Easter Weekender Part I: The Walk

Jack & Jill Windmills at Trailwalker Checkpoint 8

Well, what a busy Easter weekend for the Hardcore Four; a training walk, some big success with acquiring quiz raffle prize donations, and a surprisingly successful fundraising car boot sale. It was a good job we had the long weekend to pack this much in.  There is soooo much to talk about we are splitting this blog update into three. So we start with...

The Training Walk
Good Friday allowed the team to hike across more of the Trailwalker route as we seek to walk the whole course through our training. This week it was stages 6, 7 and 8, taking us from Washington to Jack & Jill Windmills. The distance should have been 16.2 miles, but in-keeping with what is now a Hardcore Four tradition, we inadvertently increased the distance.  This time though, it was not our fault...honest!

This is the first time we have done more than two stages which meant taking two of our OS maps, and in addition to the route's positioning on those maps, it meant we had to become experts the art of map folding.

A view from the car park at Checkpoint 8

We drove in convoy to the end point first, checkpoint 8, and dropped a car off with Jack & Jill Windmills. It was a fantastically clear and bright morning, although a little chilly. The views from the car park were stunning, but we had a walk to do so we drove back to Washington, our start point.

Washington is checkpoint 5 and it is likely to be the checkpoint where the day support crew, Jeff & Stewart, hand over to the night support crew, Tracy & Peter.

Jo showing off her new BAM trousers

The checkpoint itself is in a field, which outside of Trailwalker time, is not accessible by Joe Public so we parked up at a South Downs Way car park on the other side of the busy A24 and made our way to the real checkpoint so we could follow the instructions supplied.

Gubbs stretching...we think.

Unfortunately they start with "Leave the South Eastern corner of CP5...", which meant the path we should be following was in this field we could not access. We could see from the map that this should follow the west side of the A24 south until a bridge which we should cross. Attempting to walk along the verge of the A24 was quickly thwarted as bushes would have forced us to walk on the road. Valuing our lives more than our stage 6 replica timing, we decided to head back to the car park and work our way up the South Downs Way (SDW) instead.  The Trailwalker route meets up with the SDW in any case, so we thought we would just wait for paths to meet and we could walk down to the road again so to see the terrain we faced.  This is where we earned our additional 3 and a bit miles!

The start of the stage takes you up a long incline so we stopped for a quick stretch at the top. Once you make the top it is all down hill the rest of the way, leaving you to enjoy your lofty position, giving you some of the best views from the South Downs that we have experienced so far. It is unfortunate to think that at this stage of Trailwalker for us it will be getting dark.

The team taking on water in front of Chanctonbury Dew Pond

Continuing along the route we passed a dew pond when we were reminded to keep drinking.

A little further along we saw Chanctonbury Ring, a hill fort built in the Iron Age, turned temple location in Roman times, but now known for its ring of beech trees.

As we approached we heard howling. Were these Iron Age ghosts making themselves known at our presence..?

No, as it turned out it was just a pack of search dogs and their trainers that we spotted earlier in the car park.

Walking towards Chanctonbury Ring

We followed the path around the South side of the Ring and continued on our route.

This was a popular location for walkers and cyclists on Friday.  Maybe it was the extra day off work, the weather, or that we were at a landmark, but we saw more people on this stretch than we were normally used to.

This was Jo's first outing with her new Deuter backpack after finding that her old one was a little too big for the purposes of Trailwalker. Julie told the team about the survival instructions that are printed on the inside of the bag. She started demonstrating the signs to helicopters for 'Yes, I need help' and 'No, I don't need help'. Julie had only finished with her demonstration when a helicopter raced over our heads. We realised that Shoreham Airport was just a short distance away and perhaps practising these signs were not the best of ideas here!

YES PLEASE HELP!

We stopped for lunch at checkpoint 6 which is a small field off the SDW. Jo made some butternut squash soup which was very tasty and really hit the spot! This is one that we'll need to have again on the future walks.

On this walk we all took more food than last week and it seemed to help us stay motivated and energised. Julie made some very nice cookies which we had in our pockets to snack on as we walked and Gem dished her tasty brownies later too.  We started up again 22 minutes later making note to keep an eye on our stop times.

Stile, Gate or Cattle Grid? You decide...

The beginning of stage 7 takes you alongside the River Adur for a short distance before arriving in the village of Upper Beeding. The route takes you into residential housing before heading past a petrol station (where we stopped for some cold drinks and a toilet break), then into another residential cul-de-sac. At the end of this cul-de-sac we met the second climb of the day, this one was the worst though. It was a continuous climb going from almost sea level to 200m elevation. Energy gels and sweets taken at the top prior to hitting the deck, and as we turned back the views were well worth the slog.

It was also at the top of this incline that Gubbs found that his right walking pole tip had gone missing! Cue the *Tink* sound of metal on flint for the rest of the walk.

Paragliders from Devils Dyke

The path continued along the hilltops until checkpoint 7 at the Devils Dyke. This is where we were able to view a number of paragliders being lifted from the top of the hill into the air and gliding in the air above us. What a way to spend an afternoon. It looked very relaxing once you were up there, though we're unsure on your level of control!

We took a 12 minute stop at checkpoint 7 to snack and stretch a little.

From this point on the topic of conversation turned to being able to see the Jack and Jill windmills that we left hours ago. We knew that we would be able to see them on the hilltop, so at every hill we took on in this stage we were asking ourselves if this was the one we'd be able to see the windmills. It seemed that we'd never get there until finally we got to the top of the last one and we could see them. We knew the end was in sight! At this point Gubbs found that his other walking pole tip had also gone missing. We're going to need spares.

No balls please.

After that it was just a case of wondering through a golf course looking out for flying balls. Luckily for us there weren't any golfers playing with a drive like Gubbs, so we survived to run the gauntlet again in July (though in July will probably be going through here in the early hours of the morning!)

Finally the path took us to Jack & Jill and the car. The sky had at this point clouded over and it felt colder again so we were pleased to be heading home.

We completed our trek in 8 hours and 8 minutes covering 19.5 miles.