Moonshuffling to the end

Where was I? Ahh yes temporarily I had buoyed my spirits with freeze spray, painkillers and tunes! Thus making miles 13 - 17 my fastest to date.  During this time the sun also came up, glistening over the water and twas a lovely site to behold. I was seriously tempted to run into the sea and drown myself stick my toes in the water, but decided that would be a bad idea. So I used my camera phone to snap a few shots and plodded on.
Well I should say it was lovely at first, then it started to get bloody warm! Where was the rain? the clouds? a bloody breeze? Hot, lovely sunshine is all well and good for larking about in the park, but not when one is shuffling power walking like they have never power walked before! Thank goodness I have a sunny disposition, otherwise it would appear that I was a total miserable sod. Sunny disposition in my case was plenty of water, fresh orange slices at mile markers and happy smiling faces (not mine). On approaching mile marker 19, I met up with some girls that I know from the walk the walk forum, so plodded on with them. They were decidedly in better shape than I and were excited to be approaching mile marker 20.

 Supposedly at Mile Marker Twenty a sense of uber calmness and elatedness descends upon you like a thousand angel wings providing a cool breeze. I may of ever so slightly exagerated the wonderment that is mile marker twenty, but it was definitely a woop woop moment for a lot of people. Why not for me? The pain and tiredness due to severe lack of training was screaming in my ear. My nasty inner voice was whispering "You still have 6.2 miles to go! still not just! you lazy sod!", my nasty inner voice is a right sod. Luckily for me,from deep within my being a competitive streak was sparked just ever so slightly at the prospect of keeping up with people.
The last 6.2 miles seem to take an age, heading back into the city of Edinburgh with the sun blazing and seeing all the sights that had been shrouded in darkness hours before. Edinburgh is truly a lovely city surrounded by greeness and beautiful architecture. Of course I was not really paying attention at the time because I was concentraing on putting one foot in front of the other. The cheeriness and enthusiam of the volunteers that are spreadout throughout the course is really a nice boost when you are flagging, even though they lie about how close you are to the next mile marker (cheeky buggers). They might not of actually been lying but boy did one mile feel like ten towrds the end! Oh and the curbs! Stepping up and down curbs is like torture towards the end.
Not sure when it dawned on me that I was actually going to finish the challenge, I think it was only as I recieved my medal, sat on the floor and took off my trainers!

As I sat on the grass with my medal and bare hobbit like feet, I felt like shedding a tear or two but was not sure why. I felt emotional because I had finsihed it , but also because I hadn't had enough faith in myself that I would finish it. My fears were not unfounded, because I had been so poorly prepared for it, with excuses abound from the mumborg to college work.  So after a moment of melancholy I popped my blisters, squirted blister juice in my face (yuck), used the glorious freeze spray and felt at one with the world. Then I tried to stand up.......

Start Moonwalking...

Here I am talking about a different type of moonwalking, whilst the moonwalking maestro has shuffled off this mortal coil. Anyhow back to talking about me, me and some more about me.
I arrived in Edinburgh on Friday afternoon and headed up to the hostel I was staying in during my visit. The Castle Rock Hostel was literally across the road from Edinburgh Castle and a hop, skip and jump away from the Royal Mile. It was an ideal location to base myself for the weekend.
As I was on my own I arranged to meet up some of the others that were doing the MoonWalk on their lonesome for a bite to eat. It was nice being on my own, but also good to meet up and have some company too. Too be honest the last few weeks had been so stressful that it was a miracle I even made it to Edinburgh, let alone plan anything. I was still absolutely crapping myself at the thought of the impending 26.2 miles of hell that I had voluntarily signed up for, but for the time being forgot about that and enjoyed good food and company.
Saturday arrived after a disturbed night of sleep, mainly thanks to chatty drunk Irish girls sharing my room, they were fun though. After a lazy morning I met up with one of the girls from the night before (Debs) and we had a lovely lazy lunch. Then it was back to my room to rest and prepare for long long night ahead! Still not believing what I was getting myself into.

Around 8pm it was time to head to the Pink City in Inverleith Park, Edinburgh and meet up with some of the girls from the walk the walk forum for food and a chat before walk time. As I walked through the park entrance I could hear drums and then a huge pink city arose before me. The atmosphere is absolutely amazing as you walk through the entrance, surrounded by a haze of pinkness.
Panic began to kick in as everyone was excitedly talking about the walk and all the training they had done. I didn't think now was the time to confess that the most I had walked was 8 miles of late and that I was going to be sick! So as everyone got more and more excited, I got scared!
In the great big pink city we gathered for pasta, talks from the sponsors and then the dreaded warm up. I can't grapevine to save my life, my brain says left, my leg goes right! so I shuffled further and further away from the warm up zone and felt lost in the crowd. At this point, more than any other, I felt very alone and sorry myself.
I was in the Pink group, so that was the last group to be called to the gate and the excitement was all around as we were herded to the gate ready for the off. The Pink group was about 30-40 minutes behind the lead group and it was slow going through the gate.  Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle and then I was free from the crowd, well a bit free anyways. Whoops, claps and cheers abound, so much so that you couldn't help but feel part of something special.

