Pete Thomas’s Blog

Sorry for the delay in posting this, I hope you didn’t all think the traing had got the better of us. After last week, I must admit I was nervous about being about to do 2 eight hour walks on two consecutive days. It was quite an achievement to do 8 hours, but to come home exhausted and aching, then get up the next morning to do it all over again is the only way to know we can do the trek in the Andes for 5 days.

Well, it all went quite well. Started off yesterday in the good old New Forest. First intereresting thing was an adder. Unfortunately it was roadkill but brought home to us how close to very wildlife we are. And I was careful where I trod for the rest of the day.

We got lost (seems to be feature of recent walks), but finally found a pub for lunch after being misdirected up a very steep and long way round, but it was probably the biggest ploughman’s lunch in the world with about 10 ounces of cheese. Rest of the day was long, loads of hills (see picture - of course once again I had to run a head to get this shot) but we got home tired and aching, but not as bad as last week.

Next day was fine! The first half hour was a bit achy, but we went on a very hilly walk in the South Downs. Towards the end the aches turned into pain, but you just endure it and put one foot in front of the other thinking of how nice it will be when it’s all finished.

And it was - 36 miles of hilly trekking in two days. And the morning after we both felt that we could do it all over again for another two days, albeit with industrial quantities of moleskin and Compeed. We’ve progressed from ramblers with the Hampshire Teashop Walk Guide to trekkers with Ordnace Survey map and a compass (even though we’re not always that good at using it). And that’s the end of our official training, we “rest” a bit for the next two weeks, just a couple of mere 6 hour walks now and again to keep the muscles in shape.

It’s not all exhausting but somehow enjoyable walks round the countryside that get more and more exhausting, we also have to do weekday walks. Just when you thought you could give the calves, knees, thighs and blistery bits a chance to recover, there are also several weekday walks. Not so easy when you also have to carry on making an honest living, but I manage to do this by walking round Southampton common for a couple of hours. It’s very flat, but I make up for its lack of resemblance to Machu Picchu by walking very fast and doing arm-stretching and breathing exercises at the same time. Does wonders for your lack of self conciousness.

Compared with last weekend, this might have been a bit easier. We walked along the Pilgrim’s Way from Winchester to Upham and back, a round trip of only about 14 miles. No, no, no. It turned out to be either walking up hill or downhill. Even the level bits seemed to be hills (see photo - and yes, once again I had to run ahead to get the picture). So quite good preparation for the Andes (although I imagine the air isn’t quite as thin on the North Downs), but what with some very rugged and slippery slopey terrain undefoot we were beginning to feel we were progressing from ramblers via hikers to trekkers. But then you have to respect our predecessors the pilgrims who used this very path without Scarpa boots, Goretex or Compeed.

We managed to get lost again just before lunch (becoming a bit of a theme). This time we ended up in a field where a bunch of cows suddenly formed a line and stared at us menacingly. True to walking mythology we suddenly realised they didn’t have udders. Luckily they weren’t actual bulls, as Laurie pointerd out, they were steers and in a sort of macho adolescent kind of way were doing their best to be aggressive, nudging each other and saying “go on, you gore them to death”, then realising they didn’t really have the balls for a fight they moved off sideways. Later on we met a deer suddenly right in the middle of a field.

Apart from the foot pains (which I’ll discuss separately), we both got home feeling completely exhausted and aching from head to foot, on account of the amount of gradients involved. We also woke up feeling the same which was a bit disheartening: the trek is only 3 weeks off now. However it seems that this happens: you wake up thinking you can’t possibly even move for a day, but once you haul yourself out of bed and stretch a bit, the aches sort of subside. (But only “sort of”). I feel I could have gone on another walk today, but it wouldn’t have been easy. Next weekend is the 2 x eight hours. Aaagh, still I’m very grateful we are keeping up with the prescribed training schedule. And it’s great to see some of the best bits of rural England. Here are some pics of just a couple of the sights that helped the Pilgrim’s feel it was all worthwhile:

Especially this after a long walk uphill getting lost in the rain:

So far I haven’t had actual blisters, but some very painful areas on my left foot: the pad just below my big toe and the lower part of my heel. I hate these more than blisters because they are spread out and harder to define. The problem with my toe is not so much a blister but to do with lack of cushioning, ie I could do with more fatty tissue on the bottom of my feet, however my metabolism works in the usual way for gentlemen of a certain age, any extra fatty tissue goes towards enhancing the beer gut. As you can see from the boot discussion earlier, I’ve started to address the problem with new boots, but of course even though they can now be padded out with the incredibly expensive odoureaters, they still need breaking in while the affected areas are not yet healed, so I’m trying the conventional blister solutions: moleskin or Compeed. Laurie tells me people tend to either swear by one or the other. I’m currently swearing at both while I try them out: I have moleskin on the toe and Compeed on the heal. I’m resigned to the probability that due to the ever increasing training schedule I may just have to learn to control the pain, as the only way to completely heal them may be to go to bed for 3 months.

