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.