Once You Enter, You Can Never Leave This Park

Determination IS everything...

Yesterday we had our Trailwalker prep session with the good people from Oxfam, the Queen's Gurkha Signals and last year's entrants the Haslemere Normans, providing us with the information we need for our challenge in July.

We'll post some of the key points we took from that session once we have reviewed our notes, but for the time being we can say that we found it very useful and gave us an inspirational boost too!

We decided that while we were in Queen Elizabeth Country Park (QECP) it made an awful lot of sense to use this as an opportunity to train on the first two sections of the Trailwalker course.

So Gubbs & Gem dropped a car at the now much used car park in Cocking (checkpoint 2), and met Jo & Julie at QECP prior to the prep session.  After the session, and spurred on with a new sense of determination, we first trekked around the short woodland trail in the park.  This is a 1.9 mile trail around the southern part of the park and the purpose of this was to up the distance on the previous training sessions...as it turned out it probably wasn't required...

A fence-less gate to the countryside

After the short woodland trail we made our way to the Trailwalker start which is on the Northbound side of the A3. You start by walking under the A3 into the car park and along the roads in the park, which we presume on Trailwalker day it will be closed to the park traffic.  We probably should have followed the paths rather than dodge traffic, but we lived to tell the tale so no harm done.

There was a little bit of discussion on the route we were to take as on the supplied 2011 Trailwalker maps it shows the route marked on a path that is not the South Downs Way, which makes its way through the park.

The instructions on the other hand showed that we were going on the South Downs Way, so general confusion ensued (at least between Gubbs and our now official navigator Gem). Gubbs went to check the map board and discovered that the marked out route on the Trailwalker Map was actually a down hill route for mountain bikes... we took our chances with the cars, but down hill mountain bikes were summin' else - following the written instructions it was to be then!

Once we were on a proper track on the South Downs Way we started the ascent up a chalky track. This is not a large ascent but it did seem seem to stretch on.

Wrong way?

We made a couple of turnings and we ended up at the top of a disused quarry, if we had checked our map a little sooner we would have found that we had gone to another part of the park, but we didn't, and we kept going, now going down hill further and further. The last instruction was that we were to get to a small car park in 700m. We had been walking for at least double that so we decided to take some advice we were given earlier by Warrant Officer Stu Coope from the Queen's Gurkha Signals; 'If you think you are lost, Stop, check your map and think about it'.

Walking off piste...

So we stopped... We checked the map... And thought about how stupid the instructions were to have led us here!

We decided that it was best to walk back to the proper trail to ensure we knew where we went wrong for next time. Considering we had walked down a fair distance we weren't looking forward to having a) lost time on the route, and b) to go back up the hill we needlessly walked down.

So it was up to Julie to come up with the ingenious plan of walking/crawling up a very steep bank and cut off a large chunk of path much to everyone else's surprise. Once the initial bank was cleared it was just a case of walking up to the path on the other side of the woodland.

Back we went down to the fork in the path where the error was made and we did eventually make it to the car park on the Eastern edge of the park after 2 hours of walking (including the first woodland loop). Finally we had made it out, and to much celebration too!

Checkpoint one and a view of South Harting

Now things would become easier, in a navigational sense anyway, as it was just a case of following the South Downs Way.

The first stage between QECP and Harting Down has many undulations, none of which strike dread into you when you see them but they all provide a nice warm up for the couple of beasties that you'll be hitting near checkpoint one and also in the first few miles of stage two.

We got to checkpoint one on the top of Harting Down at 5.15pm and we were careful to time our stop, as discussed in the prep session earlier, at 10 minutes. We had a quick stretch and intake of our late lunch and then continued.

Julie & Jo's introduction to Beacon Hill

Gem & Gubbs walked Stage Two between Harting Down and Cocking at the beginning of the month with support team members Peter and Tracy, but for Jo & Julie this was their first time and it was a fine time to introduce them to the now infamous Beacon Hill!

From the bottom it is hard to get the right perspective on how big it actually is, apart from seeing the small gate on the top of the climb.  Once you get going however you realise that it has a nasty steep bit towards to top.

We set off on the climb, which this time Gem & Gubbs were able to complete without having to stop for breathers!  An increase in fitness there perhaps?

Getting to top in one piece the team stopped to enjoy the view and regain some energy.

...and we conquered it!

We followed the trail this time from memory rather than maps and worked our way down the steep decline the other side of Beacon Hill.

This is when Julie demonstrated her preferred method of zigzagging down steep hills in a skiing style. No snow today but this would be a black run!

As the light started to diminish we welcomed in Pheasant Hour (as named last week). We saw plenty of the awkwardly flying things.

As mentioned in our last blog entry for this stage, stage two has some Bronze Age Burial Mounds called the Devil's Jumps just off the path.

Here we stopped to try some of Julie's Banana, Walnut and Honey Bread.  Delicious! It definitely gave the team the extra boost required to complete the walk down into Cocking.

With the walk complete at approx 7:50pm, we were finishing in the dark again for the second week in a row. Next week we have a walk scheduled for Good Friday and this time we will be starting a little earlier!

Total mileage was 16.5 miles with a total time of 5 hours and 56 minutes.  That includes all our stops for food and shouting at the map/instructions.