I was initially disappointed to discover moleskin is not real moleskin but an artificial molskin with a sticky side and a moley side. Being an animal wildlife lover I’m very glad there aren’t loads of mole farms. I suppose roadkill moles would be ethically sound, but most roadkill round here are hedghehogs. Not so good for blisters.

Compeed seems to be a very hi-tech sort of second skin, with very complicated instructions about peeling back various layers of protective packaging flaps and things (more than an inkjet cartdridge). You also heat it up for a minute before and after applying. You’d think that after all that palaver it would stay on if you have a bath, but no. Still, I suppose real trekkers don’t have baths so that’s alright then. The good thing about moleskin is that you can take it off before a bath or shower, and it still has plenty of sticky to reuse it.

You’ve read about our experience of being caught in the worst downpour since records began, Goretex is now our best friend. When I first bought the waterproof trousers I got home and thought, F***, I’ve just paid £90 for plastic trousers. No, no, no. I ‘m so glad I didn’t take them back and buy the £9.99 Pacamac trousers from Matalan. I soon realised once they were on that they had some great features. Not only a zip on the bottom outside of the legs to help put them on over your boots, but there is a sort of double zip feature so you can also unzip the outside of the legs from the top of the leg downwards if you want a bit of ventilation on your thighs without undoing the whole thing from the bottom upwards and having them flap about in the breeze. I hope you can follow this, easier to understand (just) if you are actually wearing them.

There is something deep in your psyche that makes you not want to put waterproof trousers on. I don’t know if it’s just the palava of pulling them over your boots or a macho thing, but once you’ve experienced boots full of rain you know you need them. The problem is scattered showers (which is what the weather forecast always says as they have to hedge their bets - you can’t really really complain if they are wrong about scattered showers, if it doesn’t rain they’ll just say you weren’t in the place where they were scattered).

On the last walk (which included scattered showers) I had the Goretex trousers on but felt slightly uncomfortable on the inside of my right thigh, even though my normal trousers were quite light and comfortable. So, I took the plunge (having threatened Laurie for a while with removing my actual trousers and just wearing the waterproofs), and we stopped (luckily a bit later than than the sudden meeting with the Fickles Hole Riding School weekly outing) for me to remove my trousers and resume the walk in just the Goretex trousers.

After some trepidation (and hoping I wouldn’t turn into a Goretex fetishist), I realised that it was actually working quite well and that maybe I could become friends with these trousers, especially the upper zips on the outside leg. Just a pity there is no zip at the front.

Apart from one round of begging emails to friends and clients, my fundraising has all been via donations on my website and forum, along with any advertising revenue from the sites. We were initially going to try yardsales and fundraising parties, but so far things are looking quite good as it is and I’m quite close to the target £2650, but of course it will be nice to make more.

Luckily the main site seems to be quite popular, I have plenty of jazz and saxophone tutorials which unlike many comparable online resources, are available free of charge, but I do of course suggest that donations for the fundraising are welcome.

“Sampleaid” is working particularly well. This is where I make my own custom made working audio files available. Many music producers have such a library which they have built up over the years, and are usually a jealously guarded personal unique resource, and mine was no exception until last year when I decicded to make part of it available via downloads and CDs in order to help with the fundraising. I set up a “Sample Aid” paypal account so the funds can be kept away from my own business earnings and all the income can go straight to APEC.

The saxophone instruction DVDs are also selling very well, but I have to buy these from the producer so can only donate the profits to the fund. They are also available from Amazon and various other on and offline retail outlets so I have a bit of competition with those.
The UK Saxophone Teachers directory is not doing so well. I thought that this would attract more applicants than it has. I’ve raised a small amount with it, but realised that it needs a lot more publicity and work getting it networked via other online directories. I won’t give up on this, but because of the amount of work it will have to wait until after the Peru Trek.

We started off walking round North Kent (not all of North Kent, just a bit of it). It was raining quite hard so it was good to test out not only our waterproofs (never without them since that disastrous time a few weeks ago), but our spirits as well. Luckily both held out so we blasted fearlessly and defiantly through the damp and dripping Hayes Common with typical British pluck - stiff if slightly wet upper lip. Then it stopped raining after 2 or 3 hours. (But still with scattered showers of course).

