Pete Thomas

We’re leaving today, might get a chance to update the blog if I find an internet cafe up there!

Bye

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:

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).

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.

This weekend we almost reached the extreme limits of human endurance - 6 hours walking the South Downs Way without a cup of tea. At one stage late in the afternoon we arrived at the top of a very steep hill where there was a lane. All we had to drink was two teaspoons of water in the water bottles (we’d frozen them but they hadn’t thawed out as it wasn’t as hot as expected so they were still mostly ice). “I could really kill for a cup of tea right now” I said. At that exact moment a car pulled up right next to us and 3 old ladies started pouring themselves cups of tea. I looked at the old ladies, then at my stout and sturdy trekking pole (aka stick). Then back at the old ladies slurping their tea without offering us any and back at the stick. Their lives were saved only by the arrival of a couple of miserable boy scouts. (Walkers in the country usually say “morning”, these ones just scowled and looked down at the ground).

This walk was basically the one we should have done last weekend if our boots hadn’t filled up with water. Except we did it backwards. (The route, not the walking). After a brisk 3 hour walk in the morning with lots of “up-hill-and-down-dale”, we stumbled across a very dead deer. Knowing that Jim (our 6 year old) would appreciate it, I packed its skull (complete with antlers) into my rucksack and headed on to the pub for a ploughman’s. (Hoping the deer’s head didn’t smell too badly). We’d actually seen a ploughman earlier so it seemed to be appropriate to eat a Ploughman’s. I just hope it wasn’t the last one as he might have been hungry.

We then set off for the afternoon. Laurie, feeling brave, thought we should also do a hilly walk in the afternoon so back up old Winchester Hill, but the steep route. It started to rain and of course this time we had our waterproof gear. Just as we almost got to the top of the hill we both realised how tricky this trekking malarky can be. Laurie’s feet swole and she realised that she should probably have bought some bigger boots, and my knees started to hurt. Blisters were there on the soles of my feet but a pain in the knees can be a real pain in the a***. Luckily Laurie had some anti inflammatories and I made it down the long long descent in one piece. I expected the worse and thought I’d wake up the next day needing crutches, but surprisingly I felt fine. Can’t wait for next weekend which is two 6 hour walks. That’ll be the real test.

This was supposed to be one long walk of six hours, but didn’t quite turn out like that. We drove to Exton in the Meon valley and planned a walk that would start off with some hilly bits, as close to the Andes as the South Downs gets. We managed quite nicely up Old Winchester Hill, thought about how much more out of breath we might be at 14,000 feet, admired the bronze age earthworks then down to the pub for a quick lunch. That came to nearly 6 miles, about half the walk.

As we ate our lunch in the pub garden it started to rain. Laurie didn’t have her waterproof jacket (I smugly had mine in the rucksack) but neither of us had waterproof trousers so (being a gentleman) I gave her my jacket and we decided on a 2 mile shortcut back to the car, nip home for more waterproofs and resume part two in the New Forest even if it was still raining. However it wasn’t just rain. It was a downpour with thunder, lightning, cats, dogs and probably frogs. It was raining so hard you couldn’t actually see and within 3 minutes I would have won a wet tee shirt competion. It took about 30 minutes to get back to the car, by which time our boots were full of water and squelching so we had to abandon the rest of that day as you can’t walk in wet boots and expect your feet to not disintegrate. We’ll need to do more during the week to make up.

Now we know that you really do need the expensive Goretex trousers or your boots could turn into paddling pools for the very rare Andean Poison Arrow and Panpipe Frog.

We went to the Outdoor shop in the morning and they fitted my boots with some special insoles to soften the bottoms and stop the blister, sort of deluxe £32 odour eaters. We left the car at Shawford, a station half way between Southampton and Winchester and planned to get a train back to eastleigh and walk up to Shawford. We miscalculated the mileage and got to Shawford in two hours, so quickly planned a further route up onto Twyford Down, through a golf course where we got lots of dirty looks (as if we weren’t on a public right of way), then across a footpath over the motorway, up St. Catherines Hill and back to Shawford along the Itchen Navigation canal. I had to remove the deluxe odour eaters as they made the boots too tight but at least they had me through the 9 miles of up-hill-and-down-dale without the blisters getting worse. I’ll try without them next time and see if my feet have toughened up. This was a good bit of training as there were plenty of hills and it was an incredibly hot day and we got through the weekend without too much pain.