Top 20 Posts of 2010

Published on 28 December 2010 in , ,

So every Christmas time I do a series of blog posts basically called Bods’s Review of the Year where I do a Top 20 of popular blog posts of the year.

Review of the Year

And I ummed and ah’d about it this year as I wasn’t entirely sure whether to bother or not, but I thought, stuff it. I don’t actually care if anyone else is interested cos I am. So I fired up Google Analytics and took a look. And I realised, Houston, I have a problem.

Not that I don’t have a Top 20 of most visited posts, but that, well, I can’t really make an interesting post going “ooh, look at what people look at?!”

Why? Well because the posts have a bit of a theme.

For example, the posts at number 20 and numbers 11-15 which are about walking Wainwright’s A Coast To Coast Walk, the first part of which was published in August and September. So that’s six down already.

Then there’s number 10, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Well they’re my series of posts about walking the South Downs Way, most of which were published this spring.

It’s not that I’m not grateful that my walking posts are so popular. I’m very glad people seem to enjoy them, and do spend quite a bit of time on the pages reading them. It’s not for nothing that my first ever e-book was about my journey on the Coast to Coast. It’s just that the walking interest of my readership means that this particular posts just doesn’t make particularly interesting reading. There’s not as much quirkiness as normal.

Still, eagle eyed readers will have noticed that the Top 20 does contain five posts not about the South Downs Way or the Coast to Coast. So let’s at least look at them.

19 – Splitting your train tickets – more train fare madness

Ulvertson Train Station

Posts about buses and trains have, historically, done rather well on this blog and that continues here with number 19. It was a post about how I was going to make a train journey from Windermere to Newcastle. And the single fare for all the journey was £35.90. But if I bought one ticket for each train I needed to use, the single fare was £7.90 cheaper. These were all standard, walk on tickets. No advance ones – nothing like that.

I didn’t understand the logic. I still don’t.

18 – Trawling my top ten photos (on flickr anyway)

Water Lily Greenhouse

Funnily enough my most viewed photos on flickr don’t tend to feature that many walking photos, and have a bit more quirkiness. I mean, at number 7 is a terrible photo of Catherine boarding a TGV.

I normally like to analyse why pages get enough attention to get in to the Top 20, but I suspect in this case it’s got something to do with the photos of a Dalek and of Brent Cross.

17 – Yet another BBC iPlayer launch

BBC iPlayer on Freesat

Ah, you lot like a bit of BBC iPlayer don’t you? And I work on BBC iPlayer. So there’s a connection there. This post is from September when we launched the MHEG version of BBC iPlayer on a Freeview TV for the first time. Expect a bit more of that next year.

16 – Pennine Way Shambling

Lichen covered signpost

And you thought you were going to escape the walking posts in this bit, didn’t you? Sorry, out of luck!

When we started walking the Pennine Way in 2007 I never got round to blogging about it, and I intended to keep it that way. However our attempts to finish the route in March and April didn’t succeed and were such a horrendous adventure that I felt compelled to write a quick overview post about it. Clearly given it’s made it to number 16, I should have written a lot more! (And I will be in 2011 when I finally catch up with last summers walking related blogging!)

8 – You bought an advance train ticket? Silly Ewe…

Train fares from London to St Bees

And finally at number eight, another one on the madness of train ticket prices. For this was the year that I discovered you can buy flexible, walk-on tickets on the same train for cheaper than some of the advance tickets.

It still makes no sense to me…

So In Conclusion…

So what can we draw about this? Well some of you clearly like walking related posts.

Which is a funny thing because I was pondering recently moving all my walking related stuff to a new, separate site because I felt it was a bit hidden here. I even bought a domain name.

The new site’s going to be called Rambling Man. But I haven’t started building it yet so there’s no point in looking. Meanwhile in the New Year I’ll also be publishing my series of posts about walking The Dales Way. And I might do a book too.

But I’ll still be wittering on about the rest of the stuff I witter on about. And in case you’re wondering, here’s that Top 20 in full.

  1. Planning A Trip on the South Downs Way
  2. Walking the South Downs Way: Day 1 – Winchester to Exton
  3. Walking the South Downs Way: Day 2 – Exton to Petersfield
  4. Walking the South Downs Way: Day 8 – Alfriston to Eastbourne
  5. Walking the South Downs Way: Day 4 – Cocking to Amberley
  6. Walking the South Downs Way: Day 7 – Lewes to Alfriston
  7. Walking the South Downs Way: Day 3 – Petersfield to Cocking
  8. You bought an advance train ticket? Silly Ewe…
  9. Walking the South Downs Way: Day 6 – Upper Beeding to Lewes
  10. Walking the South Downs Way: Day 5 – Amberley to Upper Beeding
  11. A Coast to Coast Walk Day 2 – Ennerdale Bridge to Borrowdale
  12. A Coast to Coast Walk Day 1 – St Bees to Ennerdale Bridge
  13. A Coast to Coast Walk Day 4 – Patterdale to Bampton
  14. A Coast to Coast Walk Day 3 – Borrowdale to Patterdale
  15. A Coast to Coast Walk: Walking Wainright’s Walk
  16. Pennine Way Shambling
  17. Yet Another BBC iPlayer Launch
  18. Trawling my top ten photos (on flickr anyway)
  19. Splitting your train tickets – more train fare madness
  20. Planning a trip to walk Wainwright’s Coast to Coast

Tomorrow we delve in to the archive posts and see what’s there…