Trailtrekker 2012, How it all went...

Here's your intrepid team, Grumbler's Stumblers, just before the seven thirty start for Trailtrekker on Saturday 26th May 2012.

It's been quite a journey to get this far, to the start of the Challenge.  We signed up back in January when I weighed 113 kg, and had a 38 inch waist. What wasn't clear from the blog when I started it was that I'd already lost 11kg during 2011, and a couple of inches off the waistline. There was more to be done - we all needed to train for this.  We travelled up to Yorkshire as a team to walk the section of course we thought we'd end up doing in the dark, we had a night walk in the wilds(!) of Oxfordshire and we al had our personal plans too. I'd completed the 200 mile Coast to Coast, Lancy had climbed Kilimanjaro, and both Martins were getting mileage under their belts.

We were all fitter - I don't have numbers for the others, but what I'd managed meant that by the time this picture was taken I'd lost another 10kg and another 2 inches off the waistline.

Finally, it all came down to this and, as the man with the megaphone delivered the last of his profound starting speech "remember, keep yer hats on..." (it was a hot and sunny day) we were off. In the wrong direction.  Not just us, obviously, we're daft, not stupid. There was a bit of 'elf 'n safety which meant a last minute change of route at the start, and an attendant extra 1.5 km as we all made our way to the canal side avoiding the flyover that the department of transport had decided to start repairing.  The bunch of a couple of hundred walkers gradually thinned out into a long two-by-two snake which must have stretched for the best part of a kilometer by the time we got to the tow path - much to the discomfort of anyone trying to proceed in the opposite direction.  We settled in, somewhere amongst the back third, and made our way through the 9km or so to the first water stop at Gargrave.

In hindsight, we probably spent too long there, as we were to do at each of the planned (and unplanned) stops along the way.  In part, this may have been due to Martin B's need to remove his boots at every stop and count his toes to make sure none had fallen off yet. Its hardly fair to spatter him with the blame though, since I was personally delayed considerably by an encounter with an entirely unexpected cake.  The long lines for the portaloos meant that many intrepid fellows, as well as one or two brave lasses, headed off to water the local trees. (Note to self, if not walking next years course, should be able to make a huge, if slightly cruel, profit retailing shewees...) I remembered an occasion when my sainted mother-in-law mistook a portaloo for a Tardis, to the amusement of the entire family - much later on I was to fervently hope that someone had indeed planted Dr Who's time travelling device in the middle of a line of plastic crappers, it would have solved a few problems.

Suitably refreshed and rested, we hit the trail again for another ten k's and checkpoint one at Malham.  You have to hand it to Oxfam, they had arranged at each stop for groups of enthusiastic people to yell congratulations and encouragement as people turned up.  Some of these folk were truly dedicated yodellers, though with lungs like that its a mystery to me why they weren't walking!  Our bags were waiting for us at Malham, but this was where the "full support package" which we'd taken up was a bit lacking - the tent provided was packed and hotter than the surface of the sun, so we sat outside and shared our sandwiches with the gnats. A swift change of footware and we were off again on the longest stage to the next waterstop at Fountains Fell. But what's this?  An unscheduled 'pop-up' luxury stop, complete with chocolate, fizzy drinks and a selection of fine English cheeses.  Fatally unable to resist, we parked for another twenty minutes or so before finally plodding on.  Fountains Fell is officially in the middle of bloody nowhere. So much so that we couldn't "check-in" with our little electronic dog-tags until a mile further down the road, because there was absolutely no mobile phone signal, which the tracking devices needed to make sure we werent going AWOL.

After checking in with the delightful lady at the turn off to the next hill, we turned and contemplated Pen-Y-Ghent seriously for the first time. Its a great measure of how well we were operating as a team that all of us had the same thought at the same time... "Bloody hell, we haven't got to go all the way up that have we?".  Fortunately, we remembered that we had a map(!) and reassured ourselves that no, we didn't have to do much more than kiss the hill's boots!  Once over the shoulder of the hill we had a steep trek down to  Horton in Ribblesdale - during which we could see the next checkpoint all the way.  Talking to teams afterwards we found this descent claimed a few scalps - or at least grazed a few knees - for the unwary there were a few six foot drops and we came close to terminally testing our knees a couple of times, but made it eventually to the checkpoint for soup and succour.

