We did it with 7 minutes to spare!

Hurrah! The Channel Hoppers made it over the finish line with 7 whole minutes to spare. We ran the last 5 km and finished in 29 hours 53 minutes Fewer than 50% of the walkers made it within the allotted time and the one thing that slowed everyone down was mud, mud glorious mud.

The full story will follow ... but many thanks to all our sponsors, your sponsorship kept us going through the rain, wind and mud.

Pushing our fundraising to new levels!

We're so grateful to everyone who has taken the time to sponsor us on the biggest challenge of our lives in 11 days time - walking 100km in 30 hours.
And we're really excited because today we saw our biggest donation yet of £1,000. That brings our total fundraising efforts to £3,293 to help Oxfam and The Gurkha Welfare Trust.
A big thank you to everyone who has helped us reach this milestone. 
As well as giving us some great reasons to keep going at check point 10, your donation will go to two fantastic causes:
To Oxfam - funds raised through Trailwalker 2012 are especially valuable to Oxfam as they are not tied to a particular project. This allows Oxfam to use the funds where they are needed most – such as the West Africa food crisis, affecting over 18 million people. 
To The Gurkha Welfare Trust - to provide financial and medical aid to the most destitute Gurkhas who rely absolutely on the Trust for a dignified old age as well as community aid projects in Gurkha villages in Nepal. 

So if you haven't yet donated please, please take a few moments to do it today - thank you.

The Mad Walker's Tea Party

With just 11 days to go before we set off on a gruelling 100km walk across the South Downs Way in aid of Oxfam and The Gurkha Trust Paula held a 'Mad Walkers Tea Party'.  

Everyone had a very English time sipping earl grey and filling up on homemade earl grey teacake (recipe on request) scones, jam and cream, and chocolate brownies.

Sally stayed up late the night before producing some delicious whiskey truffles to be sold in aid of our walk.

It was lovely to see Chloe again, here with Paula

The chickens strutted their stuff along with the guests!













Hannah caught up with Georgie over a cup of Darjeeling!

And the chocolate brownies didn't last long!

Friends and neighbours had a great time (even the chickens joined in) and the event so far has raised £100 towards the Channel Hopper's fundraising.

A big thank you everyone for your support.

Doing Trailwalker the French way!

Michele’s husband Philippe and 3 of Michele’s friends took part in the French version of Trailwalker in the Morvan (North Burgandy). The team was called Rosa. Michele, her sister, her nephew and another friend were the support team. This is her experience. 

My experience as support team for Rosa during the French Oxfam Trailwalker on May 12/13 2012  - gorgeous weather but very cold at night.

We were 3 women and one teenager with 2 cars (the girl’s husbands came to check points no 2,3,4 and 7). There were only 7 checkpoints apart from the finish.

There were 113 teams and therefore only 452 people (this is only the third Trailwalker event in France). 

We asked our team by SMS what they would like at the next checkpoint and prepared the place where we stopped accordingly.

We had 2 cars with the following items:

1. Blanket to cover the grass on which we put mattress + towels

2. Large bowl with water so the team could have a cold feet bath 

3. A box which included: arnica oil, equipment for blister treatment, special pomade for muscles cramps or stiffness, sparadrap (surgical tape)… aspirin, Bach Rescue Remedy, Arnica homeopathic remedy, cotton, surgical spirit…

4. An electrical extension cord to be able to plug and charge phone batteries.

5. Boxes for each team members with their own food and clothes/shoes….

6. Electrical kettle + gas and pan to boil water + Isothermal bottles

7. Parasol  and folding umbrellas

8. Camping table + chairs and armchairs

No 1 to 6 were very useful but we did not use no 7 and 8.

We set up an area with the blankets, mattress and towels and each team members had his box ready close by.

They arrived and sat on the ground, took off the shoes, ask for a leg massage (at stop no 1 we massaged only their calves but after that they asked for full legs). 

At the same time they were eating or drinking or just relaxing and enjoying the massage.

They changed their socks and sometimes their shoes.

At checkpoint 4, I told them that at the next stop (kilometres 56) they would be able to shower: but they did want to. They reacted like teenagers; “We don’t need shower, no no!” And then, after they showed in the collective showers (Philippe said that was the reason he was walking with them!!!) , they were really happy that the tiredness had gone away with the fresh water….

At checkpoint 2, they had to walk uphill to get there… and I wrote on the road with a special pink spray: Rosa 100M, and then Rosa 150M and Rosa 250M… that was very funny!

One section of the night walk lasted for 16 km and was the most difficult section of the entire course (ask Jackie, who walked it to illuminate the signs). We managed to meet the team 3 times over this stage: and we gave information and encouragement to the other teams (some had no clue how long they had to walk to the next stop) and we rescued one girl who was crying because her feet were very sore: so I gave her a foot massage with a special relaxing cream: she could walk again, but I don’t know if she was able to finish.

