Apologies at the lateness of these blog posts...life whistled by without us noticing the time, and now Trailwalker is in 1 week!! We'll be updating the blog with our latest walks over the next few days - we have been training - honest!!


A 'wander' in the Pentlands
Saturday 7th April 

As we were all up in beautiful Scotland for one reason or another (weddings, gliding holidays or simply life), we took advantage of this rare occasion and decided to go for a training hike together. This time we were led by Andy, Sophie’s boyfriend Dave’s dad.  Andy is an old hand at walking in the Pentlands, and set us up with a good route, and as an ex-army chap and hill walking regular, certainly knew how to set a pace!

We were all keen to get going on this one, especially as we struggled with speed before, though this was mainly due to faffage and generally being disorganised. This time however,  we had our equipment in order and our minds set to just getting on with the walking. So off we went on a rather cold and grey morning to the Pentlands. Luckily the rain had just stopped as I pulled into the car park where we planned to meet and after some hasty introductions, we set off.  Andy didn’t even want to waste time waiting for my Garmin to get a GPS fix, which set the mood for the rest of the day!

The first few miles took us pretty steadily up, into the Pentland Hills and got us all huffing and puffing a little bit. After all it was early in the morning, we were pretty much walking in cloud, and it was very muggy - we didn’t even have much of a view to spur us on.

Ascending into the cloud...

Once we made it up the hill though we finally started to enjoy ourselves! The paths smoothed out and we were promised an ascent free walk for the rest of the day. Now if that doesn’t lift your spirits, then nothing does! Plus we got to play with the last bit of the spring snow too J

We steadily carried on along the ridge and with the cloud starting to disappear, the city of Edinburgh revealed herself to us. What a view!

Most of the walk us girls spent chasing after the boys, who made good speed at the front and got us to carry on. This resulted with Andy turning round to whoever was in charge of the map, or otherwise called mapboy, to find out the direction we should be heading with a smug smile on his face -  of course, he knew where we should be going! Although, we had one minor success over his smugness later on, as Andy steadily walked past one of the turns we were supposed to take, so we simply followed him along the wrong path. I’m sure there’s a lesson there somewhere?! Luckily this made not much of a difference and we didn’t have to turn around to correct for it. From then on we made sure we got our headings right!

We made good progress, walking along the river, and passing through the edge of town, and were soon at Threipmuir Reservoir.  Here our spirits were kept up by spotting way markers with animals of all shapes, sizes and colours, that were seemingly randomly placed along the path. We still wonder what they were for....

Part the way round the reservoir, I got very excited by this podium, as we could fit everyone on it (apart from Andy who took the picture), but I think the excitement was mostly on my side, and maybe Leigh’s - just a touch :-) 

After Soph’s earlier ‘sausage hand’ incident in the Peaks, we also carried on with our new routine to keep the blood moving in our hands. One of us who was feeling a bit ‘sausage fingers’ would shout “Jazz hands” and we all had to comply - an idea that seems to be effective and fun! Thanks to a member of the Trailwalker Facebook group for that one (can’t remember who exactly though sorry).  At least now we knew we weren’t alone with this problem!

Jazz Hands!

Finally we got to our lunch break, a relive to all of us, but mostly Dave. His boots were a touch on the small side but we had no idea how much pain he must have been in until he uncovered the blisters on his feet. I won’t go into much detail here, but I can tell you this much: It wasn’t pretty, and they were massive. So at this stage we decided to cut the walk a little shorter to get back to the cars and get poor Dave out of his misery! However, we all felt we very much achieved something that day as we finally managed to walk at a decent pace, without getting terribly lost and without faffing far too much! Here's to efficiency! :P


So here are some numbers:

- Distance Walked - 16.3 Miles (26.23 km)

- Time Taken - 6 Hours 19 Minutes

- Average Pace - 23 Minutes per Mile (This is including breaks)

- Average Moving Pace – 17.22 Minutes per Mile

- No. of "Jazz Hands" Manoeuvres – Just enough to entertain us!

- No. of blister plasters on Dave’s feet – too many!

- No. of houses with turrets that we wanted to move into – Probably about 10, more than you        

  could ever imagine seeing!

Other interesting stuff we learnt:

- Legs were hurting considerably more at this pace (at least mine did) – Future training should 
  involve more walking and less running I think!

- I lost my beloved hat, and I won’t shut up about it! I will drive another three hours to the same - 
  Christmas market next year to get another one!

- Everybody loves Pombears and CapriSun :-)

- Em wants to move into a house with a turret (or two)!

- We are still circulating the role of mapboy (map reader/leader), which continued working well!

- Sophie decided to buy some new walking shoes while mine thankfully didn’t let me down this 
  time :-)

The next time we will all meet will be a real test. We will be walking at least half of the Trailwalker track on the last weekend of May, and we will be braving it in the dark. We must be mad! It is getting serious J

Claudia xx