Training Walk I (25km Turville loop) .... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Pastry

Q. What could be nicer than a nice stroll on a warm March day in the beautiful Chiltern countryside.
A. Almost anything.
Especially when your tour guide decides to examine minute details of every "double chevron" road on the map.

An inauspicious start sees Pete sat dejectedly by the wrong "triangle of grass" at the wrong rendezvous, but eventually the team assembles at the right place and creaks into action. Mark regales us with heroic running and wine tasting tales from the previous day, but sets a good pace and the party shambles along in his wake. Ominously the red kites circle overhead.
"It's OK, they aren't predators, they only take dead meat"
"!!!!!!"

A couple of miles in and we're plodding through the picturesque village of Turville. It's still early, but the open top Beamer brigade are already arriving to do what people who drive open top Beamers do in picturesque villages on Sunday mornings. It may be something to do with foie gras and Chardonnay or perhaps they've heard that this is where (hilarious) Dawn French filmed the (side-splittingly funny) Vicar of Dibley, but it's difficult to tell from behind their Victoria Beckham shades. We leave the hoi polloi behind and hack our way up the hill just north of the village to the windmill. For film afficionados this is of course the one used in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but there's no flying car, just when we need it. Not even Rufus Ruffcut in the Buzzwagon, so we have to make with that horse peddling charlatan Mr Shanks and his team of 5 flea-ridden ponies.

We do have time to take various snaps of the team, the rights for which are sold to Milletts for nearly a pound.

Picture from Milletts "Spring Collection" catalogue.

Not entirely a surprise then that Milletts go into administration.

"A man with a mullet went mad with a mallet in Milletts"

Half Man Half Biscuit
Anyone buying Peter Storm gear on the strength of this lot as models is exactly the kind of person to run amok with carpentry tools between the not-at-all-waterproof overtrousers and the not-at-all-breathable jackets.

After heading back out towards the M40, we descend to the village of Fingest lured on by the subtle smells of Brakspear's and the funny roof of the church there.
Ask the expert #1 : How unusual is the roof of St Bartholomew's church in Fingest
- The double gable saddleback roof is one of only two such designs in England
There is just time for a "it would be rude not to" pint in the Chequers before we're whipped from our hop-based reverie out towards Fingest Wood.
We decide to have lunch overlooking the idyllic gas pipeline at Dolesdon. We ponder the significance of this strange juxtaposition of nature and technology for about 3 milliseconds before getting stuck into the butties.
Ask the expert #2 : What is the city at the end of the pipeline that runs to the Caspian Sea?
- That would be Baku in Azerbaijan. The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland lake. The Bond film with the pipeline was The World Is Not Enough with Pierce Brosnan. Azerbaijan may be the most unlikely Eurovision winner, but Portugal has entered 45 times without a single win.
Pete tires of the pipeline discussion and empties the cooked remains of about 27 pigs from his rucksack. Pastry and bread are involved, but only to ensure that the pork isn't damaged during the walk. A nuthatch is identified using the bird call app on Mark's iPhone which forces a rethink on the nature and technology debate or it would do if we weren't already on the march again.



View from lunch spot avoiding pipeline. Turville windmill on the hill opposite.

After a couple of miles we get to Southend, but the tide is out, so we don't hang around for any TOWIE extras to sell us eels. This bit of England isn't short of posh houses, so Stonor House isn't really out of place here although it's a bit weird to see a burglar alarm on the side. Despite being shadowed by a rangale (collective noun for posh deer) for a while, nobody from TTMB tries to sell us venison.

Rudolph (second left) dressed as a doe on his stag party. Dasher left behind at the Coach & Humans.

There are plenty of interesting trees at the Warburg Nature Reserve, but it's difficult to see anything with the sweat trickling into your eyes. It's still only March but it ain't half hot mum and by the time we get to Pishill, we're just a bit tired of "scaling yonder peake for groats none". Mark tries to appease the grumbles by leading us off the route to The Crown. It looks like it might be closed so he prepares to make a run for it, but it's only empty because 99% of the UK population has decided that it's much more fun to drink cheap supermarket lager at home. The Rebellion IPA just about heads off the, errr, rebellion.

The end of the Peasants' Revolt. Wat Tyler gets hacked to bits by the Lord Mayor of London again.

From The Crown it's not far back to the cars where we reflect on the positives of the day, like the good company, weather and beer. Of course "Half Full" Howard has to turn his urine fire extinguisher on the bonfire by reminding everyone that 15.75 miles is only one quarter of the real route, but it's been a decent start to the training and longer routes are planned, which obviously means more pubs to be visited.

What could possibly go wrong?

For us, we could get a bit warm, a bit wet or a bit thirsty.

For others, the picture isn't quite so rosy .....

Oxfam's information officer Fred Perraut recently visited Burkina Faso and heard a tragic story of mothers struggling to feed their children. Many women explained that when their children complain of hunger, they boil a stone in water to make the children believe food is cooking, until they fall asleep. Please watch our video on this impending crisis and then share it with as many friends as you can. We need you to help spread the word of the plight of these people to save lives. Noaga Yambeogo has been part of Oxfam’s market garden programme in Burkina Faso. She can now grow vegetables, providing her family with a much-needed source of food over the past few desperate months. She said: “You gave us work and tools and thanks to this help the children did not cry because of hunger”. However, the water levels will soon be too low for Noaga to water her plot and, like thousands of others, she’ll then be forced to sift through the dirt searching for a few tiny specks of gold. If she is lucky she may earn 50p per day. If the plight of these people moves you, please help make the world aware of their situation. Watch our video and share it with your friends Whilst this crisis remains outside of the media focus, we need you to help us to raise awareness of the situation. Can you spend 60 seconds watching the video and share it with your friends? Thank you once again for your continued support and compassion.

