Training Walk IV (Night Walk To Thame & Back 57km) .... And Then There Were Three

And then there were three?    Oh please God tell me I don't have to be Phil Collins

Derek has reluctantly decided to throw in the towel from a walking perspective. His swollen knee is not getting any better but he has stepped up to provide us with a first class support option. This is the first walk for the new six-legged rather than eight-legged groove machine. More Motorhead than The Wonder Stuff.

Howard is fretting over the route and the possibilities of getting lost in the dark, lost in music, caught in a trap, no turning back, etc.  He's read enough stories to his kids to know that if they take the wrong turning in the woods they could fall into a heffalump trap or be captured by a Hansel and Gretel-napping witch. Even a ... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Bread, trail of bread wouldn't save them. The team packs chicken bones and an "ACME gingerbread house demolition kit" just in case. At least the route gives them a second shot at The Red Lion at Whiteleaf, assuming they get there before it closes that is.

Howard prepares a greasy repast for himself and Pete which later on turns out to be "not such a good idea" and we rendezous at Matt's house in Totteridge in pleasant evening sunshine. Matt has been delayed by a work flavoured real life crisis and is trying to collect kit and eat at the same time. We set off from Matt's house at Dark Helmet Ludicrous Speed which turns out to be "not such a good idea" either and before you know it we've gone past Disraeli's country gaff Hughenden Manor and we're striding along the main road in Naphill getting admiring glances/hoots of derision from the locals. The Naphill Mob are particularly taken by the car cleaning sponge cubes that Pete has taped to the underside of his rucksack straps to take the pressure off his sore shoulders. Heath Robinson and indeed Robert Robinson would have been impressed. Each of the walks has thrown up another interesting problem to deal with, but the team is nothing if not resourceful and wherever there's a branch of Halfords or Hawkins Bazaar there's a solution.

The Wheel in Naphill has an Aylesbury Vale CAMRA Pub Of The Year 2011 banner outside which soon locks its tractor beam onto the team. Only Derek's pre-match advice that it's a bit overrated saves us from getting sidetracked "early doors". We take a nice path down to North Dean past chez Derek who is either hiding in the cupboard under the stairs or helping out with the Scouts. As we approach Speen, Pete's temptation to add an "L" to the WELCOME TO SPEEN sign almost gets the better of him. Outside Speen Scout HQ, some cubs are tying knots or lashing poles together, which seems a bit harsh considering they've not been in the EU that long.

After a bit of umming and ahhing we think we've got the right track out of Speen although it's a bit boggy underfoot. We see a shape on the path ahead and we unstealthily approach. When we get closer, we see that it's a badger cub drinking from a puddle. This has to be a wildlife watching result in anybody's book and it takes our minds off the fact that it's actually getting quite dark. Grubbins Lane turns into Lily Bottom Lane, but the Pink & Lily pub at the end is yet another country inn that has closed its doors, despite having Rupert Brooke as a previous regular.

We're now on a fairly busy road in the woods in the dark and there's much scuttling onto the verge to be done. The other problem is trying to read the map using Howard's deflicted eyes and an ineffective torch. By some miracle we make it out the other side alive, in time for Pete to nearly leave his hat behind after a roadside leak. Matt's astronomy app confirms that "the aircraft that isn't moving" is in fact Venus and we have a Professor Brian Cox moment. Howard tries to remember him from their time at school together, but the prof would only have been a spotty oik in the years when Howard was fine tuning his underachievement and trying to avoid being bogwashed by the upper 6th.

Pete's shoulder is now giving him serious grief, but Matt's Snake Oil & Mobile Apothecary contains enough drugs to stop a charging elephant and some pain relief is administered. We head away from (now) twice shunned Red Lion along the Icknield Way with a trio of head torches lending a Blair Witch Project feel to proceedings. Before long we're in Princes Risborough and it's time for snacks (Matt has a banana, Howard munches something out of date from the fridge and Pete has the first of 236 packs of chicken satay).

Howard's plan is to use the Phoenix Trail to Thame, because "it's long and straight and we can't get lost". We can get seriously bored though and the relentless pace is starting to make things uncomfortable. There's chafing and Waddington's Formula 1 tyre wear.


Swedish Formula 1 - It's at least 3 in the Slitage-markering column and Antal varv hasn't reached 1.