For the first time now, we were on really familiar ground, having walked Horton to Kettlewell as part of our training in March, and we knew that it was downhill for most of the rest of the way. We carried on up the Penine Way and turned off onto the Dales way where our previous outing had led us through boot sucking peat bogs and an area of forest that was completely blocked by storm felled trees.  The bogs werent half as bad as we remembered, and the chainsaw squad had evidently been having great fun in the woods, so we made great time.  The waterstop at Cam Farm was really well organised - the usual horde of friendly people handing out some very tasty choccy biccies, tea, coffee and soup.  And what's more, this was well over halfway through the gold challenge. By the time we left here, we were in full dark.  The route marked by eerie green glow-sticks, and walkers decked with blue ones, little groups of four head torches bobbing up and down as we all tracked over the remaining bogs and on to the road section.

It was actually quite nice walking along the roads.  A lot of the teams had split up by this point, and some were accompanied by their support crews.  Despite Oxfam's insistence on a 100m separation rule for teams, there wasn't much (any) evidence of this being enforced that we could see., but what this meant we that teams mixed and matched, chatting, and moving on, adding a real social aspect to the trek. I liked it, though I wish I'd got some of the names of folks we talked with.  Down through the little village of Oughtershaw and on to Beckermonds where we joined the side of a stream for the next 2k to waterstop 4.

Sadly, this was where we started to feel the rot setting in.  somehow a couple of us had managed to convince ourselves that the waterstop was closer, and the last couple of K took their toll on Depth Gauge. When we got to the waterstop it was fairly apparent that he had given everything he had and couldn't go on.  We got him "retired", made sure he had transport to the next checkpoint, and then set off towards Buckden.  It was at this point that Tardis I mentioned earlier would have come in handy! In a bizarre twist of fate, the "pump-flush" in these loos sounds almost exactly like a dematerializing Time-Lord's telephone box. Unfortunately, opening the door showed the same queue of people that was there when I went in - though one of them did look a little bit like an Ood.

By this time we'd pretty much decided that if another of us had to drop out, then this was it for the team, the others would retire too - looking around we all seemed tired. In the event, it was my feet which decided the matter for me. By the time we were about 2k from Buckden I was wising I'd learned to walk on my hands. The last kilometer to the checkpoint felt like five, and by the time we got there, at about three am on Sunday, I'd had it, and we handed our tags in to be exchanged for silver medals.  Officially, we'd covered 65k in just under twenty hours, though my GPS tells me it was closer to 70k (and I know which one I'm gonna quote).

Despite not getting to the Gold 100k finish, none of us, nor any of our sponsors feel this was a failure.  As many have pointed out.  Walking about 70k (43.5 miles) in one hit isn't something that everyone would, or could, do, and we'd managed to raise over three grand for Oxfam between us.

Afterwards...

On Sunday, we stayed at a pub in Kettlewell where we were lucky to meet up with team "Phyl's little soldiers" Who not only finished, but actually "won" the challenge, completing it in 14 hours.  This kind of put our efforts a little to shame, but as a genuinely nice bunch of people they were having none of that - insisting that our efforts were just as praiseworthy as anyone else's.  Still, I'm sure they wont mind if I remain a little in awe of their achievements.

Monday morning saw us facing the five hour drive home, but stiff legged, I realised there was no way that was going to happen unless we first, you guessed it, went for a walk and, more importantly, an ice cream.  So, we bravely headed off in the wrong direction (again) and took ourselves to Aysgarth, where a gentle stroll downriver rewarded us with some of the nicest waterfalls Ive seen for a while.

Despite, or maybe beacuse of, this, we all have a sense of unfinished business with this course. At the very least, I can see us going back up to finish the section we didn't walk, but I reckon its more likely that Grumbler's Stumblers will walk again next year, but with a dedicated support team in place, for sure.  We've learned a lot about about the event, about planning, walking, stopping and food and drink.  More, I think we (well, I know *I*) have learned a lot about ourselves.  This distance walking is a bug, and there's no doubt that its bitten me.

Wot, no online checkin?

Well, team "Grumbler's Stumblers" have all checked in for tomorrow's Oxfam Trailtrekker. The process wasnt perfect, but we got there in the end. Clearly, Oxfam isn't run by that disagreeable leprechaun that fashioned Ryanair out of his own greed and bile, otherwise there'd have been an online checkin, and we would have had to pay to check in at the event itself. Perhaps more worrying is the fact that the support team is carrying two bags for each of us. Patrick O'Bastard or whatever his name is would have charged us fifty quid each for that. So we're a couple of hundred quid up already. Plus, we only have to walk sixty miles tomorrow, which is less than if we'd caught a Ryanair plane to one of its city centre destinations.