Balguissa Simeam, 7 years old, helps her mother to search for specks of gold. Photo: Andy Hall

.... And You Will Know Us By Our Secret Codenames

"Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever."
Lance Armstrong

Lance clearly hasn't thought through all the positive benefits of giving up. For now though, while pain might not be our middle name, we've certainly toyed with the idea of using it as a way of getting out of painting the fence.

The Band
After task #1 "Taking leave of my senses", the next job was to find the other 75% of the walking team. Hollywood provided the necessary inspiration ...

The Magnificent Seven : Bald bloke uses charisma to assemble crack team, most of whom die before the end
The Dirty Dozen : Bald bloke uses charisma to assemble crack team, most of whom die before the end
The Trail Of Bread Four : Greying bloke uses pathetic whiny pleading to assemble cack team, most of whom die before the end (but don't tell them).

The requirement was for three highly tuned walkers, in peak physical condition and with unbelievable commitment and sang froid. It wasn't easy. In fact it was impossible. Still, they're happy to get the beers in, and at least one of them knows the way to A&E, so they get my vote.

Like the aforementioned Magnificent 7 and Dirty 12, each member has their own special skills and abilities. We like to think of ourselves as being a bit like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, sort of Middle-Age Mutant Ninja Tortoises.

Howard "The Pencil" Bishop : Training schedule, bad jokes, poor navigation [trail snack : brown banana]
Pete "The Trolley" Munro : Fundraising, communications [trail snack : pies]
Derek "Washington" Chalmers : Safe-cracking, logistics, advanced survival [trail snack : fruit and nut]
Matt "Shiny" Lamming : Electronics, first-aid [trail snack : jelly beans]

The Road Crew
It's probably fair to say this is the blister on our Achilles heel. Various other halves can help to get us there (probably) and back (possibly), but what we don't have is a dedicated support crew. Unfortunately without a back-up team this noble and ludicrous venture is doomed. 
The walkers are actually the least important cogs in this rusty machine. Anyone can keep plonking one foot in front of the other for 30 hours. It's just walking right?
What takes real commitment.... is to sit in the dark with a pile of spare socks waiting for the Flab Four to wheeze into view.
What takes real skill .... is to raise team spirit and morale when it's been left behind in a monsoon on the South Downs.
What takes real imagination .... is to honestly believe that you can help to get this bunch of muppets across the finish line.

THIS COULD BE YOU!  TEMPTING ISN'T IT?

The VIPs
Even more important than the TRÄILÖFBREAD road crew, without whom we couldn't do this, are the folks without whom we wouldn't have signed up; the wonderful Oxfam staff and the people whose lives they are trying to improve. The slightly (actually, the very) depressing thing is that if we were a little bit more careful and nations were a bit more considerate, Oxfam wouldn't need to exist and we wouldn't need to take part in Trailwalker just to look like extras from The Road. However, until people stop throwing food away, flying everywhere and buying flat screen TVs for rooms they never use, the good people at Oxfam will need to help those caught by famine, climate change and natural disasters, and to make tough lives just a bit more bearable.

When you have to walk 2 hours every time you want water and that water comes from a dirty polluted river, a new water pump in your village must seem like a miracle. That's just one of the things that Oxfam can do and it's how 13 year old Erkeni can now go to school.

While it's probably fair to say that we are doing this a bit to see whether we can, there's also the possibility that we might give some people water pumps, or books, or medicine that could change their lives.

Now we just have to find out how far we can go!

.... And You Will Know Us By The Panic Buying Of Compeed

How it all began ........

Now I like a good walk as much as the next man (unless the next man is Alfred Wainwright or the nutty spotty dog-walking DeVille woman from down our road).
It's also true that Oxfam can work wonders with £1500+ (that's a lot of goats, or tools, or fresh water), but I think we may just have miscalculated what slightly chubby, slightly unfit blokes can do, even for charity.

It’s amazing how these things seem like a good idea at the time. When you’re sat in a warm pub and someone is absolutely insisting that you try the Old Badger because “you can really taste the hops”, 100 kilometres across the South Downs in 30 hours sounds like the kind of thing that ale-drinking superheroes can do in their sleep.

It’s only when you wake up with the taste of a four week dead Badger in your mouth that you realise that you’ve agreed to do the equivalent of walking from your house to Southend in just over a day.
Have you ever been to Southend? 

Does the welcome to Sopot sign say "Twinned with grotty English seaside dump Southend"?

One hundred kilometres. That's sixty two and a half miles in old money.
But that’s miles!   In the dark!
You also have an inkling that the South Downs might be a bit bumpy. They haven’t staged any important flat green bowling championships there for a good reason.

OK, don’t panic. How bad can this be?  I mean, you walk a bit and it’s a fair old shift to the bus stop every morning. You may be knocking on the door of 50, but you’re in better shape than other 48-year olds like Whitney Houston and Johnny Depp. OK, possibly not Johnny Depp, but definitely Johnny Vegas and he’s only 41. Yeah and you so very nearly did that 25 mile hike when you were in the scouts, but you had to cry off with a nasty verucca.

All you need now are 3 other idiots, some Kendal mint cake and a Peter Storm cagoule and you’ll be fine.

This is the story of how not fine it is .......