Oh the pain!

We signed up for our first Geocaching "event" this weekend and boy did we drop ourselves in at the deep-end! We've not been to an event before so didn't know what to expect but from what I was told on the day this wasn't a typical event; this was simply a walk with a group of friends & Geocachers around a pre-defined route hoping to pick-up a few caches en-route.

The event was published as approximately 13 miles and we knew this was pushing the limits of our fitness - previously we've only done 5, 6 or maybe 7 miles per day. Additionally we were a little dubious about going as we've both been run-down since our holidays and my flight-caught cold had turned into quite a bad cough.

Anyway we decided to take the plunge and set off at 8am on Sunday morning to meet up at Edale. We met a very friendly mixed bunch of people and set off at 9:30.

By 11:00 I thought I was dying. After an easy start, no doubt to throw us off the scent, the route started going up both sides of a tiny stream that trickles down a mountain. I can hardly call it a trail as it was damned near vertical; we rose from 280m above sea-level to 533m within a mile.

This took us to the top of Kinder Scout plateau (made up of, I think, Kinder Scout, Crowden Head and Edale Moor.) We rested and then walked a couple of miles through wet peat (which makes for very tough going with heavy feet and slipping tracks) then we went around the next side of the plateau where the hill is all stones so your ankles are bent every which way and quickly start to ache. Finally about 6 hours later you walk down hill for an hour and your knees and legs feel like collapsing. You don't believe it yourself but the downhill is the worst.

Anyway I know this all sounds like a long grumble but it's not; it is very hard to explain the sheer energy sapping experiences of wading through peat, going downhill knowing you have to then go back up another hill, or carefully picking every single step across a rocky terrain. By 3:15 I would have willingly swapped my house for a helicopter - not the ownership of one, just a two minute ride in one back down to the car. HOWEVER after eight and a half hours we were finally back at the starting point. We'd done some caches (I never took count, they hardly mattered,) we'd done 14.5 miles, we'd gone up to an altitude of 630 metres, we'd fallen over, we'd slipped and got wet & dirty, we'd laughed and we'd made a dozen new friends. It was a great experience.

I'm hoping I'll read this back in years to come and laugh at myself. There were people there of all ages who did it with less effort than we did, a couple of guys even walked around in circles visiting other spots to pass the time while the slow ones caught up. There may be other walkers who read this and think we're total wimps. They're probably right.

However it WAS a personal achievement and, as they say, every great journey starts with a single step. My journey is the journey to fitness. Today I ache, and not as bad as I feared, and I'm also very proud that I have no blisters!