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Page 1 of 10 HMV – Onwards and Upwards
I can’t believe I’ve been doing this Highland March thing for five years – doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun? Once again the HM bandwagon was in full swing leading up to the off with all the troops busy(ish) with their respective training programmes.
Once again, however, the SPL guru’s don’t seem to be as keen as us when it comes to organisation as their wretched ‘spilt’ gets in the way again. With the top and bottom six sides in the SPL being settled after 31 games (usually takes 33) it still took these Muppets four days to come up with the remaining last two games for ICT. This brought about yet another walk away from Inverness but a new destination for the HM’ers – Love Street, Paisley.
Route planning looked like it was going to be nightmare because the troops would be walking over untried territory as far as the HM is concerned. Various discussions took place and the final consensus was that the HM could take on two long distance trails – the Great Glen Way (GGW) and West Highland Way (WHW). These two paths, back-to-back, would be around 180 miles and would be a very tough assignment in the given time scale of eight days. As if this wasn’t hard enough, the beloved SPL had decided that the final game of the season would kick-off at 1 pm instead of the usual 3 pm. This was later changed to 12:30 for reasons best known to the SPL. So, with an almost impossible timescale, we set about cutting a few corners and generally tried to make life on HMV a lot less stressful. Once again the troops split up into two teams, Team Yompa (TY – consisting of Gringo Jnr, Chumba and Yompa) and Team Gringo (TG – consisting of Mrs Pauliebee, Pauliebee, Mrs Gringo and Gringo). The Yompa crew would stick with tradition and commence the walk after the final whistle whilst Team Gringo would start well before kick-off and then go to the match and then recommence walking again after the game. Meanwhile, another invaluable member of the HM team, Egg, was planning an altogether different approach to the Highland March – she was going to climb Munro’s! The amount of Munro’s she would be climbing during HM week would be determined by ICT’s league position at the split (33 games), which was 9th! Her story can be found here - TBA.
Both TY and TG were of the opinion that if we were going to get the Love St in time for the match and to complete the WHW without too much concern we really needed to be in Fort William by at least lunch time on Monday (Day 3) this would give us a full(ish) week to complete it. TY decided that, to keep with tradition, they would walk overnight on the first day and try to reach Fort William by end of play on day 2. Route planning for both teams was fine-tuned and around ten miles was chopped off the route by ‘cheating’ here and there and taking the easier route along the Great Glen by keeping to the roads along the Eastern shore of Loch Ness. Not only would this be easier but also safer for the overnight walkers and also a more user friendly route for the General (that’s Don in the bus) to support the team members.
So, with all the preparation now finalised it was up to the two teams to take on this massive stroll down the road and hoping that all the training over the past few months would pay off and we’ll all make it safely to the other end. Here’s how it all went….
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