We've had an exciting safety briefing, which has listed the number of places we need to feed, water, lubricate or strap up over the next twenty four hours. Unfortunately, as we were encouraged to applaud everyone who's had the slightest input to this event during the half hour presentation, I think i now have a stress fracture of the wrist.

We have also enjoyed the "pasta party". This was not, as you might suspect, an Italian political alternative to Silvio Bugngabungascone but rather an opportunity to carbohydrate load and hobnob with fellow Trekkers. A year ago, I simply wouldn't have eaten pasta, but then a year ago I wouldn't have done this walk either, so that's ok. I've trained myself to consume a foodstuff I previously consider to be a building material, but I'm still a bit fussy. I can't get over the feeling that I've just eaten a plate of boiled rawlplugs with mince on. Anyway there was a nice pint of beer served up by what appeared to be twin blonde barmaids, who, we learned, will also be at checkpoint three in the early hours of Sunday morning. Mrs Grumbler has nothing to fear, at that point, the only things I'll be remotely interested in are soup, ibuprofen, and possibly a distant bacon sandwich.

We will be taking pictures on the way round, and you can follow us live on the Trailtrekker pages here. Remember, Grumbler's Stumblers, Paul is 20a, Martin r is 20b, Martin b is 20c and Lancy is 20d.

Well tweet (#ttrek2012) if and when we can, but more blog early next week.

 

I climbed Everest, and then some...

Here's the route we walked over the fourteen days as tracked on the GPS:

We walked just over 200 miles, from start to finish, and crossing three national parks - the Lakes, the Dales and the Moors.

Ordinarily, the highest point of the walk would be in the Lakes, on Kidsty Pike, but we detoured on that stretch, as there were very low clouds - so our high point was at the Nine Standards Rigg, 650m high (2132 feet).

That's not to say we didn't climb a fair bit, drop a little, climb some more... Over the whole route, that added up to nearly eleven hundred metres of climb - or thirty six thousand feet.  Just for the record, that's one Everest, and then another four or five Empire State Buildings. Its just possible that's why my feet hurt!

Day 14 - They think its all over!

Our final day on the Coast to Coast, just like the first one, started with the promise of rain but finished in pleasant sunshine. A hearty breakfast at Intake Farm where we spent the previous night set us on our way for a relatively short 12 mile trip, but with greatly varied scenery.

A climb up a steep muddy track alongside a beck brought us to the "Hermitage", an enormous hollowed-out boulder (with carved date suggesting this was completed in 1790), where Mike treated me to a passable imitation of a grumpy hermit.

Now Mike has set some cracking paces at times, which have had me at a mere six foot one and a half (in the mornings) frequently skipping to catch up. Today, however, he'd clearly stepped up a gear.  I couldn't understand - we'd been enjoying the whole experience, was he really that keen to be finished? Then it dawned on me... I had promised him that Julia Bradbury (she of the walking TV programs) would be waiting for him at the walk's end, with a couple of Bath Buns taped to the sides of her head to replicate Princess Leia's Starwars hairdo. The poor fellow was hoping to have two fantasies fulfilled at once. My only chance of salvation was that at this rate, he'd be too knackered to kill me were we got there and he discovered the terrible truth of my lies.

During these past two weeks we'd both become quite skilled at bog-hoping - being able to traverse a man-eating peat-bog without so much as getting splashed.  Today we almost made it through the first bog as we crossed the moors, only for Mike to fill a boot about six feet from the road.  Karma had the last laugh, though - I got through the second bog only to step in a foot deep puddle on the path out.  This was not to be the last wet sock of the trip though!

Alternately clumping and squelching, we reached the very first road sign for our destination, where Phil caught us up.  Having started back in Grosmont, he'd overtaken three or four other sets of walkers so far. The man was clearly on a mission. He stayed with us a while, then stopped to wait for his son and two mates who were cycling the trail. Here I am at the sign, not posing at all.

