Gem's Totally Sole-less

Welcome to Spring! The weather over the last week has been fantastic and the story was very much the same Sunday. This week the team had planned a walk in the afternoon due to Gubbs' running commitments in the morning. It was going to be a one way adventure through stage 3 and 4 of the Trailwalker course.

Gubbs in the Eastleigh 10k in the morning*

The morning started off with Gubbs lining up for the Eastleigh 10k alongside Iwan Thomas (when we say lined up, he was also in the same crowd of 2,500 runners). Gem, Jo and support team members Stewart, Peter & Tracy all turned up to provide Gubbs with some support from the sides, which I'm sure they would argue was just as much effort as the running given the shouting, waving and clapping involved. Gubbs would argue different...

After a decent run in the strengthening heat of the morning's sun there was time for a quick shower and lunch before meeting Julie at Houghton Viewing Point at the top of Houghton hill, from which we would leave one car, and drive to checkpoint 3, Cocking.

For future reference, while attempting to get instructions on how to get to Houghton Viewing Point, be careful what web sites you access on your work computer from the Google search listings. For one of the top options, which was accidentally selected, highlighted that this viewing point is also a hotspot for gay cruising. With work laptop browser history deleted, we met Julie at 2pm, who then drove us through the windy country roads back to Cocking.

Gem & Gubbs have walked Stage Three in the snow back in early February, and so although it was the same route, it was good to see it looking a little more like it will in July.  For Jo & Julie this was a first time of seeing this part of the route. The course starts by going up a decent sized incline but when at the top it levels out and although there are some ups and downs they are quite gentle.

With the sun beating down on us at the beginning it was good to get in the shady woodland which stayed with us, at least one the right side (South), for most of this first section. For July this would be a good stage if you get a sudden urge for a 'tinkle'.

Rapeseed field at the end of Stage 3

We reached the end of Stage 3 walking through a field of rapeseed, which will turn to a field of yellow in the summer. Further on through that we reached a grassy field which will become a check point in a little under four months time. Here we took some time to stretch, take in the scenery and most importantly eat some of Julie's now famous flapjack.

Once we started again we descended down the hill to the busy road which we crossed to the path opposite. On entering this path we were met with a foul smell which stopped us mid conversation. This wasn't a pleasant experience. It looked like there was a trench filled of all kinds of nasty smelling things with a sign on the fence saying "Warning: Keep Out". Don't you worry we made our way away from there as fast as we could, up a new incline.

Something we have found on our training walks so far on the South Downs is that each stage has it's own character, and Stage 4 was again different to Stage 3.  This was more open and also threw in a few more ups and downs. This stage also had more loose chalky tracks which were not the nicest underfoot.

That's a funny way to hold your poles Gem

It was along this stage that Gem realised that she hadn't put the inner soles back in her boots! To explain; when buying new boots a couple of weeks ago she also brought a pair of Superfeet Green Innersoles which she decided were so good she would wear them in every pair of shoes she wears. So at this point of the walk she remembered that these innersoles were back home in her every day shoes... oops... She will not be making the same mistake again as these paths were uneven to say the least.

Gem was navigating today. After her boast in the team profiles released last week about keeping the team on track, it was realised she hadn't actually done much of the map reading. She did a good job considering we didn't end up getting lost. Maybe some of this may be down to Jo exercising her new act of measuring distances in her stride as we walked step by step. As an example; when we were told through the instructions that a important branch in the path was 150 metres away she measured this by counting her steps which she adjudged to be a metre. We witnessed the birth of the Nugent Strider Measurement (NSM).  However, on the one occasion it was unleashed it turned out to be 30 metres off so it was given up fairly quickly.

Old Roman sign and modern white car

Part of Stage 4 covers an area which housed a Roman villa back in Roman times (it's just a guess). So when walking along here, archaeology enthusiast Julie had a keen eye out for Roman pottery. So naturally we were excited when Julie exclaimed an excited "Check this out!" after picking up an item from the floor.

...Unfortunately, to our disappointment, on this occasion it was a piece of pottery coloured plastic.

There is that saying, "every cloud has a silver lining". For us yesterday losing an hour sleep moving to Summer Time, meant gaining an hour sun at the end of the day, and this was well needed towards the end of our walk. As we made our way down towards Houghton and checkpoint 4 the ever lowering sun give a chillier feel while also providing some dramatic light against Amberley and hills on which we could see the pathways which we would take on stage five. But that wasn't for today and we worked our way back up a different incline towards the car park looking out for any cruising gentlemen.

