Pete Thomas’s Blog

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.

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.