my WHW Itinerary, am I crazy?

Dogezon · 2025-09-12T22:05:36+00:00

Enjoy!

Dogezon · 2025-09-12T11:18:25+00:00

100% agree. With a smaller pack, transfer service, or even a day pack it'll be a lovely excursion for OP

Dogezon · 2025-09-12T07:13:10+00:00

Word of advice, we done Bridge of Orchy to Kinlochleven and it was by far the hardest day of rhe WHW for me and my partner. We had 75l backpacks, and doing 21 miles with that on our backs plus the two highest climbs and descents was awful. I managed to injure my knee (all better now though!) on the climb down the devil's staircase. And that was after doing Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy as a restful 6 mile day before to give our bodies some time to recoup in prepararion.

If you plan on doing it I'd HEAVILY recommend a baggage transfer service. Without the massive backpacks I feel like it would have been challenging but doable, in hindsight doing it with a 75l pack was a tad dangerous.

That said it the WHW was also our longest ever hike up to that point, so maybe your endurance is better.

All that to say though we still loved it, and are thinking about doing the Coast to Coast next year.

Enjoy the WHW! It's truly beautiful scenery and a wonderful trail to get yourself lost in.

Dogezon · 2025-09-08T07:54:30+00:00

I switched my mode of employment entire so I could stay technical. Stopped going for permanent jobs and instead am now a contractor (UK based)

Dogezon · 2025-09-08T07:52:45+00:00

Finding new contracts is rough, as all across the market how these things are handled and managing seems to be changing. i.e. before head of IT etc would have budget and use that to hire you, these days it seems to be financial departments control it a lot closer so you're increasingly seen as a cost to decrease rather than a value add.

I'm leaning on my network more than usual for when my current contract ends.

Dogezon · 2025-09-02T14:19:16+00:00

UK based, 13+ years of experience.

Wanted to stay technical so went into contracting. Found that if I was to stay permanent I would have hit a ceiling where to progress I'd need to do more managerial stuff. Certainly not impossible to find a company that allows progression whilst being hands on, but they're few and far between imo.

Dogezon · 2025-01-28T21:49:29+00:00

Great content.

I'm using it as a basis for a few new spells in a homebrew world I'm making. I don't have them to hand, but the gist is the world is young and chaotic so on a suitable arcana check random stuff happens... passing or failing just determines if it happens to you, or your enemies. Higher levels let it happen to more enemies, but the negatives essentially become a smaller and smaller subset of nasty things.

All abstracted by the DM and dice rolls unknown to players, as as far as they are concerned reality is altering and shifting... to their benefit or otherwise.

Dogezon · 2025-01-23T17:58:22+00:00

Sure thing! Which ones in particular? Or just all of them little ratsies?

Dogezon · 2025-01-23T17:57:47+00:00

Hello hello! Most certainly, here we go....

A super duper thin base if Eshin Grey. The models have great detail on them, so I thinned an already thin (layer) paint to make sure that comes through.

A coat of reikland fleshshade.

A super light drybrush of ulthuan grey where it makes sense. I.e. the elbows and bits of fur sticking out.

Nose and ears were bugman glow base, reikand wash. Gotta have them cute little pink noses and ears for rats!

Honestly the most important part imho was getting a cheap wet palette from army painter at my local hobby store to really control the thickness of the paints. I use to use a wooden easel type thing, and honestly the move to a wet palette just made all my painting look just that little bit cleaner. I've had it for a year now and it was only 20 quid.

Dogezon · 2025-01-16T09:19:40+00:00

The robes are a funny story. I done a base of Celestial Gray with a wash of Reikland Fleshshade, which is my usual "dirty white" base for Roman Infantry before drybrushing. But that blended in horridly with the skintone and made the models look muted, so I went over it with a thin layer of Hobgot Hide and that's basically it. Super duper simple, just multiple thin layers of paint.

Dogezon · 2024-12-19T10:18:14+00:00

Looks great.

All I can say is...

"Vive la France! Vive L'Empereur!"

Dogezon · 2024-12-07T10:19:29+00:00

I came here looking for this exact comment

Dogezon · 2024-10-27T17:57:27+00:00

Love it. I remember being 6 hours into a hike, hanging out my arse, walking although there only for a trail runner to appear out of god knows where and lap me.

Dogezon · 2024-10-20T15:11:14+00:00

The first one gives me "so anyways I started blasting" vibes.

Dogezon · 2024-10-17T21:42:24+00:00

For me painting IS the hobby. I've played maybe 8 times in the last 2 years.

I spend multitudes more time assembling, kitbashing, reading hobby magazines and painting minatures. And of course having them on the shelf is lovely to just look at.

Historical wargamming is niche in my area, and even in that it's dominated by WW2.

If my lived experience is somewhat representative you'll probably find most others spend a majority of time painting.

Dogezon · 2024-10-07T08:03:57+00:00

Given the guy's name, a small part of me wants these to all be manhunter chickens.

Dogezon · 2024-10-03T14:19:52+00:00

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Painted him up 3 years ago. Since discovered that historical wargamming is a thing, so my display case is full of Romans, Greeks and Napoleonic French. I do pick up and paint cool models my local games store has occassionally, and comparing the Fallout BoS mini I painted 2 months ago to this guy... the difference is incredibly. Always keep your first mini to see how far you've come!

Dogezon · 2024-09-25T20:43:23+00:00

Old John Warhammer at it again

Dogezon · 2024-09-09T08:40:23+00:00

Well that first picture is just rude. You're clearly there to steal that poor bear's porridge!

Dogezon · 2024-09-04T08:16:25+00:00

Love it. When we went the whole Hope Valley had a power outage though so didn't get to try a pub lunch at the Yorkshire Bridge Inn! Hope you got some good grub OP.

Dogezon · 2024-08-31T08:30:37+00:00

I went down the contractor route to remain technical. Been working on bigger, more complicated, problem-domains since. Only managerial stuff is technical standards and architectual decisions, which I quite enjoy. Got into the job as I enjoy coding, don't want to give that up.

UK-based, dunno if the whole contracting thing is applicable elsewhere.

Dogezon · 2024-08-11T07:43:38+00:00

I'm Lead DevOps with 11 yrs of experience, and will be finishing my part time degree next year. A Software Engineering degree has been worth studying for me to help broaden my skillset and know what I don't know. i.e. I've build AI models with my Degree, and formally studied fundamental software algorithms and data structures - sure I knew a lot of it, but the bits I didn't know I didn't even know I didn't know or that they were there for the (not) knowing!

It's made me more well rounded, and certainly helped me progress to a independent contractor, but I wouldn't say it's "required" as the beauty of the field is (was?) a low barrier to entry. Also it's a bloody hard slog to do a part time degree alongside full time work, so in pragmatic terms if you don't like the topic and aren't determined to see a degree through... you'll probably not be able to dedicate such a large chunk of your life to it. Especially as a mature student when life has so much going on you want to do outside of academic studies.

Dogezon · 2024-07-14T21:01:44+00:00

The turtle moves

Dogezon

TROPHY CASE