Getting darker

We finished our walk at 7:15pm walking a total of 11.75 miles in 4 hours and 27 minutes.

As we drove back to drop Julie at her car in Cocking we were given every chance to run down a pheasant as these birds seemed to have some kind of a death wish. It was officially Pheasant Hour, so many of them wondering the roads you would be forgiven for thinking they had their own Trailwalker. In an attempt to move them on Gubbs resorted to some strobe light flashing of the headlights which did absolutely nothing but add a disco effect to their evening stroll. 

So that was our Sunday. We hope you enjoyed the read, but before you go, there is just one more thing for us to tell you...

The Hardcore Four Trailwalker Pub Quiz is open for bookings!

The details are as follows:

Date: Sunday 27th May 2012

Time: 4:00 pm 

Location: The Queen's Head, Fisher's Pond, Eastleigh, Hampshire, SO50 7HF

Entry Fee: £5 per person (Teams of 5 please)

Prize: £50 in cash!

Please get in contact through our media outlets (Twitter or Facebook) or if you do not have either accounts please try our newly created email address: HardcoreFour2012@gmail.com

Or if you know any of the team members well - send us a text or give us a call and we'll book you in.

Please be aware there is limited space so get in touch as soon as you can!

*Picture courtesy of Paul Hammond of Eastleigh Running Club (http://www.flickr.com/photos/hammy8241/sets/72157629303445152/)

Hairy Back to the Future

This weekend passed with no team training. This was due to Gubbs & Gem's 'break' to Center Parcs with their old Uni pals. So this meant this weekend was a real mix of activity from the team...

Friday saw a determined Julie continue the good work of previous weeks by putting in the miles. 15 in fact, around her local area. A good distance for walking on her own. So definitely no training break for Julie!

Jo has been seeing a physio the last couple of months to aid her recovery from a running injury and this weekend she took a big step by running again, and this time with no pain! It may not have set any distance records, but it's a good start for what we hope will be a long injury free summer.

As mentioned earlier, Gem & Gubbs went away for a weekend to Center Parcs in Longleat forest with their old university friends for some fun and games.

For those of you who are not familiar with Center Parcs it is a holiday park for those looking for a somewhat active break, and we had a blast.

Lots of badminton, tennis, swimming and of course cycling. This was a real cross training weekend (that's our excuse to pass it off as training anyway). It was far from an easy ride with some of the hills. Our accommodation was obviously at the top of one hill which made for much entertainment and pain while attempting to ride back to after a busy day of sport etc... The legs have just about recovered.

Anyway a highlight for us had to be uni friend Chris being taken off in the current of the water rapids with his face trapped between the wall and a big hairy chap's back. You haven't seen a man with more panic in his eyes! Of course it goes without saying the rest of us were in stitches at his misfortune! Memories flooding back of 'Along Came Polly', with Ben Stiller's character getting a hairy sweaty chest in his face while playing basketball (see here for the YouTube clip).

So back to more relevant news, at the weekend we crossed the £400 sponsorship mark so we'd like to take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors for your generosity. If you are reading and enjoying these blog updates and have not yet sponsored us, please feel free to by clicking on the big Virgin Money Giving button at the top of the page (or here if you are reading on mobile).

In other fundraising news, on Thursday night, Jo, Gem & Gubbs will be visiting the pub that we have booked for our quiz night to sample the food and drink... Err, I mean check that all the facilities are up to scratch... We will be joined by support team member Stewart and team friend Brendan who also would like to 'approve' the facilities.

More details on the quiz night to come once we have finalised them.

Finally our training plans this weekend will consist of a team walk.  This will be stage 3 and 4 of the Trailwalker course on Sunday afternoon going from Cocking to Houghton and we are very much looking forward to it.

NB: Thanks to Uni friend Anna for the photos!

Shorts in March?!?

Yesterday saw the team come together for a walk in East Sussex. Due to Julie & Jo being in Brighton already for a family meet up arranged for the Saturday, Julie & Jo suggested Gem & Gubbs met them on the Sunday to train the last couple of stages of Trailwalker, which of course finishes at Brighton Racecourse.