Three Dog Night tribute band Three Badger Evening complete their set when Bodger and Badger scuttle across the path. Sheesh, badgers are just so passe darling.

We miss the dodgy syringe and special brew section of the Phoenix Trail by taking the Chinnor Road into the centre of Thame. Pete's prayers are answered and there is an all-night garage selling cold Lucozade. We also manage a proper coffee. The glucose and caffeine hit lifts the tempo again and we mark this down as a required item for the real walk. The local constabulary are investigating an altercation at Thame's premier nite spot and we head back to the ringroad before things start to get ugly.

Although it's well past 1am, all the houses in Towersey seem to have their bedroom lights on and the pampas grass out front tells of a community rich in marital flexibility and Argentinian gardening. A sign in the bus stop suggests that duck rustling is also rife.



Yes and they tasted wonderful

Leaving Towersey's steamy hotbed of intrigue and crime behind we climb wearily back onto the Phoenix Trail. By the time we reach the outskirts of Princes Risborough, there is a watery light in the sky. We walk across the railway to ensure that we're back on the wrong side of the tracks (where all the nasty hills are). Everything is starting to creak now and the pace has dropped off to a shuffle.

Pete checks out a new set of wheels

In a cruel twist of timing we hit a mobility low point, just as we pass the Mobility Equipment & Advice Centre. Strangely there's nobody there to provide either equipment or advice. The fact that it's only 5 in the morning may have something to do with it.

The next big hill is Wardrobes, although it looks like someone has stacked a sideboard, a bedside cabinet and a Welsh dresser on top of it. Howard's starting to get dropped from the peloton now. The broom wagon would have swept him up, but Mr Broom is still in the land of Nod (Dudley).

Just in the nick of time we get a text from Derek who has mobilised his army field kitchen and we arrange to meet him in Lacey Green for breakfast. The military precision of the operation doesn't quite extend to the bacon, which is performing a territorial reserve role in the fridge when Derek rolls up. However, egg rolls, porridge, coffee and folding chairs turn a Diem Horribilis into a Diem Mirabilis. Pete and Matt have a tyre change, going from walking shoes to running shoes. It's difficult to describe the impact on our spirits of a hot drink and some proper food and we get into a good stride on our way back to Speen as the sun scrapes over the horizon.

Reasons to be (briefly) cheerful Part #1

Between Lacey Green and Speen we kill time by going through our Top 5 Cooked Breakfast items which reopens the wounds of the Hash Brown Heresy but there's enough consensus around bacon and black pudding to avoid bloodshed.

Back in North Dean, Pete's monster blister has exploded and Howard's calves have turned to mahogany. We've also underestimated how far we've still got left to walk and even a gentle incline takes its toll. North Dean seems to go on forever, but eventually we're climbing north again towards the Mushroom Farm. Some surly Jerseys give us the evil eye and force us to up the pace through the field.

We're in the home stretch now, but there's still time for some more injuries and more mud wading. Pete has one final Coke "pop" stop to get him through the last half mile back to Matt's.

Pete drives home with matchsticks holding his eyelids up.
Matt buys a paper and sits in a warm cricket pavilion.
Howard walks home from Totteridge and thinks about amputating his feet

Howard's feet prior to amputation

Some more important lessons have been learned :
1. Sponges don't stop your shoulders from hurting. Enormous quantities of drugs are a good alternative.
2. Changing your socks and shoes regularly is the best way of reducing blisters.
3. The psychological and physical benefit of support crew is impossible to overstate.
4. It gets boring walking for 12 hours in the dark, even with people who make you laugh.
5. It hurts a lot after 36 miles. The pain after 62.5 must be unimaginable.
6. Coffee and drugs are essential to get you through the night.

War is hell ...... and so is Trailwalker

Solo Training Walk (28km Stockley Park to High Wycombe .... The Long Walk Home)

To celebrate walk to work week and in a burst of contrary madness Howard decides to walk the 17.5 miles home. The weather looks decent and all meetings from 4pm have been cancelled ..... what could possibly go wrong?

The first stretch is probably the best, along the canal towpath to Uxbridge. I leave The Water's Edge, The Malt Shovel and The General Elliott behind, and I pass under the Oxford Road with just over an hour gone. I had planned to take in a swifty at The Swan & Bottle, but I push on towards Denham.

