This is a many-sided problem and no one solution is going to work for all events (or people), but possibly one way of reducing the number of individual cars traveling to and from events would be to arrange a minibus link to the nearest rail/bus station (if buses/trains arrive early enough) or town with a YHA / large concentration of B&Bs.

I know there are any number of reasons why this might not be practical in a lot of cases & it may not help at all with the 'O/T or challenge walk?' dilemma, but it might help reduce car miles to events which start within a reasonable distance of a town with good transport links.

The convenience of being able to go straight back home independently is lost, and it might become necessary to stay overnight in the area more often for events a long way from home, but the number of individual car miles (and gallons of petrol used) would be reduced, which would at least be a contribution to reducing environmental pollution, as well as acknowledging that, as Tony says, the issue is not going to go away.

[Helen Southall]

This problem is not going to go away. For cost and environmental reasons we need to reduce car mileage as much as possible. How do we do it with least impact on our lifestyle expectations? Jumping into our cars to travel to challenge walks is the most convenient option, but how much inconvenience are we prepared to accept with alternative solutions?
Public transport is impractical other than possibly for those living at the centre of transport hubs. Car sharing is the obvious solution. Friends can organise this by word of mouth but if we hope to extend it's use we need a communication system. Perhaps the internet can provide this.
One possibility would be for the LDWA to encourage members to sign up with one of the liftsharing websites. Perhaps another is to make use of the online entry system by adding a "lift available/required from" column which would be visible when accessing the entry list.
The success of such a system would depend on sufficient people using it to make it viable, and the willingness to accept the possible inconvenience of hanging around at the finish of an event waiting for a slower liftshare.
Any more ideas?

i converted my van to run on LPG at between 48 -60p a litre it softens the blow a bit, and means i can still travel and the time out of the house means the heating is not used there.

works for me

JohnK

This is an old problem. With so many of our events being held on a Saturday, it used to be either stop up for a long drive after a 04:00 finish or do four hours overtime and pay the bills. More times than not the bills won. Mind it was the same for a Sunday event O/T or bills.
David H

After having just read my Npower new charges and panicking( up by nearly 50%!!)- it is a toss up whether to continue travelling from the the east coast to the challenge events/social walks of other parts of Northern England (fuel in the petrol tank), or not turn on the heating!

Hmm - this Paramo is great for keeping warm! Hello to West Yorks/Cumbria and Nidderdale etc! Has anyone else got these decisions?

On another note- what is anyones favourite challenge event/social walk name? My fav at the moment is the Harden Hard'un... and it was! But great it was too!