Kingston-near-Lewes from hilltop

Well prepared, after a night out which saw them dancing the night away in a classy "sticky floor" night club until the early hours, Julie and Jo managed to get to the meeting point early to meet Gem & Gubbs. The meeting point was at the before mentioned racecourse and it was our intention to walk the route backwards (in terms of the route rather than literally) from the end of the Trailwalker course to checkpoint 9 in a village called Kingston-near-Lewes, which as the name suggest rests just south east of Lewes.  We were then to turn around and return to the racecourse in Trailwalker mode taking in the landmarks and challenges along the way and storing them in our memories for July.

Walking on Sunshine!

This was Jo & Julie's first training outing on the Trailwalker route and we got started by walking along a track that took us along the back of houses with some great views of the South Downs on the left.

Talk started about 'The Call of Nature'. How frequent would bushes appear along the route if you were to receive one of these 'calls' while out on the trek? Would there be enough cover? What happens if there are lots of people?

With all three of the ladies agreeing that they will probably hate Gubbs after the event for being a man and apparently being able 'to go' anywhere, we made our way along the track further until we hit a busy road crossing. The track then went on further with a slight incline away from the houses, and any other signs of urban life, to the top of a track decline which would take us down to checkpoint 10. Though downhill now, it meant that this was going to be the last incline of note we would have on the way back and also when we return in July. 

Hmmm Jelly Babies

Checkpoint 10 is handily located near a derelict looking barn. We believe this is one checkpoint where the support crew will not be making an appearance, probably based on the very limited access. This was where we had the first treat of the day; a handful of jelly babies. The team then undertook some stretching exercises while Gubbs checked the map for the route to the next checkpoint.

We set off again following a track that took us meandering around the base of hills to a point where we made a relatively steep ascent to the top of one of them. The motivation here was lunch! Getting to the top meant we could open up our egg rolls as supplied by Gem. We were also treated to a new, and very tasty, variation of Julie's flapjack which really did wonders for the energy levels. Due to the unexpected spring heat, this was also the point where Julie and Jo decided to ditch the bottoms of their trousers legs to get the shorts working for them. 

With Gubbs polishing off his lunch before the rest of the team he decided to check the map board located at the top of the incline we just made our way up to, just to confirm that we were indeed where we should be.

Checkpoint 9

...Unfortunately for the second week in a row, we went the wrong way.  This time a little more dramatically... at checkpoint 10 where we went left, we should have gone right. That mistake took us the other side of Castle Hill National Nature Reserve and if we had kept along the route we would have found ourselves back at the Racecourse a little sooner than intended!

With new location and directions found, and whilst trying desperately to convince the team that this was the plan all along, Gubbs led the team along the hill top following Jugg's Road (which was not a road but actually just a track on the hill top).

Fortunately Jugg's Road took the team straight into Kingston-near-Lewes, down a relatively steep descent. On entering the outskirts of the village, the trail levelled out and we walked to where we assume checkpoint 9 will be on the day, an open field with a white building nearby which looked just like a windmill missing it's sails.

At this point we got out the chocolate mini eggs (the benefit of putting in the miles is that you can eat what you like!) We reset the watch and set back to Brighton in Trailwalker mode.

Check out those legs!

Stage 10 is a very small one at only 4km (a little under 2.5 miles), but it has a decent sized 125m incline in the middle of it. This is by no means as bad as say Beacon Hill tackled last week, but it stretched on much further than our legs would have liked. We can only imagine the pain you would be feeling at this point on the day itself after walking for 20 odd hours!

We got to the top at which point Gubbs decided to join the team in exposing some flesh and unzipped his trouser leg bottoms too. This was also when the team put on their sun glasses as we were now walking into the sun. In doing so Gubbs gave some advance warning to everyone that it was not the sunglasses, but rather his ears, that were wonky.

We continued, managing to follow the correct paths and field crossings back to the barn and checkpoint 10 passing fields of sheep with their lambs bleating at us as though we interrupted their peaceful Sunday afternoon.

We checked our watches for the time to complete the stage and we managed to complete this in 57 minutes,  which we were quite pleased with.  We then checked out the suggested Trailwalker time for a team looking to complete the challenge in 24 hours - 1 hour and 52 minutes... The 12 hour teams would apparently complete this in 56 minutes!  Either we have seriously upped our game, or this is a mistake in the map guide! We conceded that perhaps we were not elite athletes after all and carried on to the racecourse.

Almost there now...