The temperature dropped to below zero at night, but Philippe who famously hates the cold, kept his shorts on all the time. 

My sister and I stayed up all night, and that night was astonishingly dark with a red half moon and millions of stars: we are not used to seeing so many stars as there are too many lights are on all night long. Morvan is not very populated region and villages are scarce so there is no light pollution.  But it was extremely cold: we were walking up and down the road trying to keep ourselves warm:  a hard job. During that time, Jeanne Marie (the 4th member of the support team) went back to our gite with Pierre (my teenage nephew) who decided to go to bed at midnight.

Anne and myself did not sleep, as we were completely into the event: sending energy to the Rosa team and encouraging the others teams. 

Odile, one of the Rosa members who had not been able to sleep the night before, broke the world record for walking while sleeping. At one moment, Philippe had to take her arm and walked with her for almost one and a half hours: at the beginning of an ascent, he told her: “Now Odile, you have to lift your feet because I am not going to lift them for you” 

Philippe also rescued another girl who thought it was too late and was sure she would not make it. Her team was the last one to finish the 100km…..

Team Rosa completed the course in 28h45 and ran the last 200 metres.

We were so proud to have been the support team of Rosa, who told us that without us they would not have been able to reach the end in such a good form.

Friendship, partnership, fluidity, sharing, empathy, compassion… GREAT!!

Welcome to our new team member, Jennifer!

Sadly, we have to announce that Sally has bowed out of this year’s Trailwalker, due to being submerged by an ever-increasing pile of work.

This stumped us for a while, but after pouring several glasses of wine down her throat, and then explaining that it would be a doddle, Jackie has managed to persuade her very good friend Jennifer Fox to join the team!

Joking aside, Jennifer is a great addition to the team – a half marathon runner – and avid cyclist, she is already on top form – as she proved when she came out on her first practice walk with us, which just happened to be 45 kilometres! She took it all in her stride and even ran the last 4 Km home.

For those who don’t know Jennifer, she is American but has lived in France for more than 25 years, and lives in Dieulefit (where I, Jackie lives) with her French husband Stephane, her two dogs and her three donkeys.

At last, Jackie, who has been doing all her practice walks alone up till now, will have someone to walk with, the only question is will she be able to keep up with Jennifer!

Feet, our feet .....

When we talk about feet, it’s often to complain: “my feet hurt”, “I’ve got a corn on my toe”, “I’ve got a callus”, or a blister… In fact we often think about our feet only when they hurt, as if our feet were required to serve us without having any kind of right to complain and without deserving any special treatment.. Moreover, we think that our feet, just like other parts of our body ‘are there to do our bidding’ and that, without requiring any specific attention, or preventative care, they will stoically put up with all the tests that life brings.

However, we do pay a great deal of attention to what we covers our feet, our shoes: for women, shoes must be beautiful, often with elegant and shapely, high heels in order to show off our figure at its best. And yet, these shoes are often terribly uncomfortable: hurting, compressing and crushing the toes, cutting off the blood flow and sometimes causing backache.

But when you think about it, our feet our possibly the most important part of our body: how would you move without feet? On your hands? By crawling, like a worm? Our feet deserve better: our feet, your feet deserve your attention.

Here is my advice for taking care of your feet in preparation for walking:

1. Treat yourself to a pedicure to remove all the hard skin from your heels and toes and ensure that your toenails are not too long.
2. Every evening (or every other evening) massage your feet with shea butter or one of those many creams, which boast ‘anti-rubbing’ properties. This could become part of a regular ritual or in preparation (1 or 2 months in advance) for long distance walks.
3. Before a walk, some feet appreciate a dusting with talcum powder while others like to be rubbed with oil. Yes, really! - with arnica oil (or any other appropriate oil-based preparation). Whatever you choose, make sure you put it in your backpack.
4. On your walks, take several pairs of socks with you, to make sure your feet stay dry.
5. As soon as you feel the slightest hint of pain or rubbing, stop and investigate the problem.
6. Bring something with you to cope with any potential blisters: the choice of treatment will depend on the size and the place where the blister occurs, as well as where you are, and what you are going to be doing the next day: walking or resting.
7. Some people prefer to pop them, others think that’s the last thing to do,and instead apply special blister plasters: make your own mind up, after testing both methods. Personally, when it comes to large painful blisters, I prefer the first method. I prick them with a disinfected needle and thread (I leave the thread in the blister): this allows the liquid to drain from the blister straight away and then, when it closes up, it will drain again when you pull on the thread. Purists use syringes to extract the liquid and then inject a product such as Betadine to dry it out.
8. Finally, If your feet hurt: stop and massage them: believe me, they will love it!

There you go! That’s all I wanted to say!

First taste of the South Downs

Day 3 (Sunday).

