Blown Along the South Downs

The time had finally came along for Team OUCH to do their last training session together. After reports of bad weather and flooding in their first and second choice locations they decided if they were going to get wet and blown away they might as well do so on the route they'd be walking a month later.

So off to checkpoint 1 (South Harting) they went, their first destiation was checkpoint 2 (Cocking). In record time (~30 minutes) Mnemosyne managed to miss a turning so a small scenic detour was added to the route. But then they were on their way. There wasn't the number of cyclists on the route this time so a hobby was made of working out who on the trail was there training for Trailwalker, any team of 3 or 4 was a likely contender...

Checkpoint 2 was made in reasonable time given the detour and then the route was done in reverse, but without the detour. The wind was a steady 25 mph with the odd gust of far more, well we wanted a cooling breeze... Beacon Hill, hard on the way out to checkpoint 2 was worse on the way back, thankfully we never have to do it that way round again, Mnemosyne was doubly glad after seeing it closer up...

On returning to checkpoint 1 Medusa's parents surprised the team with rock cakes and tea :D. Revived and refreshed it was onwards to the start. On the way the promised rain decided to make an appearance and the team got reacquainted with the sideways rain concept. However their route was soon tree lined and sheltered. Another short detour amongst tall trees and we were at the start. Medusa's parents met us again, a friendly face at a checkpoint works wonders on morale, and then we were heading back to checkpoint 1. This was our fastest stage, knowledge of the route helping keeping the momentum up.

That's a raindrop and camera flash not a metorite

 
By the time we were out of the shelter of the trees the weather had eased and stayed that way until we got to the cars at checkpoint. It was a great days walk, even with the weather against us, and more knowledge of the route was useful.

Not long to go now...