After following the route back we decided to actually take the Trailwalker route into the grounds of the race course to simulate the finish as much as possible (with less aches and pains now I assume!). I have to say it took a lot longer to walk that racecourse then we had thought and it's worth keeping that in mind for July!

The last stage we completed in 1 hour and 15 minutes which is about 8 minutes faster than what the guide gives us for a 24 hour finish so we were pretty happy with that.

The stats for the full walk were 5 hours 7 minutes (including a 15 minute lunch break) taking in 13.3 miles (21.4km)... it would have been about a mile less if we followed the correct route...

Next time we are here it will be after 24 hours of walking!

The Day We Earned The Name 'Hardcore'!

This is the first blog update by team member Jo – so please excuse if it’s not as entertaining as our ‘media mogul’ Gubb’s usual stories!

Sunday saw the turn of team members Julie and Jo to complete their weekend training walk, and we couldn’t have picked a worse day weather wise!

The route was just under 12 miles, starting from Winchester Train Station, on to St Catherine’s Hill, and then taking in the countryside between Twyford, Shawford, and Oliver’s Battery, before heading back down in to Winchester.

The rain had been teaming down all morning, which meant wet weather gear was in order – waterproofs on and hoods up!  Not a very pleasant day for a walk!

Having completed this route once before, as part of a training program for the Shine London marathon for Cancer Research, Julie and Jo thought they had the beginning part of the course nailed and so set off without looking at the directions.  Big Mistake!!  Without even walking a mile the team members already headed in the wrong direction taking the route that was supposed to be used for the return leg of the journey, proving that a sense of direction definitely does not run in the Davis ladies genes (a point that can be well and truly testified by support team member Jeff!).

However, having realised their mistake, Julie and Jo quickly headed back to Winchester Cathedral and picked up the correct route once again (after a good read through of the directions!).





Wet weather gear on, we stopped for a quick snap of the newest sculpture outside the cathedral



The beginning section of the route took in the pretty streets of Winchester, before heading down to the river, past the old flour mill (where a section of the old Roman Wall can still be seen), and then onwards alongside to river in the direction of St Catherine’s hill.

 

 

Nice weather for ducks - or swans!

St Catherine’s Hill is a dramatic chalk hill to the southeast of Winchester which can clearly be seen from the nearby M3 motorway.  The Hill, on the westernmost extremity of the South Downs National Park, rises steeply to a summit of 318ft and provides fine views over the Itchen floodplain, nearby Winchester and the surrounding countryside – or it would have it the weather hadn’t of been so goddamn awful!  The top of the hill is ringed by the ramparts of an Iron Age hill fort (much to keen archaeologist Julie’s interest), and is also home to the remains of the 12^th century chapel of St Catherine, as well as an interesting Mismaze, the origin of which still remains a mystery but it is thought to have been created in the 17^th century.

Not to be outdone by Gem and Gubb’s hilly walk on Saturday, Julie and Jo also encountered steps on the accent to the summit of the hill, along with a few stray cows which Julie had to heard onwards up the hill to continue along the path.  The ground was wet, muddy and slippery making for a pretty treacherous accent.



Mooooooooooove cows!



On reaching the summit, we bumped in to a pair of soggy farmers searching for said missing cows in the rain, so we were able to helpfully point them in the direction of the misplaced animals, and continued along the slippery, muddy path.

The hill descends on the other side down into Plague Pit Valley (Nice Name!), and we followed the kindly constructed wooden stairs down in to the depths of the plague pits, along the bottom of the valley in the direction of the farm land leading to Twyford.  At this point, after 2 hours in the relentless rain, Jo realised that her jacket was not fully waterproof when the water had soaked through to her skin!  A new walking jacket may be on the cards!  We also discovered you can never have enough pairs of gloves in wet and windy weather – we got through 4 pairs in total and could have done with a few more!!

Surviving the Plague Pits



Baby cow

Moving on in to the neighbouring farmland and climbing up hill once again, we came across a tiny calf sheltering in the ditch next to the path with no mother cow in sight.  Having spotted a sign on the way into the field with a number to call for ‘cow emergencies’ Julie ran back to the fence to make a note of the number in her mobile phone and we set off in search of the baby’s mum.  Luckily a little way further down the track we spotted her, and were able to press on with the walk safe in the knowledge that the calf was probably just sheltering from the weather!  Clever cow!

