Our first year of blogging

Hello again people and pooches. Joe the Cocker here, not to tell you about a hike but, to tell you about the amazing first year of blogging that we have experienced. It all started after me and my human completed the West Highland Way in October 2019. I asked him to type our recollections of the journey and to post it on Facebook and WordPress. I thought that he should post some of the photographs that he had taken on the way as well. We expected that a few family members and friends would have a look at it. It proved to be of interest to more people than we had expected so, we decided to write a blog about each of our hikes. It is now almost a year since we posted our first blog and we are mind-blown by the response.

We have written approximately 100 blogs about our adventures. Some have been about multi-day hikes, such as the Great Glen Way and others have been about day hikes, as well as short local walks. We are continually amazed by the positivity and encouragement that we have experienced on our journey. We have discovered earlier this week that Joe the Cocker’s Hikes now has 1000 subscribers, a figure that has really shocked us. The blogs have been read in 69 different countries around the world including places like Azerbaijan, Sudan, Oman and Panama.

We pledged in December 2019 to walk 2020 miles in 2020. So, we started our Country Walking Magazine challenge on January 1^st, and passed 2020 miles on 23^rd September. We also appeared in the magazine in the July issue, after we had completed our first 1000 miles. An article appeared on the Country Walking website in October when we completed 2000 miles for the year. Me and my human are also appearing in the Country Walking Magazine 2021 wall calendar.

We also enrolled onto the Trail Magazine’s Everest Anywhere challenge in 2020. The aim of the challenge is to add up your altitude gained on walks, with the view of attaining the height of Everest 8848 metres, within the year. We have climbed approximately one and a half Everest’s up to now. We were limited in the amount of hillwalking we could do as we live in a relatively flat area of Cheshire and Covid restrictions limited our ability to travel to the hills. Plus, the big feller has developed an ‘iffy knee that gives him a good excuse to be lazy.

The most amazing milestone that we have reached, since our first blog was published, is the 48,000 views of our blogs. We genuinely expected that a handful of people would read them so, we are overwhelmed with the response. We have received an incredible amount of comments, all positive and encouraging. People have been so kind with their words, and we think that we have replied to everyone. If we have missed anyone along the way, we would like to take the opportunity to apologise now. Sorry peeps!

It has been an amazing year, with so many ups and downs. We have discovered many new places, including whole new areas of our own town, that we wouldn’t normally have seen. We plan to continue our adventures and writing about them until people lose interest in them. Hopefully, this will be a long time off. Thank you all again for your support and encouragement. Stay safe and well.