Inspired by Pete Stott’s amazing poem, here’s my feeble attempt at recording our recent walk in a slightly different style:
As spring-time drizzle surrounds our tent
Dawn chorus voices soon are spent
We make the choice ‘twixt walk and yahtzee
One we may regret quite quickly,
Wrapped in hats and coats and scarfs
We step out down the boggy paths
Aiming for the beacon high
We leave the tents far behind
Up the long and craggy slope
Slowly we toil with little hope
Of ever seeing peak or view
For mist and rain encroach a-new,
Reaching the top we cheer and clap
Then continue quickly, brief look at map,
Along the south downs way we toil
Our noses numb, our trousers spoiled
Meeting few other hardy fools
We trudge along like laden mules,
Descending gladly t’wards civilisation
Spirits raised by good conversation,
Ditchling is our target ahead,
A place to be watered and well fed!
We find refreshments in the White Horse
Settling down to watch England lose (of course)
Clothing drying, licked by flame
“Another drink?” “I’ll have the same”
Warm and toasty by the fire
Conditions outside still quite dire,
Resigning ourselves to our lazy fate
“We’ll complete the walk on a later date”
Provisions purchased for our dinner
A taxi home, the day a winner!
M.Gleave
This weekend we’re going camping. Yes I know it’s only March, and there’s even been some snow in recent weeks, but it’s a very popular campsite and so there wasn’t much choice of dates! The car’s packed, (mostly with clothes, duvets and blankets) and we’ll be heading off straight after work.
This is just a short post to keep you all updated (and in-case the hypothermia is serious). We will of course be walking whilst we’re there…I’ll keep the location a secret for now, so you have to come back to find out all the details and how we fared!
Have a great weekend!
xM
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Oh my feet hurt!
We cracked out our head torches this weekend and indulged in our first bit of night walking. The plan was to knock out two walks, one from Herne Bay to Birchington and one from Canterbury to Ramsgate. That changed fairly quickly on Saturday morning when I realised I’d left something at work so we changed the route and instead of doing Herne Bay to Birchington we did Sandwich and back so I could stop in and grab what I’d left behind. We still wanted to do all our shopping in town on Saturday morning though so we didn’t set off until 1:30pm meaning we chucked our head torches in our bags just in case. The route is a fairly easy one and if you’ve seen my video then you’ll know we’ve done it a couple of times. We got into Sandwich about 3:45pm and headed to the Fleur De Lis for a drink and a dessert. I tucked into a pint of 6X and Chocolate Fudge Cake while Michelle slurped down a Coke and ransacked a apple and rhubarb crumble. There’s something about just walking in and having dessert without having anything before it!
We took it fairly easy and didn’t set off again until nearly 5pm so it was a good job we put our torches in. It started getting dark around Pegwell Nature Reserve and we got a good shot of us with the lights of Ramsgate in the background. It wasn’t until we got past the viking ship that we needed to crack out the torches properly!.
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It was quite cool walking along in the dark and the view of Ramsgate at night is always a good one when you approach it from the west cliff. All in all, although the walk is flat and over well kept paths (well kept to the point of being wheelchair accessible for the majority of it, you’ll need to detour round the cycle path between Pegwell Bay and the Viking Ship and you’ll need a key to get through the gate at the nature reserve) it’s pretty good.
This morning we had good intentions to walk from Canterbury to Ramsgate, to sort the route out before Michelle’s Birthday Walk. However, I was in one of those moods were everything annoys me so I wanted to get some stuff round the house. That meant that instead of Canters to Rammy G we did Herne Bay to Birchington. I think Michelle has got it into her head that we should walk all round the Kent coast. So far we’ve done Herne Bay to Dover in various stages on different days. The one thing about the walk today…my God was it flat. We had the sea on our left, some cool stuff on our right, including a shellfish hatchery, but slogging out the miles along tarmac sea wall isn’t the most inspiring walk we’ve ever done. To be honest it was decidedly forgettable. There were a couple of good things, one being the Reculver Towers and Fort and the other being the challenge of getting the walk done in time to catch the early train from Birchington. It turned into a bit of a sprint for the last section but we made it and were fairly chuffed.
I wore my heart rate monitor on both walks and amassed 3465 calories over 22 miles, that’s 158 calories a mile you know. When you take off the chocolate cake, beer and sausage and chips I had over the weekend though I’m not sure I managed to shift much weight. So much for this coast to coast walk inspiring my fitness!
Anyway, my feet hrut a little bit now from all the hard tarmac walking so I’m off to watch the last bit of Hairspray (strangely a good film) and then it’s a shower, some chilling and then bed.
Have fun,
Sid.
2 friends and the coast to coast walk 