com/

I was attracted to them in the first place after reading this in the Guardian online:
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/feature/0,8806,1120383,00.html (Trip NUmber 7)

They are not the cheapest by any means, but they seem to know what they are doing. Had some good conversations with Helene, she seems to be chief organiser for this particular trek and has done it herself. Very enthusiastic lady and bends over backwards to help - even with some of my more off the wall queries! Very professional website, very professional staff. I think I will trust the trek organisation to them!

Found some nice photos of base camp here:
http://www.everesttrekking.com/base_camp/

I think I will try to sort out my hill walking schedule later. I want to try to get up into the hills about once a month if I can - maybe increasing the frequency as D-Day approaches. I want a fairly early trek up Snowdon to baseline progress. Ive done it before and I cant see the everest hike being steeper. I dont know but I would imagine this one is fairly typical of how each days trek will be. I may be very wrong! Over the coming months I will climb each of the UK's 3 highest peaks as part of my training. None of them are anywhere near as high asI am going, but I think the climb up each of them is probably higher than any individual day on the expediation.
The only thing I am not sure of is how high the start point of each climb is above sea level. Obviously that will impact the actual distance climbed.


Ben Nevis
The Cairngorms
Scotland
1344 metres

Snowdon
Snowdonia, part of the Cambrian mountain range
Wales
1085 metres

Scafell Pike
The Cumbrian Mountains
England
977 metres