Our route continued to take us uphill, passing neighbouring Hockley golf course.  With the weather worsening by the minute, and no sign of any brave golfers on the course, Julie and Jo decided to take some shelter underneath a wooden porch on the golf course, which also provided a chance to stop for some ginger tea and chocolate eggs.  Luckily we did this just in time, as the next minute huge flakes of snow began to fall from the sky, and it quickly became, in the words of Julie ‘near blizzard-like’ conditions!

At this point support team member Stewart decided he would phone Jo and let her know that it was snowing at home, whilst he was snuggled up on the sofa under his blanket!  Grateful for this ‘update’ Jo informed Stewart that she and Julie were actually out in the snow on the top of a hill, at which point Stewart kindly offered to come and rescue them if they needed it!  However, we’re not called ‘Hardcore Four’ for nothing, and therefore decided that we would head on out into the blizzard!



Blizzrd on the hills!


On hitting the wintery conditions our journey changed from a walk, into a quicker walk, to a slight jog, then speeding up even more so we could get down off of the hills as quickly as possible in to somewhere more sheltered from the elements!  Jo would highly recommend her Meindl walking boots to anyone looking to purchase some boots for trailwalker, they are super lightweight, with good grip, and completely waterproof!  The walk this week definitely gave some serious testing of this factor!

We eventually arrived back down in to the valleys, passing Julie’s ‘ideal future home’, a picture of which is attached for support crew member Jeff’s reference(!), although it didn’t look quite as appealing as the last time we’d seen it in glorious sunshine back in September last year!  It was still pretty spectacular!



Julie and her house


The walk then picked up the path of the river Itchen once again, although following the continuous downpour of rain, sleet and snow; it began to become difficult to distinguish between what was the river path and the actual river!

 

 

Which ones the river?!

After wading through the soggy path for a mile or so, we eventually emerged at the Bridge at Shawford pub.  Now this pub has a showbiz history, having been the location for the infamous death scene of Victor Meldrew from One Foot in the Grave, in a hit and run accident! ‘I don’t belieeeeeeeeeeve it!’

 

 



Victor Meldrew's final stand

The Bridge also happened to be a few feet away from Shawford railway station which has direct trains back to Winchester…. Having been extremely tempted by this fact, cold, wet and hungry for cake, and having seen that the next train was due in 10 minutes time, Julie and Jo spent some serious time debating whether to give up on the walk and head back in to Winchester for some food…. However, being part of a team with the name ‘Hardcore’ has a lot to live up to so we decided to press on and finish the remaining 4.5 miles of the walk!

The next part of the route followed the village roads round through Shawford and onwards in the direction of Oliver’s Battery.  Strange name for a village but it is actually named after Oliver Cromwell’s siege on Winchester during the English Civil War. 

At this point the rain/sleet/snow had begun to ease slightly, and the fact that we could see Winchester Cathedral in the distance over the downs gave us some encouragment that we were approaching the final leg of the walk.

Just to prove any doubters wrong who may think we did cheat and get the train back, here is a picture of the Cathedral in the distance!!

We didn't cheat - we kept going through the elements!

We then picked up the route of the river again to head for St Cross on the way back into Winchester.  Now, the thought of the little café at the Hospital of St Cross had been what had kept driving Julie onwards during the previous 10 cold and soggy miles, as we had stopped there for a hot drink and some homemade cake on our last adventure on this route back in September, but alas, our luck had not yet picked up and the café was closed.

The Hospital of St Cross is actually a medieval almshouse founded by Henry de Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror between 1133 and 1136, and is the oldest charitable institution in the UK.  The Hospital still continues the tradition of the Wayfarer’s Dole which can be obtained by anyone asking for it, and consists of a small flask of ale and a hunk of bread.  If we hadn’t been so close to the end of the walk at this point, we could have been tempted by this ancient custom!

However, undeterred by the closure of the café and forgoing the Wayfarers Dole, we had a quick stop for one of Julie’s delicious homemade flapjacks and continued to follow the river back down in to Winchester, returning through the old cobbled streets to the Cathedral.

Our paced quickened considerably at this point at the thought of finally getting back to the cars and home for a nice warm bath and change of clothes!

One thing's for sure, we can only hope we don’t have that sort of rain or snow in July!!

You Know It's Steep When There Are Steps

With Jo and Julie organised for their walk for Sunday morning, the other half of the team (Gem and Gubbs - you guys must surely know the names by now!!) were out for a Saturday morning stroll with ever present support team members Peter and Tracy.

