....so the challenge really is now on. We spent this weekend honing our finely tuned walking, compass reading and orienteering skills, tackling night walking and some more big hills...or so we thought...
Friday night- a balmy summers evening. Ideal for sitting outside, sharing a drink or two and stories of the week with friends, relaxing after a hard week at work and easing yourself gently into the weekend. Well, for us four, we had to spurn all social invites (of which, of course, there were many) and headed round to Mrs MacLeod's for some dinner and last minute preparations for the evenings walk. Yes, at last we had decided the time had come to spend some time walking under cover of darkness in preparation for the big weekend..
The darkness came sooner than we had imagined, with the electricity getting cut off and whilst Niamh valiantly went to rectify this slight hitch in the evening's plan, the rest of us could only wait with baited breath in anticipation of the walk to come..Crisis over, and food poisining averted we set off for the night.
Imagine the scene- four young women, who would normally be spending their Friday evenings very differently and wearing slightly more credible clothes, dressed in shorts and tracksuits, big cagoules and fleeces, with very attractive and sturdy walking shoes and socks on, setting out for a Friday night on the town...or walk round the town. We did an 11 km loop around Hampstead Heath area, passing through the nicer parts of London - Belsize Park, Highgate, Hampstead, but even that didn't detract from the fact that we looked completely ridiculous. For those of you who know London, you will know this already, but those of you who don't, it's fair to say that no-one gives you a second glance in this crazy place. There are so many different people in London, with different senses of style, "cool" and how they want to live their life, that if you pass the man who sits by the canal in Camden Lock, tattooed from head to foot and with about 50 piercings on his face alone, you wouldn't even give him a second glance. So when we were strolling around the neighbourhood after midnight on Friday, it's fair to say that we did feel slightly self conscious at the fact that not one, or two, but so many more people blatantly stared at us in the street and gave us funny looks...we must have looked a right sight!
But back home from the trauma and to bed for 1.30, and up at 6.30 to catch the train down to the South Downs again on Saturday morning. Again, the rucksacks were packed and re-packed, walking gear donned and we had all had a better sense of what was to come. We had walked the South Downs before, not this particular section, but we knew that despite not looking our best, the clothes we were wearing wouldn't attract as much attention as they had the previous night. Challenge one of the day had been faced and overcome.
After a sneakily steep hill right at the beginning of the day (ow!), the rest of the day was fine-the weather was cooler and breezier than last time we were on the downs which was a relief for us all. We each took a turn at reading the map, honing those compass skills, and trying to stick to timings and become more disciplined with our breaks... I think its fair to say that at some points our map reading skills were fantastic (being dumped by our taxi driver in the middle of the countryside and managing fairly quickly to work out where on earth we were and which direction to walk) but at some points perhaps they were not their best - wandering aimlessly along a track, chatting away and only realising we had been walking the wrong way for about half an hour when we attempted to enter a deep forest which seemed to be guarded by a wild deer...unless the South Downs Way had become a bit riskier since we were last there, leading us to dark places reminiscent of Harry Potter plots, we were pretty damn sure we were lost.. Re-tracing our steps took about an hour out of our day and timings started to wane a little, from us thinking that we were 45 mins ahead of time at one point, to catching our train 2 hours later than planned...
It's fair to say we all felt a little dejected after that, but we persevered and despite blistered feet, tough decisions to make over whether we would rather be an Olympic Gold Medallist or President of the USA, or whether we would rather give up meat or alcohol, heated debates over whether tables on trains or patches of grass in the countryside were preferable to eat sweets from, we came away achieving a lot and still being in relatively high spirits, if completely knackered. Our map reading skills have improved immensely and we all now know how to use a compass and, let's face it, the biggest thing we have learnt is realising when we are lost, how we are going to sort that out and get back on track....and not get lost again.
All valuable lessons to learn, and better late than never with only 11 days to go....
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