The last few miles of Wainwright's route, just like the first few, are a cliff-top walk.  Anticipation builds as you round one headland after anther until finally, Robin Hood's Bay comes into view, and from here its downhill all the way to the North Sea, where tradition has us dip the toes of our boots in the sea, and fling the pebble we picked up back in St Bees.  If you've ever tried to dip a toe in the North Sea, you'll know that it often has other ideas. A series of really quite pathetic excuses for waves lures you further and further down to the water's edge until you've no hope of escape, at which point a mini Tsunami will fill your boots and, if you're particularly unlucky your trouser pockets too.  I dont (yet) have a picture of my calf deep soaking, but here's Ann and Phil getting theirs.


Ill make one or two more updates in this blog regarding the walk over the next few days.  A few anecdotes not mentioned elsewhere, maps, mileage, and links to more pictures on FLIKR....

Day 13 - Steamed

Having arrived at the Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge early in the afternoon yesterday, and with a thirst on, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the title of today's post relates to the consumption of a great deal of ale, and indeed we had a few, but we weren't that far gone. Nor does this reference the fact that we left the pub this morning to find ourselves in the middle of a cloud. So read on...

In fact, there's not much I can tell you about the morning, as there wasn't anything we could see. To illustrate the point, here's a picture of Mike by the sign to the delightfully named and allegedly picturesque Great Fryupdale. I say allegedly because, as you will note, there's no way we could verify the fact.

So, before I describe the afternoon's much more successful walking, I'm going to digress, and tell you about something I learned last night in the pub. I was chatting to a bloke who claimed to be a Grouse Winder. Now I initially assumed, as you would, that this was local dialect for a gamekeeper, but it's not so! I wouldn't normally ply a chap with drink to ferret out his secrets, but it was Mike's turn to pay the bar bill, so I quickly abandoned my principles and got the fellow comprehensively trousered. This is what I learned:

Most people have probably never seen a grouse in the wild. In fact, if they've seen one anywhere other than on the front of a bottle of scotch, it's probably in the TV ad for the very same whisky, and they will have assumed that the bird in the ad in question has been very badly animated. Wrong. The grouse is, in reality, a badly animated bird. Well, "sort of" bird...

It turns out that in 1899, with hostilities escalating towards the second Boer war between the UK (and allies) and the Orange Free State, the Brits decided they needed a new and devastating secret weapon, the task of developing which was given to Major Tangible-Hairpiece of the Electric Light Brigade, who worked for several years with only the help of his assistant, Sergeant Merkin, of the same regiment. Their objective was to develop a bomb which could fly just above ground level, into the enemy forces front lines, before spontaneously exploding. The final fruit of their labours, cobbled together with the remains of a pheasant from the regimental kitchen, a hand grenade, and most of the inside of a cuckoo clock stolen from the junior officer's mess was the prototype of what we know today as the grouse.

That's right, the grouse is in fact a late Victorian example of a reanimated bionic bird. Unfortunately for Tangible-Hairpeice, his invention was too late to be used in the Boer war by a matter of days, and he eventually died penniless and unknown in Southern Austalia having fled the country in shame. However, this wasnt the end of the story for his creation, which was further refined over the years by a coalition between the league against cruel sports, the upper class twit association and the vegetarian society into what we know today as the modern grouse. A clockwork powered bird, which can fly at no more than three feet high, for twenty five metres or so, all the while making a ludicrous noise, before finally exploding. Its unique niche applications being in providing something that herbivores can shoot at without damaging their consciences, and which upper class twits can claim to have bagged despite the fact that, as shootists, most of them couldn't hit a cows arse with a banjo.

The grouse winder, then, has the task of regularly ensuring that the birds are fully wound up and, on and after August 12th, that they are properly armed and will explode in a satisfactory manor whenever someone so much as looks at them.

To get back to the walking, it's fair to say that by the time we had covered ten miles and sought shelter in the Cafe in Glaisdale, we were wetter that an Essex girl's T-shirt on a club 18-30 holiday. Fortunately, after several pots of tea and some excellent pork pies the three of us (we were accompanied for most of today by Phil) were a little drier, and ready to hit the road again under cleared skies.

A highlight for me today was the station at Grosmont, which is under the care of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (used as the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter films). Our arrival being timed so well that we saw two trains! A final trek uphill to the moors has brought us to tonight's stop, at Intake farm in Littlebeck, leaving us twelve miles tomorrow to the finish of our walk, and a well deserved celebratory ice cream!

