Welcome to my web site.

 

My name is James and I am 67 years old. I live in Oregon, having moved here in 2007 when I retired. I am a native Californian, living the past 32 years in Eureka in far northern California.

I was a business owner, being a licensed independent insurance adjuster and a licensed private investigator. I have a BA degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MA degree from California State University, Los Angeles. Both degrees are in European history.

This site was primarily designed to document my Pennine Way walk, which I completed when I was 63, in 2004.

I cannot tell you what prompted me to "tackle the challenge." I had been thinking about it since early 2003. I purchased and read Wainwright on the Pennine Way some time ago. I have been to the UK well over 20 times, visiting the first time in 1963 after graduation from UCLA.

Both Brian, my English friend I met on the Way, and I have talked about what made us decide to do the walk and neither of us can come up with a definitive answer. Perhaps the best reason would be that I have always been challenged by outdoor physical activity and walking the Pennine Way seemed to be something very special and, of course, it turned out to be just that.

I had not done any long distance walking prior to walking the Way. I have done 9, fifty mile hikes as a scout master. Taking 8 days to do the 50 and carrying everything on my back. That was all wilderness hiking and the last one was in 1986.

Last Fall Brian and I walked 160 miles of the Southwest Coast Path in 10 days but other than that, I have not done any long distance walking.

I have over 100 photographs of my walk but they are all on 35mm slides, so this journal is purely textual.