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Adventure Eve

Monday, May 15th, 2006

1 day to got till we set out on our big adventure….things still don’t feel
real despite the fact that in less than 24 hours from now we will have bid
farewell to all our friends and family for the next 11 months!

We have been lucky enough to spend the last couple of nights down at
Charls parents house in Deal, having bid an emotional farewell to our house
in Leeds on Saturday morning. When I say emotional, it appears that an
occassion like this effects people in different ways. Myself, Charlotte and
John remained fairly chilled out by the event, sinking a couple of fairwell
pints at the bridge, before getting our heads down in anticipation of the
inevitable Niblett early start.

Burnsy however was clearly not so chilled out. Despite sneaking out for
an early evening pint at the rack (which wasn’t best received as my packing
was not quite complete / started) to bid farewell to my old mate on his
birthday, events got the better of the young lad, who rocked up to our house
as only he could, and tried to break the front door down at 1.30am. Having
woken the house with his confessions of undying love through the letterbox,
thankfully he was convinced to wander off into the darkness after a farewell
kiss / cuddle (unfortunately I couldn’t get Charlotte to oblige so I had to
step in!). Cheers Burns, a quality lasting memory of our final night in
Leeds!

The bags are now packed (albeit with significantly less than we first
thought – we won’t be quite as fashionable in South America as planned), the
goodbyes have nearly all been said (Shirley remains our final hope for
tears, having been surprisingly let down by the Street gang – modern drugs
are clearly amazing), and all that remains is to step on the plane and the
adventure begins……..

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A lesson or four in hiking

Monday, April 17th, 2006

Four 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!

 

 

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It’s all in the preparation!

Wednesday, March 8th, 2006
Sometimes I wonder how Chris and I have managed to stay together for what will be ten years this November. We are so different at times it amazes me.  Me I like to plan, arrive on time and know what I ... [Continue reading this entry]

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We Did it

Thursday, March 2nd, 2006
Hey everyone. Well we finally booked our trip around the world this morning! I am soexcited (and a little aprehensive about the hostage takers, bird flu,drugtrafikers using us as mules, police chopping our hands off for spitting out gum ... [Continue reading this entry]

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