 

 

Day 12 - Not "On the Busses"

 

On looking out of the window this morning, the clouds from yesterday were a lot higher, and we could see the ridge that we'd walked to get here. Blimey. And indeed Gosh. The picture to the left doesn't quite do it justice, but it'll give you an idea. High moors, heather, and more ups and downs than a week's plot line on Eastenders.

Grouse, too, and I don't mean from the Grumbler either. The little bird from the whisky bottles is by far the most prevalent bird on these moors. You can't walk more than a minute or two without one of the little buggers exploding out of the ground cover and whizzing, no more than three feet high, like a squawking clockwork dervish shouting it's hoarse cry of "Go Way,Go Way!". Most of the time, it's not a problem, but every now and then one will appear right next to you, just when you're contemplating the scenery. I don't scare easily, but at least one of these wee beasties has startled me almost enough to be grateful I have more than one pair of walking trousers.

The hotel we stayed in last night offered us a lift to the point we left the trail to walk down to Great Broughton, but that would have meant jumping straight out of the car into the first (and only) climb of the day, so we politely refused. When this epic journey finishes (barring disasters in the last two days) we are determined to have been from one side of the country to the other on foot, and without having used any other transport. No more than two minutes out of the hotel we ran into Phil, with whom we walked all of today's stage. He seems to be in exactly the same kind of luddite frame of mind. It's a nice feature of the walk that we keep running into others that we have seen on and off throughout the adventure.

The curtain of cloud was most definitely following us, lending weight to my thoughts yesterday that some Tolkeinish wizard is watching with evil intent, but we managed to get as far as the OS trig point on Urra moor before it caught up with us. Phil has been walking this on his own while his dad meets him at various points with fresh clothes and provisions. Today, Phil's son, and a couple of mates are setting out from St Bees to ride the three day bike version of the coast to coast, and his missus and others are already waiting in Whitby (nearby Goth capital of the world!) so there's gonna be quite a family get together when they meet on the East coast. He was kind enough to take the picture here.

Not much to say about the rest of the walk, another misty tramp across the moors as far as Blakey ridge. As an avid watcher of the sixties/seventies tv show "On the Busses" I'd been hoping that we'd be greeted by a miserably inept bus inspector, but it was not to be. However, as soon as we walked into the Lion Inn, which is the only place to stay for miles, we were greeted by at least six other people on the walk. So tonight promises to be a pleasant evening.

Seventeen miles to Littlebeck tomorrow, and a good chance of rain. Internet willing, there will be another moistened missive at the end of the day.

 

Day 11 - The Touch of Middle Earth

This morning, at breakfast, we were introduced to the Park House B&B's resident cockerel, Alan. He's named after Alan Carr, partly because when he originally arrived he wanted nothing to do with the hens, was suspected of "batting for the other side" and harbouring a liking for quiche and flower arranging. Very soon after being released into the wilds of the garden he decided to bugger off into the woods, and wasn't seen for a couple of days, after which he came back with a dramatically different personality, and has been cock o' the roost ever since. That's one of the reasons that while I say "introduced" there was a good glass window between us. The other reason was that Mike and I were both chained to the breakfast table by a couple of good old fashioned doorstep bacon and egg sandwiches.

 

Soon it was time for us to follow in Alan's footsteps, and bugger off into the woods which, inevitably, meant an uphill slog for a while. Surprisingly, my legs felt pretty fresh, and we gained height pretty quickly until we were actually in the clouds, where we stayed for most of the rest of the day. Mike's day was set fair when his GPS beeped to signal a geocache location, and with a triumphant smile he unearthed a small Tupperware box containing what looked like a pencil, a notebook, and half a dozen toy soldiers.

 

Many ups and downs, and a side trip to a cafe which turned out to be closed, later, we got to the top of Cringle moor, where you can find Alex Falconer's seat, a stone bench and map at a viewpoint from which you can see as far as the North Sea, our final destination. Or at least you could, if the visibility was better that twenty feet. There were times, when all I could see was a thin track, with burned heather either side, with ghostly, ice cold fingers of cloud worming their way under any layers of clothing, that I though maybe "Yorkshire Moors" was a misprint, and that second word should be "Mordor", it was that similar to a scene from the Lord of the Rings.

 

And so, eventually, to Great Broughton, where I'm tapping this out in the company of a pint of Black Sheep, with a burger comfortable stashed away as fuel for the morning and our penultimate climb on this journey from west to east coasts. Internet access willing, there will be more tomorrow.