Who Wants to Walk in the Rain Anyway?

Last week, with Gubbs off running around the countryside dodging paintballs on a stag day, the ladies of the Hardcore Four group headed off for some more training on the Trailwalker route.

The plan was to walk from Queen Elizabeth Country Park (QECP) through to checkpoint 3 at Littleton Farm, and then back to Hilltop Farm at checkpoint 2, where we had left our finishing car.

The weather was atrocious! The rain was teaming down and showed no sign of letting up.

Right is right.

Having walked these few stages previously, and having got quite badly lost on the first section, we were determined to get the route set in our mind so that we won't be likely to make any unnecessary wrong turns on the actual day.

The wrong turn we took previously is just on the route out of QECP and is marked by a fork in the path where you will find a bench on the right hand side which provides a viewpoint over the surrounding countryside, and a sign which warns mountain bikers to stick to the marked paths. Any fellow Trailwalkers reading this blog, please take note that you must take the right fork here, otherwise you'll find yourself heading off to the quarry which will add unnecessary time delays and extra miles to your journey - not something you want right at the start of the trek! The directions are a little confusing for this section, so just stick to the right fork, and you'll soon find yourself at the small car park mentioned on the directions on the edge of QECP.

The route briefly follows some metal tracks before heading off cross country again. The bluebells lining the path provided some colour on what was otherwise a grey, misty and dreary day.

Where did the path go??

When we walked this route previously we were able to have a clear view of Harting down, atop the hills in the distance, providing a guiding beacon for the first check point, however this time the hills were covered in mist.

The paths towards the hill were also more like rivers than the clearly marked nice dry paths that we experienced the time before! This proved to be a challenge as trying to skirt around the huge puddles without falling ankle deep in to the water or the sticky boggy mud was very difficult.

We found that our walking poles came in very handy here as extra props to balance ourselves on whilst we perched precariously on the sloping grass verges at the sides of the path.

On reaching the top of Harting down, we found ourselves surrounded by misty clouds.

Visability wasn't great

The rain still hadn't let up, and to give ourselves some sort of shelter from the continuous down pour, we crawled our way into a copse of trees, avoiding worms, creepy crawlies and low slung branches.  Huddled under the trees, we refuelled ourselves with some much needed chunky cookies and bananas (apart from Jo who hates bananas so topped up with an extra cookie!). We also knew that we had Gem's nemesis coming up in the next section of the walk... Beacon Hill!!  And even worse than that...Beacon Hill in the rain!!

We set off again on the route and soon found ourselves at the foot of the hill. After a few deep breaths and some motivating words, the team set off up the hill. And we made it!!! If we can make it up that hill in that rain, we can make it up there in any circumstances!

Hopefully this has helped Gem prove to herself that she can tackle her nemesis and it won't be such a hurdle in her mind on the day of the event!

The beautiful views from the top of Beacon Hill were sadly not as spectacular on a day like today as they will be be on a (hopefully!) sunny day in July, however, Jo did manage to take quite a dramatic shot of the stormy weather.

Onwards we plodded, getting wetter and colder and more uncomfortable. At this point, the thought of reaching the end of stage of two, and then moving on to stage three and back to stage two was a daunting and unpleasant. We had been trudging through the rain and mud for hours and our waterproofs we're starting to give out under the relentless lashing of the rain.

The view from Beacon Hill

It was at this point the team decided that rather than continuing on to stage three, and back to two, we would end our training walk at stage two where our car was waiting for us.

We knew that we were giving up on the target of that days training walk, however, we accepted that we had put in a good 12 miles in some awful weather and there was no point making ourselves more uncomfortable, pushing ourselves and possibly suffering an injury in the slippery conditions, for the sake of an extra 6 miles of misery.

So we admitted defeat, stripped off our wet clothes and piled in to the warm dry car and had some well deserved lunch!!