A lesson or four in hiking
Monday, April 17th, 2006Four weeks today and we’ll be in the air flying to Madrid to catch our connection to Lima. Extremely excited but I’d be lying if I did not say a little apprehensive.
Since we wrote last, our walking boots have been broken in courtesy of the three peaks in Yorkshire.
The latest outing was a little bit of a disaster which hammered home the realisation that we are are complete novices to this hiking malarky (hey if Jamie Oliver can use it in an advert I can use it in a blog!) insofar the heavens decided to open when were five miles from the car. Now my new performance wear jacket came up trumps! but sadly I had not got round to purchasing waterproof trousers! Needless to say combats are not generally seen on your average hiker and there is quite frankly good reason why this is so! The only thing that was comforting was that Chris, in his golfing jacket, and tracksuit bottoms was more wet than me.
The second lesson (the first being our equipment sucks!) is that to qualify as a Great British hiker it is a pre- requisite to be extremely polite…………..every person you pass happily chirps hello come rain or come shine ….but better still no-one sniggered pitifully at us despite our pathetic appearances (mind you we did not pass anyone blow the age of forty so maybe it was a maturity thing?).
The third lesson was that when cold wet and hungry we did not argue…….now when regaling the story to family we sold this as a positive – it clearly shows that when we are travelling RTW and times are tough our relationship will be able to take the strain no matter what adversity we face …. yeah right! In reality it was mainly due to us not actually speaking for the last hour of the hike. I found that being so cold and utterly miserable and by this time a little bit in pain due to numbness setting in I had to focus on my goal and quite frankly nothing was going to interupt the mental picture I was visualising (a little technique I drew on from my swimming days!). Plus Chris had been constantly moving the goal posts starting with “we are only half an hour away” – then approximately 30 mins later – “we are only fifteen minutes away” and so it went on for the next hour!
When back at the car we stripped off the wet clothing and being novices we did not have a spare “DRY” pair of trousers to travel back in. So t-shirt and pants for us both for the journey back to Leeds. So the last lesson of the day? Perhaps a change of clothes? No – I think it would be to never go commando!
Cause lets face it you never know when those pants are gonna come in handy!
Chris and Charl