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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Checkpoint 9 |
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.
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| 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.
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| 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...
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| Next time we are here it will be after 24 hours of walking! |
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