The route planned was Stage 2 of Trailwalker which is from Harting Down to Cocking (or Hilltop Farm in the official maps).  Cocking is the checkpoint from which Gem & Gubbs launched their first South Downs Trailwalker training session, while it was covered in Snow in early February (here's the blog entry if you can't remember that far back).  In addition, while Peter & Tracy would head home from Cocking, Gem & Gubbs would make their way back to Harting Down in order to increase the miles from previous training weeks.

Our hopes for a nice clear walk were dashed on the drive to meet Tracy & Peter.  Heavy rain greeted us as we made our way up the A3.  We decided to stay positive in the mind that this would be our first training session in some hard rain and that if last year is anything to go by, it has every chance to rain in July too!

We made the drive up to Harting Down car park and we were greeted by no rain, but some rather thick mist.  This is when we realised the spectacular views of last week would be lost on us today.  Unfortunately, it was not only the views that would get lost on us... so would the actual route!

Lost?

Now this is an good opportunity to realise how difficult the night sections are going to be. Only seeing up to a hundred meters or so in front of you does not help the navigation and this soon led to disagreements on the official path. This week's map reader Gubbs could only look at his map and instructions in confusion and a small amount of panic when everyone realised that we were in fact off course.

Luckily for Gem & Gubbs, Tracy & Peter have had some experience of walking this route before and so they were able to inform us of our mistake early on before we ended up back at the car park, or some other undesired place, perhaps more distant from our course.

After managing to reach the route again, we were confronted with Beacon Hill. Now, we have heard many things about this hill (mostly from Peter & Tracy actually) but our original thought was that with the mist we would be lucky/ignorant enough to not see what we were up against until we were up there! A well timed gust of wind soon took care of that, almost by divine intervention, the view to the top of the hill was provided to us and we were surely glad that we brought a spare pair of underwear.

Those are some big steps

So we trekked up the steep incline to the top of Beacon Hill...slowly. Our ascent was not helped by the slippery chalk path or the slick grass to the side of it. Progress was indeed slow and a few breather breaks were used up in this section too. Gem made use of some of the steps that have been built on the climb and this is when Gubbs said "You know it is steep when there are steps". Quite right too.

The worst feeling of this was also that we would not gain the benefit of a good climb with any decent views, as by the time we were to the top the mist shrouded us again.

As we followed an equally steep track down the other side of the hill we were met by the sound of a lost dog (we presume) howling for it's owner.  It gave the Downs an eerie atmosphere in the mist and we only hope that owner and dog were reunited shortly afterwards.

We followed the track up another steep incline (this stage is a real tester!) and then down to a field, followed by some woodland. After this point the worst was over (for the route to Cocking at least), and the mist started to lift. By the time we were 3 miles in, the sun even started to peak through the clouds!

Gubbs with Devil's Jumps

We stopped for some early lunch by the Devil's Jumps which are Bronze Age burial mounds. You can see these from the Trailwalker route very easily, so for any teams reading this, it is something to look out for on the big day.

After the woodland the landscape opened out and at this point we were able to see the types of views we thought we would be kept from this week. The sun was out and the clouds and mist were gone.  The route took us along the top of the Downs and then down to Cocking and the car park where Peter & Tracy would be leaving us, and we would turn back to do it all again. From the top of the hill we could see the start of stage three of the Trailwalker course but this time it was green fields rather than the snow white we saw in early February.

Now at this point, where the path took us down the hill, we could have decided to turn around to avoid the additional incline on our return... It was thought about, but not ones to cheat we kept going down into Cocking which greeted us with the smell that only a full shed of cows could greet you with.  On the way back up I think we recorded our fastest moving time getting past the shed again!

Beacon Hill again. This time going down & with visibility.

With Gubbs constantly repeating how different the day was compared to when we started, while also being smacked in the face with his waterproof map holder by the wind, we made our way back, moving up the previous descents and down the previous ascents.

We were surprised to find that we recorded the time on the way back of 2 hours and 7 minutes, which was 45 minutes faster than the way to Cocking (2 hours 52 minutes). In total we covered about 13 miles in just under 5 hours.  An all round good day.

Gem & Gubbs are taking a rest for Sunday, when Jo & Julie pick up the reins.  Keep an eye out for their blog update tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.