Walk the Wight – 16th May 2010

As part of my training for the 3 peaks I decided that I’d enter “Walk the Wight” – a 26.8 mile fund raising Walk on the Island organised to raise Money for the Earl Mountbatten Hospice.

There is an opportunity to walk either 26.8, 12.5 or 14.3 miles, depending on your fitness level, determination and stupidity. I opted for the whole walk, which category that puts me in is open to discussion!

So At 06.00 on the Sunday morning Sean from next door and myself piled into Liz’s car, as she’d kindly offered to give us a lift to the start. We got a whole ¼ of a mile before she had to turn round to go back and get my shades!

So we were late to pick up Ian (Chats) who we were collecting with his dog on the way.

We finally got through the checking in point at Bembridge airport at 07.00 and started on our way. Pretty much straight up the side of Culver down!

We had hoped to keep up a steady 4 miles an hour – which quickly went by the board as there were so many people walking (the highest walker number I saw was 13,986, but that doesn’t mean everyone turned up!).

The plan was to aim to be at Carisbrooke Castle, the starting point for those doing 14.5 miles, at 09.30 to meet up with my partner Liz and her daughter Jess. By the time we got there at 10.50 they were long gone!

We finally met up with them at gone noon some 5 miles further down the route where they had been waiting in the cold for quite a long time. We stopped for a quick bite and then carried on.

It was a long slog. We lost Ian before 10.00, as he was far better at over taking, and to be honest a lot more determined to get a good time than us! By the time we were coming down towards Freshwater, some 22 miles in, Sean was having real trouble with his leg/knee. We decided to stop in Freshwater for a cuppa and see how he felt. After a rest of about 20 mins it became clear that Sean had walked as far as he was going to that day. What to do? I was tired and my feet hurt. We’d been lucky as we only had a bit of rain, but there’d been some horrible wind, and there was now very low cloud infront. I was about to throw in the towel and go with Sean until Jess made it quite clear that having slogged that far she intended to finish.

She was of course right, if I hadn’t plodded on up over a Tennison Down to the end at Alum bay I would have regretted it a lot.

So I finished due to a young lady with more determination than me. And I’m very grateful to her!

So apart form that I need to be more determined, I learnt that slower speeds actually make the walking harder. My extra training is strengthening up my knees which were very painful on the downhill bits in the Lakes earlier this year, but a lot better on this walk. And I learnt that chocolate raisins are indeed the best walking snack in the world!

Roll on July 31^st! (My blister will be long gone by then!).