Red Yeti's Blog

This post is simply my recipe for publishing a book via Lulu although a lot of it may be relevant for anyone wanting to write up and format a book.

Though to be frank, I’ve had a lot of trouble getting the images printed correctly. With a lot of help from Lulu support we finally got good copies last week. Hence the delay in posting about the  GR5 Honeymoon ebook.

Next time (and there may be a next time!) I think I’d use Blurb since they review well for image printing. I may still use an uploaded PDF with Blurb rather than using their (admittedly very good) downloadable book creation tool since I think I’ll want more control over how it hangs together (plus I believe you don’t get much choice as to the style of cover with that tool – though I may be wrong!).

There is a wealth of instructional material on the Lulu site. But because there are a great many different options, I thought a very specific path through it all might be helpful to someone.

Besides – I wrote all this out as I went along so it seems a shame to waste it!

Recipe for publishing a book via Lulu: Continue reading »

As we walked the GR5 we made diaries, audio for me, written for LB. “LB” being a nickname, like “Red Yeti”. Some may be surprised by her actual name. Some who know us have been mighty confused by the “LB” mentioned on this blog!

So, assuming you don’t want to spend silly-money on a book about our honeymoon, take a look at the:

Free ebook version of A GR5 Honeymoon

(Right-click the link and select “Save link as” since it’s a rather large PDF file!)

Unfortunately it doesn’t come with the cover that’s on the real book – but that’s at the top of this post – just click the image and you’ll get the idea.

The first Big Walk we did together in the Polish/Slovak Tatra has now faded somewhat in detail with only the pictures, a single, rather retrospective blog entry and the odd good yarn that has been told and re-told to friends to remind us. We didn’t want the GR5, or in fact any other Big Walk in future, to fade so much.

I wasn’t sure that I would remember to make an audio diary every day but with the lack of other distractions I managed it almost without fail.

We then transcribed it ourselves, partly as a way of making it more accessible in future to look back on and partly to add the details that we didn’t think to mention in the original as we went.

And then the project grew…

We added LB’s written diary into the transcription, organised it into a semi-formatted document (using Google Docs which allowed us to both be editing and adding to the same document at the same moment).

We then decided it was very, very “dry” without some photos so they started to come in.

And eventually, we had something not far short of a book. So we decided to go that last mile and create one. Just for us, with a copy for each of our respective parents.

It was completed last November, a couple of months after we returned, but we had quite some trouble getting the images to print correctly.

At last it’s time to “publish” it to the world.

Not that I expect anyone to read it all! But it might be of interest to flick through.

I certainly don’t expect anyone to buy a copy. Particularly since it’s rather expensive. The price that you see is purely the price that the Lulu charges to print, there’s no profit margin on there for me.

But considering it’s around 260 pages with a photos on most of them, and it’s wrapped in a glossy, full colour cover and printed exactly to order – it’s not badly priced at all.

As we walked the GR5, we used a Spot tracker to record way-points along the route. It managed pretty well and only missed one day (oddly, I’m sure it was on…).

As we walked, I had it uploading to a page on the Spot web site so people could track our progress, but sadly it only logged the last seven days of activity. I hadn’t realised that I should have logged in to spotadventures.com and created an “Adventure” so that the way-points could be recorded permanently. The Spot web site, rather like the Spot tracker, doesn’t always have a very intuitive interface.

Luckily though, Google Maps allows you to import several track formats, so in they went. (It only shows 200 track points at any one time; scroll to the bottom of the list of points, in the left hand panel, to see more of them).

The great thing is, since Google Street View has arrived in France, you can see a couple of landmark points on the walk in an “interactive” format:

The start of the walk, just by the roofed-over shelter by Lake Geneva.

Our favourite village, St Dalmas le Selvage.

And the end of the walk, on the tiny beach at the edge of the marina in Menton.

In ordinary map view, try left-dragging the little orange man (in the top left, at the end of the scale) and as you wave him about over the map, the roads that have Street View are highlighted in blue.

Of course, there are only a few points where the Street View images intersect with our walking route, but it’s remarkably evocative to be able to see the route in such detail.

This posting is an assortment of “handy tips” for longer trips although some apply regardless of length.

I originally noted them in audio form as I wandered the GR5 and thought “Oh yes – must mention that on the blog when I get back…”

Continue reading »

I must admit I wasn’t sure that the Terrocs would be up to the whole walk. I’d already talked to Outside Hathersage about getting some sent out to us if we needed them. But in the event, they did the whole 732KM without a problem.

Well  okay the Five Fingers did five days of duty, but the Terrocs were also out on several walking weekends before we left so I reckon they can claim the full mileage.

