You are listening to the Hiking Radio Network, where we talk the walk with shows by hikers

about hikers for everybody. Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis, joins Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine.

Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This is episode number 496 of Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail,

the ultimate midlife crisis. On the show, we introduce you to a number of different people

who walk trails all around the world, though we tend to focus largely on the Appalachian Trail

because, well, it's kind of the title of the show. This week we have an Appalachian Trail

Completer from the class of 2022. My friend Barry Hill introduced me to Charles Bruce or

tracker a couple of weeks back and conveniently sent me his contact details. So I got on to him

and like many of us who hiked the AT, Charles was very happy to talk about his adventure.

We'll hear from Charles in a moment. Then, as always,

we catch up with both, rather, all three, members of our Mighty Blue Class of 2025. Beth and

Andrew are now past the halfway point and, as we spoke yesterday, we're about to hit the rocks of

Pennsylvania, which start just outside of Duncanon. We'll catch up with them both after Charles.

Then to round out the show today, Dave tells us about his 10th and 11th states, as he is on

the verge of Vermont. Those miles are sliding past quickly for our class members, and particularly

in Dave's case, he is only about six weeks from the end. These are such exciting times when

you know that accidents aside,

you're going to make it. You've got your game face on and it starts to feel like it's a job,

lacing up your boots every day and walking with your world on your back and making camp that

evening. It's the simplest possible life and one that in the moment should be savoured because

it's unlike anything you'll do again, unless of course you're crazy enough to go again someday. Just before we got on to meet Charles, I wanted to say a word about those inserted ads that I added to the show last week. I hope they weren't too much of a pain, but they really helped the show, and I now know how many will be in each week. We already have two at the beginning and two at the end, but I'm now adding ads dependent upon the length of the podcast. The guide that I've been given is for shows between an hour and an hour and a half, which is what most of ours are, there'll be six ads in the middle, broken into two sets of three, as I did last week. If it's even longer than that, please God it's not, the guidance is

for two sets of four ads, and if it's less than an hour, two sets of two. I hope that's clear,

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