TGO Challenge 2017: Getting Organised: Limbering up

As someone who has done a fair bit of planning in my time, the first thing to bear in mind is that Plans Always Go Wrong. However, if you start out without a plan, things stand a much greater chance of going horribly wrong. 

Lord Elpus counts himself a fortunate man. He has Miss Whiplash to beast him around the footpath networks of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire. Mud holds no terror for Miss W, and Poor Phil gains his phenomenal fitness gritting his teeth against snow, hail and icy blasts straight from Siberia. This punishing regime starts as soon as he returns from the Challenge in May. It is a year-long struggle.

Like most years, my plan for a general level of readiness for the TGO Challenge is straightforward, and I might say, more gentle. Starting in the New Year, I walk on average three miles a day until the start of the Challenge in May. Three miles a day doesn't sound like a lot, but if you miss a few days you have to catch up the missing miles, and then you realise that it's not quite so easy.

FAVOURITE TREES

Of course, you don't want to walk on roads, because down in the south east of England the roads are very busy and wherever you live they are hard on your feet. But more importantly walking on level surfaces won't prepare the soft tissues in your feet, ankles, knees and hips for a walk over the rough ground found in Scotland.

ONE FOR DAVE: HEDGE LAYING

A recent discovery is a nature reserve at the northern edge of my patch. The entrance sign says permits are required and the gate to the reserve is locked, assuring you that you are not welcome.

THE MYSTERIOUS NATURE RESERVE

However, right next to the reserve is the wonderful Chawridge Wood, an abandoned coppiced wood. 

PRIMROSES IN CHAWRIDGE WOOD

CHAWRIDGE WOOD

The footpath network hereabouts is well signed and generally in good order, with a few glaring blackspots where stiles are overrun with very spiny bushes, seemingly deliberately planted by one particular landowner.

WARFIELD

FAVOURITE TREES, ABOVE ST MICHAEL'S

*THE* FAVOURITE TREE, ABOVE ST MICHAEL'S

Can you spot the deliberate mistake in the next picture?

SPOT THE MISTAKE, ASHRIDGE LANE

After a slow start, I've finally dragged my carcase back up to and now passing the planned mileage. I have almost fifty miles in the bank, which is probably as well, as the weather forecast for next week looks poor. 

And finally a spreadsheet and graph. Because I love both. I know you do too.

THE PLAN SO FAR

And now, from two years before England won the World Cup, here's one for OM.

Two Churches walk and trees

In my usual disorganised fashion, I set off too late for today's stroll, especially as it turned out to be an eleven miler, making it up as I ambled along. I took profound pleasure watching buzzards, a kestrel, a few red kites, a jay, dozens of rooks, a sky lark or two (it may well have been just the one, as I'm pretty sure he was following me. Paranoid?) blackbirds in delightfully full voice, and a deceit of lolloping lapwings. On the ground there were Belted Galloway Pigs, dozens of rather smart horses and indeterminate sheep. I'm not sure what the fluffy beggars are around these parts but some are quite large so perhaps they're Texel crosses? I shall make an effort to find out.

THIS WASN'T FROM TODAY, BUT IT'S A FINE TREE IN THE NEW TOWN CENTRE DEVELOPMENT.

With the recent fine weather the sloppy mud in my northern patch is working down to a sticky clay and managed to walk its way up the inside legs of my trousers to about knee height. When it gets up to my goolies I'll stick them in the washing machine. The trousers.

WINDMILL HILL, WITH NO WINDMILL

At Chawridge Bank, an ancient meadow and nature reserve, there are signs saying visitors require a permit, but having looked at the website there's no mention of this. I shall have a poke about on my next visit as it looks interesting.

I had been looking forward to the comfortable bench at Westleymill Ford but some blighter has pinched it! I continued my plod onwards to Tickleback Row with a somewhat disconsolate air. 

.

MOSS END

The topmost part of my patch just clips the flightpath from Heathrow, with the end of the runway barely ten miles away. You notice the planes flying out and fortunately they're high enough to be interesting but not a nuisance.

WARFIELD

You will have seen these trees on here before. You may well see them again as I love them. Whoever planted them did rather well. At the moment Bracknell Forest Council seems to be doing its level best to cut down all the ancient oaks and cedars dotted about the place. Someone ought to do something about this.