They’ll be around for a few more trips yet by the look of them. Since we’ve return I’ve put a couple of spots of McNett Seam Grip on each one where the stitching has become frayed but apart from that, they did the job nicely.

The one thing that let them down was that the right shoe has a rather fat seam right where my longest toe is (my second toe). But that was easily solved with a bit of wool stuffed into it. It “felted” to form a comfortable pad that I dutifully put back in place, every time I put them on, for about six weeks.

I was very lucky that Rachel was carrying some (that she never used – amazingly!). She’d bought it very cheaply from Boots (a chemist – not a shoe shop) in the UK. But I know that there’s a firm called hapihike that do a more expensive version, available online. I certainly plan to carry a small wad of wool in my first aid kit from now on.

Would I take Terrocs again? Only if I can’t find an even lighter, comfier shoe in the mean time!

As I mentioned before, we both love wearing the Vibram Five Fingers. And we still do in fact. But there was a real gotcha that I came across whilst on the GR5 which put the whole trip in jeopardy for a few days.

Ten days into the walk, I developed a spasm in my left calf that stopped me in my tracks. I’d worn the Five Fingers for five of the previous days but had stopped using them a few days before as I realised I was bruising my insole.

The bruise was caused by wearing the Five Fingers since my left arch arch collapses.

My right arch doesn’t collapse anymore – wearing Terrocs and Five Fingers seems to have strengthened it. It certainly used to collapse, I had to get the “Custom Fit” Superfeet insoles ten years ago. When I was re-assessed by a Superfeet Fitter last year (many years of trail-shoes and some time in Terrocs) I found my feet were hardly collapsing at all. So much for the strange idea that “once your arches collapse there’s nothing you can do about it” that I’ve heard and read several times. So much for Conventional Wisdom.

But my left arch still collapses. So as I took a step and my left foot happened to land with a small stone under the arch, I would initially feel nothing (the stone fitting into the arch).

However as soon as I weighted the foot and “stepped through” with my right leg, the arch would collapse, crushing the toe-flexing tendons of my left foot between the stone under the arch and the bones.

Obviously this made them quite painful. In fact, to my surprise, a visible bruise developed after five days of walking in the Five Fingers.
At that point I decided to swap back to the Terrocs for a few days. In fact I wouldn’t return to the Five Fingers for the rest of the trip. Though I carried them since I dearly wanted to go back to them if I felt I could!

However, because the toe flexors were painful the Soleus muscle in the calf tried to avoid moving them by tensing up (purely a sub-conscious reaction).

But of course I was moving them with each step, so the Soleus was trying harder and harder to stop them until eventually it went into spasm.

It was like getting severe cramp in my left calf whenever I tried to weight it.

Luckily, with three days of rest, and holding the leg in the freezing cold outflow from a pipe in a mountain stream for five minutes in every fifteen, it healed enough to allow me to hobble on. (As I mentioned before, the cold treatment caused great concern with many French people, until a pair of French Physiotherapists arrived! Beware the well-meaning advice of those who don’t actually know what they’re talking about… especially in the mountains. I might post a couple of observations on that one day – it’s an interesting area!).

I was also given some anti-inflammatory cream (Srilane idrocilamide) and pain killers by some very kind French hikers in the La Balme hut (one was a doctor so asked me a couple of questions to ensure I wasn’t being given something that might kill me).

None the less, I didn’t take the pain killers since I didn’t want to mask what the leg was telling me and then further aggravate it. I also avoided using the cream until we hit Briançon a couple of weeks later where I was able to check out its contents on the Internet. The Srilane cream appeared to help but since it was generally healing anyway it’s hard to be sure. But at that stage I was confident I wasn’t re-injuring it and just wanted to keep it calm enough to complete the walk.

It then continued to improve as we walked, with only one extra rest-day in the old town in Briançon when it whinged a little, which was certainly no hardship. And by the end of the walk I could do 25+ kilometres (16+ miles) days without feeling a thing. Further proving that it was the above situation causing the problem (i.e. since I’d stopped wearing them – it improved despite continuing to walk on the leg).

Would I wear Five Fingers on a Big Walk again? Absolutely.

I wore them for five days and they were very comfortable, collapsing left-arch issues aside. Importantly, my right foot was fine and LB’s feet were fine whilst she continued to swap between hers and the Terrocs (wearing the Five Fingers for around 30 percent of the trip in total).

The only reason I had a problem was that, after years of wearing “normal” footwear, my left foot is not yet strong enough. Once it is – comfy long distance hiking joy awaits…

As I wear the Five Fingers more I expect that the arch will strengthen and cease collapsing. Meaning that I can wear them, or perhaps the new KSO Treks, on the next Big Walk.