Down to business. At last Michele and Jackie get their first taste of the South Downs. On the agenda today: 38 km along the first section of the trail from Queen Elizabeth Country Park to Amberley. Given that we had only done a maximum of 25 km up till now, this was going to be quite a test. We started at 8 am. The rain, which had been falling earlier in the morning, finally stopped and Michele’s rain dances throughout the walk helped keep it at bay! (A missed photo opportunity, if ever there was one!). Our two warm up walks had stretched our legs and now we were feeling fit and strong ...

and able to really start putting the pace on. Armed with our walking poles we made good progress, reaching the first checkpoint in under 2 hours. We stopped for lunch just before the second checkpoint and then stopped again at the third checkpoint to drink tea and eat delicious cakes at the farm shop in Cocking. The farmer told us only 11 miles to go to Amberley. Which seemed nothing. It meant we were more than half way, but in reality it seemed so much further and was definitely the hardest half of the walk.

Paula trailed behind us tweeting and texting to the world. 

Michele marvelled at ever more trees and Jackie complained about her knee! Philippe put up with us all magnificently, as we walked over hills, through woods and across fields of flowering rape! 

We were encouraged on our way by the mating calls of hundreds of pheasants and the first cuckoo of the year.

Finally we were in the final straight around 5 pm and with one last push up Bignor Hill, 

it was all downhill from there. Unusually, our walk through this part deserted Sussex countryside was accompanied by deafeningly loud music, apparently from a rave party going on in a copse close by! We arrived in Amberley at 6pm – completing this section in 10 hours, which is pretty much bang on target!

Jim, Paula’s husband, and half of our support team was waiting to ferry us back to Godalming. Thank you Jim! To say we were tired at the end would be an understatement! But at least we have all managed to complete the distance. Onwards and upwards (although not too many upwards bits) with the training!

What is it with Surrey?

Day 2 Saturday.

What is it with Surrey? After the Devil’s Punchbowl, we started this walk at the Devil’s Jumps!

Despite the worrying place names, the walk proved to be full of stunning scenery, picturesque villages and former water mills. Paula calls this walk ‘the Real Estate’ tour! Whatever the label, it’s clearly fifteen kilometres of English countryside at its best!

We were joined on the walk by Jackie’s friend Claire, who will be joining Michele and Jackie for a week of intensive training in France in June.

During the walk, we tried to put into practice everything that we learnt from our walking coach about Afghan walking. Jackie had still not got the hang of it, as this photo shows:

She is trying to swing her hips, look up and bend her knees, all at the same time. Keep trying, Jackie!

Michele, still chasing trees, spotted this fascinating specimen, which had absorbed a fence as it grew. 

We were all exhausted after walking up a particularly steep hill...  but we managed to follow instructions and stretch our weary bones ready for tomorrows onslaught ... 

26 miles of the South Downs Way! 

Easter Weekend - return match in Surrey and the South Downs

After the first full team weekend in France, it was the turn of the French half of the team to visit their English teammates over Easter.

Michele and Jackie (accompanied by Philippe, Michele’s husband) dutifully rendezvoused in Godalming for 2 days of warm up walks around the Surrey countryside and our first test walk across the South Downs.

Day 1 (Friday) was a spectacular tour of the Devils Punchbowl and its surrounding countryside, the highlights being Gnome Cottage ...

 

wild ponies ...

             

and a James Bond film set!

Michele very quickly revealed her hitherto unknown love of trees, which required us to stop every five minutes to take a photo of the latest arboreal wonder…

Sally kept us entertained with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the area, and regaled us with a story of dastardly deeds in the graveyard of Thursley. To top it off the weather was fantastically warm.

Training in the Jura Mountains: Part 2

On Day 2 (Sunday 24 March) we were joined by a local French team (team Rosa) who were training for their own Trailwalker on 14 and 15 May.

Michele had hired a coach to give us all tips on long-distance walking. Agnes Godard runs courses in Nordic walking and Afghan walking (that isn’t walking with an Afghan hound). She keeps llamas and in summer months has a yurt in the mountains. She gave us great advice on how to use our poles (we’d been doing it wrong), on breathing techniques for climbing hills without getting out of breath (they really work), on stretches and exercises to do before, during and after, on footwear and on nutrition. You can read more about her (in French) here.

It looks like we’re having a Sunday snooze or practising the dying fly, but this was one of Agnes’s preparation exercises.

This was the view from Michele’s house and the route we were taking (just to the right of the big bare slab), 400 metres (1300 feet) up the sheer side of Mont Saleve to the cow pastures on top (heaven only knows how they get the cows up there…) We thought we’d had enough steep hills on Saturday to last us for a lifetime, but we woke up on Sunday (admittedly not until 10 a.m.) fired up with enthusiasm and ready for the day.

