Back in 2005 I was chatting with Alan Sloman who had just written up our TGO Challenge. We had noticed that the volume of entries for the Challenge from newcomers had declined in recent years – probably because its reach didn’t go very far beyond the readership of the (then) main sponsor – The Great Outdoors Magazine. Alan thought that the web would be a superb way of publicising the event to an audience who would otherwise never hear of it.
So I had a go at learning a bit of html, and Doodlecat Mk1 staggered into life. The screenshot below shows how the old site looked back in 2005.
Over the years we accumulated some wonderful Challenge stories. Some were revisited hundreds of times – especially in the two or three months when routes were being planned! I am sure that they were a source of inspiration, information and entertainment for many Challengers, thanks to the excellent authors who took the time and trouble to record and share their experiences.
So if it was so popular, why did I scrap it?
Well, now there are many more personal websites blogs & podcasts that cover the Challenge than twenty years ago, when there were almost none. The main reason though was technical. I had made one huge mistake in designing the site – I had relied on third parties for some key functions.
The biggest blunder was to merge Blogger into the home page. Incorporated & styled with CSS it provided a fully integrated blog function which worked brilliantly – until Google made some changes that collapsed the whole house of cards. A couple of other third party apps, such as blogrolling.com were also discontinued. It all became a bit of a mess, and well beyond my limited skills to put right. Time to let it go.
When the Covid lockdown imprisoned us I had time on my hands and fired up the PC to have a look at the old files. Could it be resurrected, I wondered? Being a bit rusty on HTML mark up I tried WordPress to create a new version of Doodlecat. The exercise was a welcome release from the pot banging insanity!
The new design looked a lot more modern but it needed more than TGO content, so after a while I shelved it. But I didn’t forget it. At the back of my mind a comment from Peter Goddard nagged. He remarked on how valuable it was to preserve those early histories of the Challenge. I decided to give it a second go, keeping the TGOC as the focus, but extending the scope to other areas too.
What you see now is the (almost) finished result. And as I have hosting for the next four years, it will be around for quite a while yet – I hope you will enjoy it! Much of the old stuff is already here, and new content is on the way, especially for the Random Doodles section.
Huge thanks to all who have contributed to the TGO pages over the years and made them such a popular resource.. It’s been great fun putting them together. Your tales have been read by people across the world from Burnley to Beijing, and, come May, perhaps someone plodding through a rain soaked Scottish glen will be thanking you for getting them there 😉.
Toodle pip for now.
Phil
Wonderful to see you back.