A Little Background

Every May for nigh on 30 years now there has been an organised event that involves walking from the west coast of Scotland to the east coast in a two week period. For the majority of those years the event has been know by its main sponsor The TGO Challenge or TGOC. The TGOC is limited to roughly three hundred participants. Those three hundred souls at the start are spread out unevenly along the west coast of Scotland where they have to sign out at one of the six (? There maybe more I can't rightly remember) sign in points. They then hike and camp their way across Scotland to the east coast and then make their way to the finish sign in point at Montrose and the celebratory meal with their fellow Challengers.

Before I joined the academic world as a lecturer I completed two crossings (2008 & 2009, my 2007 attempt I'll revisit another day in a repost of the dramatic events). However the hero of my 2007 attempt Lord Elpus this year is doing his twelfth crossing, whilst Alan will be completing his twentieth crossing. Think about that twenty crossings! It will for various reasons that are not mine to say their final crossings. They plan to move on to new scenery and more better guaranteed weather. Which also means if invited I will be able to join them on the new adventures (I'll need to sort out my passport) because they won't be tied to that teacher unfriendly window in May.

So in honour of this momentous occasion and to celebrate my two friends I thought I'd make a couple of custom minifigs of Alan and Lord Elpus. But I didn't want to stop there I wanted to make this a bit more special but I will reveal those plans in another post.

The posts for this project will be part memoir/reflection as well as documenting the building process. Mind you I have already been getting bits in over the months, and I think the next post in this series should be a look at what I have already got for this project.

Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app