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.