I think that atmosphere carries you through the first few miles, as you look around the beautiful city of Edinburgh, absorb the excited chatter and forget your worries. It is when things get quiet and the atmosphere becomes more serious as people get their heads down and pick up the pace. The pace! Bloody hell! It is nothing like the pace of hiking or normal walking. Upping the gear from 2.5 miles an hour to 3.5/4 miles an hour is a serious wake up call to your muscles (or lack of them). I thought I was a good judge of distance, but holy moly were those mile markers slow in coming! I nearly cried when it felt like an age to just pass 3 miles. I didn't even want to update anyone via my phone as I was in serious doubt of finishing even half way. At mile marker 11 the half moon walkers branch off and do their last two miles to complete the 13 miles of their challenge. How I wanted to go with them! Especially as it dawned on me painfully and slowly that I wasn't even halfway <--------------- Insert whingeing here!

Just past Mile marker 11 it was toilet stop time and although it was freezing and the queues were massive, I needed to stop. During the queue I gave myself a pep talk, sprayed my knees with half a can of freeze spray and  popped some pain killers. The combination of pep talk, text off the mumborg, painkillers and freeze spray did the trick and I began to pick up the pace. After reaching mile marker 13 and the disco bus, I plugged myself into my mp3 player, turned up the volume to ear bleeding level and kicked myself up the arse.

The adventure continues tomorrow (ish)

Hiking in The Devil's Kitchen

To see more photos and these photos individually visit my flickr page by following this link:
Twll Du photos on Flickr

Welcome to Twll Du which translates into the black hole in Welsh, but in English it translates into The Devils Kitchen. It refers to the narrow cleft which you can see in the top right hand photograph. It is found in the hanging valley called Cwm Idwal which is in Snowdonia, Wales.

I have been to this place quite a few times, even with school,as its an area that was formed by glaciation and is absolutely beautiful.

In those past visits I had not attempted any hiking. So its starts as a lovely nice stroll, then its a rather tough scramble to the top. You will see that if you watch the video located at the bottom of this post.

Unfortunately once we did get to the top in one piece, the devil decided to come out to play and we were battered by hailstones and a little snow flurry. Although that did pass fairly quickly, the clouds came down fast on the mountain tops and visibility decreased. This meant it wasn't safe to carry on as we weren't familiar enough with the area for that to be a wise decision.

This also meant I didn't get to see some rather cool rock formations, but I will be going back so will get them next time.

The scramble down was worse as it was a lot more slippery and I had to hold onto to the mountain at some points. No doubt you will be amazed to know that for once I did not fall on my arse, a miracle I know.

The Devil himself appeared in the form of a mountain goat on the scramble down, but stayed still long enough for me to take a picture. A fellow walker told us that one of the mountain goats butt you if you don't feed it. That would of meant goat curry if the furry blighter tried that with me.

Even though the weather spoilt some of walk, overall it was still a gorgeous place and I am looking forward to going back in better weather.

The video is filmed with the same camera that I use to take the photographs, a canon powershot A630. I wish I had a good quality hand held camera but at the moment this does the job.

As its an ominous place I went with ominous music to set the theme, also you could hear that I was out of breath at times, so that had to be edited out.

I forgot to say that the music is by Matthijs Vos, which I found on Jamendo thanks to my chum Tech Fun aka JD. It is track seven, Strings Adventure, and from your comments it definitely adds an eerie factor to the video.

Wooden

When I go hiking, I am always in seemingly treeless places. There are in fact quite a few trees but when your going up a mountain the trees tend to disappear.
So when it was decided that this week in PhotoHunt the theme would be Wooden, I thought what better than to post my favourite tree photos.

*Remember to click on my face to see more hiking adventures*

Hike Two, hot, sweaty but not muddy.