WARFIELD

TOWARDS NUPTOWN

The soil around these parts is quite heavy. Low lying fields hold water for weeks in the winter and in the summer the ground is as hard as iron. Three labradors and a couple of spaniels took great delight splashing about in the wheel ruts just after I took this snap. They came out plastered in mud. A little later I saw them in a very smart midnight blue Range Rover with cream leather upholstery as they drove past in a fury of barking and mud splattered windows. 

Schadenfreude is a beautiful thing.

ST MICHAEL'S

NEWELL GREEN

Happily, at the moment it's light enough to walk comfortably until about seven o'clock, and I scuttled home in the gloaming to catch my evening fix of the Archers. 

NEWELL GREEN

All the pictures were taken on my phone. It's fine, as far as it goes but pretty hopeless if you want to zoom in as the only thing that happens is an electronic cropping of pixels. 

The new boots - you do need to know this - have now clocked up a hundred miles, and all is fine and dandy.

And now, in the spirit of Old Mortality:

Things looking up

The arrival of new boots invariably promotes a passion for perambulation. [That's enough of the alliteration, thank you very much.] And so it has been with the new Scarpas, with over a hundred miles knocked off in two and a half weeks. Not all in the boots, but most. 

The wonderful thing about comfortable shoes is that I forget that I'm wearing them. Over the years Phil and I have seen so many footsore Challengers to know that the opposite is true of uncomfortable shoes; they are devices of torture and the limping backpacker is in torment. They can only think about their feet. A well-shod walker, on the other hand, strolls about with an unencumbered mind, free to roam. 

Latterly, my walks have become random affairs, turning left or right as the fancy takes me. My only directive is to ensure I'm back in time for tea. 

All this fresh air has lifted my frame. After months of stooped inactivity I'm at last walking naturally again. I spent too many months worrying about my blasted foot and had started walking in a way to compensate for the Plantar Fasciitis; a sort of Richard the Third crab-like shuffle. I wouldn't wish PF on my worst enemy. Oh. Hang on. Yes I would. The bastard.

So, things are definitely looking up. And speaking of looking up here's a couple of pictures where I had indeed been doing just that.

LILY HILL PARK SHELTER

HEREFORD SKYSCRAPERS

Guilt, the TGO Challenge and Northern Soul

It's the same every year. Three hundred haunted souls spend long winter nights poring over maps, poking through clapped-out camping gear and then with a collective sigh, lean back in their settees and have another snooze. That fitness stuff, the muddy tent and the ripped overtrousers can all be sorted out later. There's plenty of time. 

But with ten weeks to the ghastly moment when we splosh about in the sea on the west coast and turn to the east, I'm bloody-well convinced the girls at Challenge Control stick pins into three hundred numbered dolls, inducing overwhelming guilt that sweeps like a tidal wave over the unfortunates. 

It is with some alarm that I notice that Lord Elpus' and my new walking companion, the VeryVeryNiceMan Mr Williams, reports in his journal that he has been shouldering heavy bags, tramping about in the snow in the Darkest Of Dark Peaks, and camping overnight in the wild wastes. And, in February to boot! 

You'll notice from his piece that not all went exactly to plan, but when does it? It sounded like perfect training for walking with Phil and me. He has now gained experience and so will doubtless leap to help his inept colleagues as they struggle with tent contraptions, dead cold stoves and sloping sleep systems. 

THE NORTHEASTERN WASTELANDS

THE HANGING TREE

My own guilt has forced a redoubling of effort, staggering around the northern wastes of my local patch rather than the benign pines and sands of the east. This involves more miles and more (barely more) metres of ascent. It also involves mud. It's always muddy up north. But the northern patch has a more soulful quality to it; longer, yearning vistas with clarion clear high notes.

With it still being winter, the risk of benightment is very real, and yes, there have been a few Very Close Shaves and home barely gained in the nick of time, before the wolves start their prowls.

TROUBLE WITH THE BBQ

WITH A BLINDING FLASH, DAVID'S STOVE IGNITES

This afternoon a red kite taunted and teased as I snapped away with my phone's wide angle lens. He knew, of course. There is just one salvageable fiercely cropped shot, that neither shows the blighter's redness, his fantastic acrobatics nor his piercing cries.

CUNNING KITE

But sometimes life gives you lemons.

Happily, with this sudden slew of strolling, I am now back up to my three miles a day target for the year to date, and the new boots are becoming like well-worn slippers.