Going up: LSBF: Little Steps, Balls First (that refers to the feet, guys). There must have been at least 40 of these switchbacks, which we climbed without pausing even once to rest. The poles helped a lot, and so did Agnes’s breathing tips. As the slope gets steeper, breathe in for two steps, breathe out for two steps: 2/2. Paula thinks we were climbing non-stop for at least an hour. I have no idea, I was too busy counting my breathing.

Going down. As ever, harder than going up. Bend the knees, said Agnes. Keep your sticks out to the side, in case you get one entangled in your feet and trip. ‘Inspire for three breaths,’ said Michele, ‘and then’ (to our alarm) ‘expire for ten.’ She meant ‘Inhale’ and ‘exhale’.

Further down, once we were off the vertiginous goat-tracks, Agnes showed us some great techniques for relaxing and stretching tired muscles towards the end of a walk. Walking backwards was one, and taking it in turns to lead each other blind was another. Walking several strides and then leaping several strides was a third, which looked completely surreal with all of us leaping together, but really helped to loosen us up.

Scenery, weather, good company and training: altogether it was a wonderful weekend that really made us feel we were getting there. Thanks to Michele for her brilliant organization and hospitality, and to Jackie for keeping us going with her excellent homemade isotonic drink.

Next leg, England, two weeks later…

Team time. Rosa (left) and Channelhoppers (right) with Agnes (far left). Trailwalker here we come!

Training in the Jura Mountains: Part 1

On 23 March Paula and Sally flew to Geneva to walk in the Haut Savoie on the borders of France and Switzerland, where Michele lives (lucky Michele!). Jackie drove up from the South of France to join us. On the Saturday we walked 25 kilometres around the Vuache, a solitary outcrop of the Jura mountains that juts 1,105 metres (3,625 feet) above the valley of the Rhone.

Michele had recently walked 50km with one of the French teams training for their own Trailwalker in May, but for the rest of us 25km was the furthest we had been in months – or even years. Still, we had to up the level of our training from casual to serious at some point, and this was it.

The walk was tough, but the wonderful scenery kept us distracted from aching muscles, for most of the way at least. Limestone cliffs and precipitous gorges, rare flowers and chestnut woods, old forts and stone-built villages, parts of which looked like they’d hardly changed in several hundred years. Things got difficult when we thought we heard Michele say that we were fifteen minutes away from where we had left the car. Our joy was unbounded – until she explained we were fifteen minutes away from the next village, and we still had another 7 km to go. Nevertheless, we made it, and retired stiff but happy to unwind in Michele’s basement sauna.  

Plus ca change! Hazards are the same wherever you’re walking. Fortunately the big bad bulls were not at home

In Chevrier a friendly old couple were happy to take a team photo and wished us well when we told them what we were doing. ‘Mais vous etes fou!’ they said.

Fort l’Ecluse guards one of the routes from Switzerland into France. You can see why they built it here. The archway and windows looked like a face staring out of the mountain, or like something from Lord of the Rings

Not quite a via ferrata, but we wouldn’t have wanted to scramble along this leafy ledge without the help of the wire. It’s a couple of hundred feet straight down through the trees to the Rhone. Fed by glacial meltwater here, the Rhone was the most amazing colour. We’d never seen a major river that shade of turquoise before.

A welcome rest for tired limbs and time to pay attention to Michele’s mantra: Learn to Love Your Feet

Arcine. The road up to here was practically vertical, or at least that’s how it felt to us at the time. A kind woman refilled our water from her kitchen: we needed it, as it was in the twenties by then (you remember, it was that hot week in late March…) Even Jackie, who feels the cold, was down to her T-shirt

On the track down to Chaumont, the third of the mountain villages we passed through. The kind of view that just keeps pulling you onwards

Somewhere around here we passed this winery with its mural of grape-pickers. Paula and Sally couldn’t resist joining in, while Jackie looks on

The beautiful little Erythronium ‘dent de chien’ (or dogtooth violet to us linguistically-challenged Brits) grows on the slopes of the Vuache in spring, and is the symbol of the local trail which crosses the mountain

The Road Less Travelled: no matter how far there is to go, who could resist the call of a track like this one

Welcome

We look forward to sharing our journey with you as we train for the UK Trailwalker 2012.

So what's the challenge?

Over 15 and 16 July we'll be walking 100 kilometres (62 miles in old money) of the South Downs Way to raise money for Oxfam and The Gurkha Welfare Trust.

And we must do it in 30 hours or everyone will have packed up and gone home.

As if that challenge isn't enough, two of us live in south-east England and two of us live in France.

While Michelle has done some regular long-distance walking, Jackie and Sally have never done a challenge like this before. However Paula completed the Trailwalker last year and says it was one of the most amazing experiences of her life. When she decided to do it again, we were inspired to join her.

So how are we doing? Well, despite the geographical challenges, we have already managed to channel hop and train as a team twice.