Making the most of a free Saturday, today Diana and I have been walking in the Forest of Dean, about an hour's drive away from Bristol over the Severn Bridge. We parked at the visitors centre and decided that as the longest marked visitors trail was only 4.5 miles, we'd tackle the cycle trail instead which presented more of a challenge to our legs! After a bit of map-and-compass malarkey in the car park, we located the start of the trail and set off, trying to wake up in the early morning air (11am is early to me, anyway. Oh the joys of being a part-time arts student...!)
We seemed to be lucky with the weather again for most of it - only getting a bit rained on once. (I seem to be learning one thing per walk - today's lesson was to remember a waterproof!*) Oh well - if Saturdays would continue like this weather-wise, it would be very good! The trail was really well marked which meant we could concentrate on walking steadily rather than keeping having to extract the map (bonus for me with no map skills whatsoever). After a couple of hours' walk, we stopped for lunch before our only hill - getting slightly chilly but enjoying the break nonetheless! We then wandered (ahem, I mean route-marched) up to an RSPB viewpoint where a big sign said we could see goshawks, but I'm not convinced they were out and about today. Probably doing the sensible thing and staying at home/nest!
We managed to finish the 9 mile walk in about 3 hours, including a 20 minute stop for lunch - not too terrible methinks, though we'll have to build up to going faster on the real thing. Diana and I are going jogging this Tuesday (eek) to try and get fitter - I definitely appreciate having company whilst training, it's very good for taking the mind off slightly achey muscles! So far a lot of my smaller training sessions have been on my own (things like swimming, going to the gym and cycling) so it's very good to be planning some joint things. Next week I want to try and do a 16 mile walk round Bristol - this should be a lot more challenging as it will involve more and steeper hills and a longer distance. I think I really need to start pushing myself to get fitter - hopefully managing to remain in one piece whilst I do it!
* For the interested(?!), the lesson learnt from my South Downs expedition was to try and just keep walking up the hills - no stopping if possible!
1 comment:
Good luck with the jogging!
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