On Friday I set off for a two day hike/camping trip to complete my Duke of Edinburgh bronze award. I must admitt that at first I wasn't looking forward to the trip, I had recently returned from the practice trip and suffering a broken toe, which wasn't great. With a 65l rucksack, a tent and a load of terrible 'add water' dried food.
As we departed on the first day, the weather was pretty grim and the weight on my back wasn't making it any better, however after a while of walking my spirits heightened and I enjoyed it.
Then we came to the motorway - we had to cross a huge dual carriageway. We decided to go 20 minutes down the motorway to an underpass to pass through safely and ended up taking a 2 hour detail through 7foot bracken and a knee high swamp. The rest of that day was a mess of insect attacks and getting soaked in lakes, but eventually we reached the camp site, and the horrible bugs that came with it.
That night i slept terribly, lumpy ground, bird attacks and a family of hedgehogs trying to climb up our tent.
The next day saw a 5am start, another long walk with that huge weight on my back, we started with a pretty bad mistake of zigzagging through a forest that we later realised that we could have just gone straight throguh.
After that we seemed to just eat up the miles, moving from a rainforest atmosphere to a longroad that resembled the desert or something out of a scary movie, wild horses attacked us and then after another 7 hours of solid walking we made it, and came first out of all the groups.
Now this experience was a pretty insane one, I got back covered in bites and slightly tanned and soar feet. But I feel this has hugely helped my stamina and mind set, I will no longer be lazy towards conditioning because I know how much my body can indure and how fun horrible unbareable pain can be :)
Sorry this is a slightly feeble account but I am exhausted from training/conditioning today, hope you enjoyed this anyway.
Cheers. :)
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