A bit further on there's a dodgy transaction going on between two schoolkids involving a bag of maggots and what looks like a Panini sticker album but might be the 21st century equivalent of "What The Butler Saw" ("What The Butler Recorded On His WebCam And Uploaded To The Internet").

By the time I get to Denham the air is filled with mayflies, but there's a surly darkness to the sky. Despite turning the map round several times I end up taking the wrong path, but after zigzagging dangerously across the firing line of the golf course I get back on track and end up outside The Fat Cow. After peering in through the window I figure it isn't "my kind of place", although I'm sufficiently thirsty that I'm willing to let my standards slip a bit. Just at that moment I'm nearly flattened by a 4 x 4 Merc driven by a woman whose fake tan would probably set off the smoke alarm. My inverted snobbery gene kicks in and I decide to take my chances further down the road.

The new pedestrian crossing over the A40 hasn't been finished yet, so Howard plays his own game of Frogger and just about manages to avoid being hooshed into the gutter by the bus he would have caught if he hadn't been walking home. Ah the irony.

Instead of heading alongside the A40 there's a footpath marked between the BP garage and the bottom of "the land that time forgot" lane. In fact there are two sections to this footpath, the first one requiring a machete-wielding battalion of Chindits and the second one being navigable only by coracle. The houses up "the land that time forgot" lane are a curious mixture of city traders' bolt-holes and farmhouses with quad bikes, rusty burned-out cars and getorrfmahhhlaaaannnnnnd attitude out front. Nothing even vaguely resembling livestock or crops, although there is a horse and some asbestos sheeting. The pace picks up from here and by the time I get to to the pile of rubble that was The French Horn a 9pm finish is back on the cards. Opposite The French Horn is The Apple Tree (Country Pub & Eating). Wild horses, etc. ....

Country Pub & Eating ... gosh is that the time?

It's now just a case of a straight walk along the A40. At one point I'm accosted by a bloke in a high viz jacket. Turns out they're filming a Sleeping Beauty remake in Bulstrode Park and anyone using the public footpath here is clearly trying to break in to steal a pair of Angelina Jolie's pants.

Beaconsfield offers more overpriced gastrononsense pubs, but at least you can buy hats, oil paints and proper musical instruments here. I'm tempted by the banjo, but time is pressing and the sun is fighting a losing battle with the horizon. At the bottom of the big hill coming into Loudwater I'm buoyed by news of a black pudding Scotch egg acquisition in time for the cricket on Thursday. So excited, I miss the turnoff for The Dereham's Inn, but end up at home to crack open a bottle of Clouded Yellow.

A touch under 4¾ hours for 17½ miles is OK, but I'm more than 25% tired.

Training Walk III (51km Cholesbury loop) .... I'm Just Going Outside I May Be Some Time

Today we're out to break through the 50% distance barrier. The idea is to harden up the feet and get a warm and fuzzy feeling from another milestone reached. There's nothing warm and fuzzy about the air temperature though as we park up opposite the windmill in Cholesbury just before 7. Like the dog with the black and white stripy jacket at Walthamstow, Pete and Matt push the pace along straight out of the traps and the stumpier half of the team trot along behind like the dog with the black and white coat from the Dulux advert. The torrential rain over the previous days has taken its toll and the "shoe team" are cursing while the "boot team" splash smugly though the mud. This is the walk where it becomes clear that a variety of footwear and socks is essential. Shares in Bridgedale rise on the news.

We skirt past the entrance to Dundridge Manor, one of many places on the walks that has a longer commute from the front door to the gate than most people need to get to work. Despite the faux medieval entrance we aren't run off the land by Guy of Gisbourne, but someone in a Range Rover gives us a funny look.

Just after Durham Farm, the road is flooded with cartoon ducks swimming on it, but we have an alternative path that takes us to the A413 Wendover Road. Lots of cyclists are out, but not many cars, so we can scuttle safely across. Cockshoots Wood is basically a muddy swimming pool with trees and after some circumspect paddling we come out at the wrong place and it takes a bit of compass work and Matt's GPS to get us back on track. There's a discussion about which side of a hedge we should be on and common sense wins out over the map and we avoid having to retrace our steps. The team is starting to lose faith in the mapreader and a bloody rebellion is fomented. The chance sighting of a hare distracts the revolutionaries and the coup is avoided.