Yesterday was another glorious day in the world of hiking, I know its annoying to those of you surrounded by snow (haha). It was actually icy, but the sunshine took away the chill factor and well to be honest, the hiking gear and thermal undies helped too.
I have not been to Wales since we attempted this walk the first time round last year and I am definitely heading back to this corner of the world soon. The walk was from Llyn Geirionydd & Llyn Bychan to Llyn Crafnant. I cant pronounce it (its Welsh) without sounding like a Klingon.
To start the walk you have to find the car park which in itself was tricky and you have to force others drivers to reverse around corners in order to let you pass. Once at the car park, we discovered it was deserted, not many brave folks out today.
If you look at the mosaic above you should see a building, that was part of a disused mine which you will see in the video below. It says 'keep out', but of course I ignored that. It was a lovely spot to start the walk. The video is not the best quality and due to my naturally clumsy nature its not safe for me to walk and hold camera for any length of time. Hopefully you get an idea of the lovely scenery that we walked through.
The walk was 9.5 miles / 15.4 km graded as Moderate. The ascent was 1900 feet / 576 metres, but we may of added on a wee bit too that (due to incompetent map reading, again).
Although the hike was beautiful, it was not complete success as yet again the damn five bar gate alluded us twice! this happened last year too. It is mentioned in the directions, but we have never spotted the ruddy thing, so therefore must not have completely gone the right way again. That means we will be going back again to conquer it once and for all.

Notice in the title it says 'hot,sweaty but not muddy' this is in fact a lie. I was a bit muddy but I did not fall on my arse this time.

Click the link below to see the rest of the hikes photos over on my flickr page.

*More Pictures HERE*

Hiking is worth it.

Free Willy!

Quite a few of you witty/mad/perverted and crazy folks have jumped on the I Love Willy bandwagon and proclaimed him to be a free willy when he is out on hikes with me. I can't tell you what my hiking buddies think of me bringing willy, because it involves a lot of swearing and exclamations of WTF!!! They don't understand the world of blog and that everything in life is bloggable. I know what your thinking, WTF! am I doing hanging around with these people for? Its a good thing they can drive and make me nice sandwiches.
Today I am off hiking again for part two of the great getting it right this time challenge. This is where we attempt to not get lost when on previous attempts we have, today's second attempt is in Wales, this one.The previous attempt, so while I am off conquering the hills you can gaze at this photo from last week.

So while I am foot loose and fancy free in the hills , check out the others from this weeks PhotoHunt.

A few blisters popped later....

As you can see from the photos, yesterdays hike was indeed worth it! Even the pus filled blister i have just popped, hasn't diminished how beautiful it was yesterday.
I shall start from the beginning of this adventure so you can appreciate the full wonder of it, as i forget that people actually want to know where i have been and not just stare at my awesometriffic photos ( i am rather chuffed with them).
I awoke about 2 minutes before I was getting picked up and had to drag my still asleep/dead body around the house, legs half in pants, half out, whilst brushing my teeth and making coffee. My chums arrive on time, the buggers, so i open the door and use various hand gestures to communicate that i was running late.
Once i finally got my shit together, i dumped my stuff in the car boot and onto Sedbergh we went. Sedbergh is located in North Yorkshire (England) and its not the first time i have been to this particular spot. Every time we, as in Aly, Chris or me, pick a walk its normally a random thing guided by where has the best weather. This walk was a return to conquer a past failure, Sedbergh had defeated us on a previous adventure, due to bloody fog! (Previous attempt). With this in my mind, i wasn't looking forward to this walk at first.
This is the roughly the path we followed The route, sometimes we go slightly off track. It was a ten mile/16.3 km slog , graded moderate (my arse). The ascent was to the dazzling height of 2300 feet / 697 metres.
As yesterday was my first hike of 2008, you could say i was a wee bit out of shape, okay a bloody lot! Aly and Chris both have kept up with fitness like stuff, i on the other hand hibernate for winter. So while the start of the hike was great, i was even happy. The towards the middle bit where we had to ascend up the side of that bloody waterfall, I could of quite happily died. Aly and Chris wanted to kill me because I apparently had a face like a toddler about to throw an almighty wobbler. I hurt so I could feel like that if i wanted, don't get me started.
To combat the pain and well basic unfitness, I took many a photo stop. Taking photo's is a great excuse to stop and get your breath back.
Humour was restored once we reached the top and everything was downhill from there literally.

Funny notes of the day: I fell over twice, both times landing on my arse in mud. The first time was early on in the hike so my pants had dried and Chris fell over whilst laughing at me (Ha!). Unfortunately the second incident happened at the end of the walk and i had to walk through the village of Sedbergh looking like I had crapped myself.

Watch the video to see a wee bit of what it looked like on the way down, it is set to some lovely music.

PS: Willy was there but he will have his own post :)

Hot, Sweaty and covered in mud.

I am back from my little hiking adventure, hot, sweaty, tired and covered in mud. Did i mention pain? pain all over my body.
Was the pain worth it?I will let you know tomo when i feel like updating this post. Here is one of many shots I got today.

Wordless Wednesday

Saturday Photo Hunt - Flexible

Hello this week in PhotoHunt the theme is flexible. I seriously wracked my brain to think of something, as me and flexible don't normally go together. Then whilst I was sorting out more of my hiking photo's to put on flickr, I found these ones. Boy did i have to be a bit more flexible to get myself and two dogs up that waterfall! Not as flexible as the guys we saw rock climbing in the cove at the end of the hike.