.... 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 .......