Setting the pace - a road walk to Gaulby and Houghton and back

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Monday 18 August, 2008

I'm now in the habit of checking the weather at the weekend to see what kind of Monday I'm going to have. In the four weeks since I've done a substantial walk on my day off, I've been lucky. But the forecast for today was much worse. I woke to a lead-grey sky and wondered whether it made sense to plod the fields around Hallaton as planned. I imagined returning to the Bewicke Arms soaking wet and with muddy boots.

So I changed my plans. I've been thinking that when Walking Home, I will do the majority on minor roads, rather than country paths. So I thought I'd see what a full day on the road would be like.

I set off from home at 9:40, through local streets and onto the Gartree Road, built by the Romans. It's a B-road, full of traffic and with very narrow verges. Not much fun. I tried using the GPS feature of my new HP614c "Windows Mobile Device". Under the trees it struggled to locate me but in the open it settled within a couple of minutes. It seems that Google maps was using the data which I received during the wi-fi session I had at home earlier and the blinking blue dot on the map was impressively exactly where I stood.

Compared with walking through the fields, this was easy. Even the pressure of the passing traffic didn't prevent the walk being significantly more relaxing. No paths to spot, no map to refer to at every field, no feeling of being unwelcome on someone else's land. And the pace was so fast.

On the smooth tarmac I easily found a rythmn. In fact, my legs seemed eager to stride at an unnaturally fast pace and I wondered if I would pay for this later. I conciously restrained my speed and counted my steps over a minute - 112. I did some mental arithmetic and calculated that this is 6720 steps an hour. Or, to put it another way, about 150 hours of walking for every million steps. A million is a big number!

I thought about the way that soldiers march at a steady pace to achieve large distances. It confirms to me that country rambling is much less efficient than road walking. Speed is not that important to me, but the comfortable rythymn seems to make the whole experience more absorbing, more relaxing. I recognised the psycghological state of 'flow', described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, which I enjoyed so much in riding my motorbike.

For the first 90 minutes, the walking was effortless. The slight drizzle in which I had set off had soon given way to a fresh, brightening sky. I packed away my coat and enjoyed the breeze and bursts of sunshine. This was going to be a good walk.

I reached Gaulby at 11:48 and calculated my speed at almost 3mph. That's the fastest I've walked so far. At this rate I could easily make Houghton my lunch stop.

Sure enough, I ate the second of my cheese and tomato sandwiches in the car park of The Black Horse in Houghton, before going in for a pint. I chose Everard's Sunchaser, which I haven't had before. It's a blonde beer, very 'easy' and light but not enough taste for me. I prefer something a bit more 'chewy'.

I left Houghton after a stay of thirty minutes at 13:15 and arrived home exactly two hours later.

For the last two hours I noted the sensations in my legs. They had felt heavy for a while, but the very slight soreness on the outside of my thighs during the middle of the walk was giving way to new pains. There was a growing dull ache on the front upper part of my right thigh and a slightly sharper pain behind my left knee. Nothing very painful but I want to become familiar with these regular aches and pains in order to spot anything more unusual or serious. I'd hate for my long Walk Home to be spoilt by a pulled muscle or ligament that could easily have been prevented.

I checked my pace again, to see if tiredness had slowed me down. Surprisingly, it was exactly 112 steps per minute.

The last couple of miles were quite tiring but I reckon that I could have managed a few more if I really needed to. This is reassuring. Today's walk was 13.9 miles, which is well within the 10-15 mile per day range that I'm planning for Walking Home. This also means that today I have walked the second longest journey of my life. When I was fifteen (and more than four stone lighter!) I managed 18.5 miles.

After a sit down, a shower and a cup of tea, I feel nicely tired.