I had decided to try the new pair of boots, but thought it best to wear the old ones for the morning and break the new ones in during the afternoon, but just in case I carried the old ones in my backpack. As it turned out by lunchtime the old ones were still causing some pain, I put the new ones on and it seemed the one area that would probably need the most breaking in was right where the most pain was, however they were brilliant - my worst nightmare (ending up in the Andes with the wrong boots) is now laid to rest.

The afternoon went well, lots of hills (see picture. Please note that to get this picture I had to run ahead up the hill).

After the 8 hours we didn’t feel too bad at all, Laurie had a slight blister) however the next morning there are plenty of aches and pains, so we’re quite glad the traing schedule has a couple of single 8 hour walks before the double 8 hour (in two weeks’ time).

NB, looking the photo you might think it’s a flat field with a vertical field behind. That’s my bad photography. It’s actually an (almost) vertical field with a flat field behind (honest).

Got some new boots today. These are not as macho looking as my previous leather ones, but they are lighter and ventilate better. Most importantly there is room for the shock absorber insoles.

Saxophone players use an expression “Gear Acquisition Syndrome” or “GAS”. It’s very often associated with amateurs, but can quite easily spread up the food chain. Us hardened pros are usually happy with a beaten up old instrument and have no need to succumb to all the latest accessories (unless of course we are lucky enough to be sponsored), but I still occasionally feel the need to by the latest NASA designed waterproof neckstrap.

But when it comes to trekking gear, walking into the outdoor shop is almost on a par with waliking into a stationary shop. I become the ideal consumer and drool over all the lastest hitech equipment and accessories. Sometimes my inherent thriftyness wins out, and tells me that an £80 trekking pole is actually a stick so I end up walking with a stick I found by the river Itchen. Funny thing is when I was on a walk recently and left it somewhere, I actually went back (downhill) a mile or so to retrive it as if it was an £80 stick. I wonder if I’m going to need to bring my stick to Peru, how do you explain to customs why you are bringing a bit of a tree on a transatlantic flight and back?

The big one. Two six hour walks one day after another. We did it. Not easy.

Saturday was an easy morning as Jim and his grandma were with us so we just did a two and a half hour amble along the Itchen from somewhere to Ovington where there is probably the best pub in Hampshire.

But then the afternoon was long and hot and exhausting. Laurie’s new boots had been causing problems (she thought they were run in but no) so we went home for the old boots and decided to walk round Southampton. Not sure if it was the mundanacity of walking up and down hills in Bitterne or the annoyingness of Itchen Valley Country Park only letting you have UHT milk with your tea (”Sorry you can’t have real milk with your tea, we need that for milkshakes” - and so I paid an extra 45p for a “glass of milk” to put in the tea), but this was a hard afternoon.

Next day we thought we would take it easy so six hours round the reasonably flat New Forest seemed a good option. The first half hour was a bit scary as I was aching from the previous day anfd thought I’d never make it, but that soon wore off and the beautiful surroundings soon took over. (The New Forest is a pleasing combination of treeishness and open savannah).

However things got a bit tricky when we got lost in the woods, I won’t go into detail as it would involve blaming Laurie’s map reading skills, but it was very very scary when we thought we wouldn’t make it to the pub in time for lunch. Vultures were soaring overhead and wolves were getting closer, but finally we got to a place we’d been to before (yes we’d done a complete circle) so we got our bearings and made it to the pub just in time. Lunch was not as good as the pub in Ovington, but memorable for our exit. We accidentally let a very enthusiastic New Forest Pony into the pub garden as we left. A big pub garden full of chavs.

So onward and unexpectedly upward as we discovered a very nice bit of the New Forest (up north) that is very hilly and probably previously unexplored. A long long long long but nice end to the dual 6-hour marathon.

Except I realised that I really needed shock absorbers in my boots as I had some quite considerable pain in the balls (of my feet) - see 2nd Weekend. This means buying not only shock absorbers (i.e. another type of expensive odour eaters), but also new boots as there is not enough room in the old nicely run in boots for the shock absorbers.

(Or is it Podometer - I can never remember). Laurie bought me this for Christmas and its great. Here is an example of what it tells you:

Pedometer mp3 audio file

It’s great to get to the pub at lunchtime and know that you can replace all those calories. As long as you make a creative guess about the number of calories that need to go back in it’s no problem.

However, the lady in the podometer sometimes lies. You can walk for hours sometimes, hit the button and be told that you have walked 0.32 miles.