ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

The final countdown

With one week to go, I had made lists of the essential items, bearing in mind that everything would have to be carried, so anything that was a luxury was immediately banned from the back pack.Μύ Nicholas, being away, had not been able to spend much thought organising the trip and was more concerned as to where his lunch was going to come from each day and what it was going to consist of.Μύ

I had been walking a few miles a week for a few months and thought that would give me an adequate level of fitness.Μύ However, by planning the walk over six days, that meant a couple of days of eighteen miles each, especially the first day from Lynmouth to Withypool, which meant a climb of some 1,200 feet into the bargain.

It's a long way up!

So a test run was called for and leaving home at eight in the morning I walked the lanes and byways around home, covering twenty miles, climbing 1,500 feet and carrying a back pack with β€œBilly the brick” in it.Μύ I arrived home at five in the evening, sat down on the terrace and could not get up again!!Μύ Is this a totally wise move, going on this walk on Saturday?

Another thing that the trial walk had taught me was the likely distance to be covered in a day.Μύ Early on in my thought process I had found a chum who had walked the route. Well, when I say had done the walk, it was his wife that had completed the journey and he had joined her for a couple of sections.Μύ Sensible chap, I was now thinking.

β€œYou must bear in mind,” he said, β€œthat you will be able to cover the ground at two miles an hour.”Μύ He must be joking (I thought), I walk at three and a half miles an hour, up hill and down dale, and I’ll cover the ground in half the time.

How wrong that turned out to be.Μύ By the time I had allowed for sniffing the air, looking at the view, lunch, drink stops and most of all keeping on the straight and narrow, two miles an hour is exactly the speed that the practice walk achieved. This turned out to be one of the best pieces of advice as it allowed the start and end times of each day to be planned with at least some degree of accuracy.

I had prepared a list of essential items and weighted them in the back pack, tried it on, unpacked it and sent the list to Nicholas in case he wanted to replicate it.Μύ However, his list of essentials seemed to centre round energy bars, chocolate biscuits and pork pies.ΜύΜύ I could identify with the latter.

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