We fight our way through yet another field of rape, getting lungfuls of Eau de Sprout and a generous coating of yellow dust and arrive by the shabby tradesman's entrance to Hampden House. He's been a great big silly old Hampden and lost all his money in the South Sea Bubble. His great great granddaughter lost her heart to a Starship Trooper, but that's another story.


The footpath out of the estate flirts with Grim's Ditch, bits of which we seem to come across on virtually every walk.
Ask the Expert #6 : What was Grim's Ditch for and who was Grim
- There are lots of Grim's Ditches in southern England, probably constructed in the Iron Age. They aren't deep enough to have much of a military purpose. Grim is another name for the Saxon god Woden.
A lot of the time we chat about films and stuff to pass the time. Pete and Derek both recommend Dog Soldiers with Sean Pertwee.
Ask the Expert #7 : Is Sean Pertwee related to Jon (3rd Doctor) or Bill (I'll get you Mainwaring)?
- Sean Pertwee is the son of Ingeborg and Jon Pertwee. Jon and Bill are distant cousins, but he's only 6 steps from Kevin Bacon.

Nice monument. Shame about the casualties.

More fields of rapeseed, more mud and some unfriendly horsey types take the gloss off what is otherwise a pleasant walk through some lovely countryside. The Chiltern Way turns into the Icknield Way which becomes the Ridgeway. It would have ended up being Howard's Way, but due to poor planning on his part, the Red Lion at Whiteleaf isn't open, so we plod shabbily across a golf course in a desperate search for refreshment. The Plough at Lower Cadsden looks a reasonable replacement and the Olde Trip hits the spot, but it's clear that grubby walkers are not their favoured clientele. It's no surprise that the Camerons get a warmer welcome to The Plough a few weeks later. So warm that they decide to leave daughter Nancy behind. Rumour has it that she followed the Trail Of Bread to Chequers. She didn't make it to Coombe Hill though. The monument here commemorates the fallen from the Second Boer War. From here we can see exactly where HS2 will spoil the view of the Buckinghamshire gentry. I can feel my heart bleeding.

The cadence is starting to get a bit ragged now and even "the one about the buffalo and Prince Phillip's  underpants" isn't funny. By the time we get to the inaccurately named Painsend Farm, the pain is really starting to kick in and Derek is clearly not in a good way. We create our own little Antarctic vignette; Derek is the heroic long-suffering Oates, Howard is the evil inflexible Scott and The Full Moon at Cholesbury is the outside of the tent. Derek trudges the 3 miles to The Full Moon on his own. Stretching the analogy too far, Matt is Shackleton but on a different expedition, Pete is a tenacious husky (even though he's taken something for his throat) and the No. 4 bus from Chesham is the team of ponies that failed to get Scott home from the pole, but gets Derek back to Wycombe. It's clear now that we should all have bailed out, but instead of listening to his inner Shackleton ("Better a live donkey than a dead lion"), Howard listened to his inner Scott ("Weighin' in at nineteen stone. You're a whole lotta woman. A whole lotta woman. Whole lotta Rosie"). We realise too late that we should have agreed how to handle situations like this in advance. It's difficult to pick up the morale after that, although the sheer unadulterated unpleasantness of the Lucozade gel sachets lighten the mood for a bit.

We reach the Pole. Pete does some dancing. Matt humours him. Amundsen has already been and gone.

By the time we reach the Cow Roast Inn we're gasping for a drink and the bar staff here are much more welcoming to sweaty walkers. We sensibly if reluctantly go for long soft drinks rather than the Woodforde's Wherry and we're back on the road all too soon. We cross the canal and loop around the bottom end of Northchurch Common and hit the outskirts of Berkhamsted. Pete's blisters are now giving him major problems, and we're all shuffling along like Chelsea pensioners, or someone tackled by Chelsea pensioner "Chopper" Harris. We have a "pop" stop at the Tesco Metro before tackling the Col de Berkhamsted.

In sight of the finish, Howard puts the last half mile extra loop to the vote and almost becomes Caesar to Matt's Cassius and Pete's (great smell of) Brutus, so head straight to the pub instead. Rarely has an average pint tasted so good and we reflect on a day of mixed fortunes. It's taken twelve hours to complete thirty-two miles, but we were virtually stationary by the end and we lost Derek and some team spirit in the process.

Teacher's report : A good effort, but must do better, C+