Closer to home

It's been quite a hectic weekend so I decided to stay local for today's walk and took the opportunity to venture up to Mousehold Heath - a large area of wood and heath to the North of the City Centre. The first two miles was a walk through the city centre - not the most exciting of walks on a busy Sunday afternoon on a particularly warm day.

There is a main road that runs through the middle of Mousehold with a couple of main paths running through the middle of each side as well as a multitude of small tracks to follow. The terrain was a particularly good training ground - lots of hills, good variety of ground to test my boots out on etc. It is also, as it turns out, good ground for BMXing and motorbiking and I nearly got 'taken out' by a motorcyclist early on in the walk! I didn't really follow any particular pattern or route - just criss-crossed the area until I reached nearly 7 miles as this screen grab shows.....

The Mousehold are is one of the highest points in the city, not far from Gas Hill where I spend my lunch breaks training. This gives some really good views of Norwich..... (much better than I managed to catch on camera....)

Some of you will know I'm quite a fan of finding quirky graffiti, my all-time favourite is:

Today I found the beauty below, it may not be quite as pretty as the above but seemed quite apt for the challenge I'm undertaking - now only if I could find up those three mountains I'd be sorted.....!

21 miles in two days!

After yesterday's 11 mile walk it took a lot for me to peel myself away from my bed (on my day off!) to tackle today's walk. But peel myself I did, and I do feel rather pleased with myself for doing so.

I decided today would be the day to do another coastal walk - the summer season seems to be starting to really kick in now, and the town carnivals for Cromer and Sheringham are just round the corner so I think I will focus on the less tourist-popular areas for my walks during August.

I started today's walk by getting the bus to Cromer and then walking, following the road, into Overstrand and on to the cliff tops which provide some pretty good hilly sections (hilly by Norfolk standards). I then followed the cliffs, round the Cromer golf course and into Cromer sea front. Last time I did this section of the North Norfolk coast it was a gloriously sunny day so it did strike me how different the landscape looks when it is overcast.

the same stretch of coast in the sun from last time I walked it (click)

After passing through the town I followed the cliffs along to the Runton Road car park. There the cliff path disappears into a private camp site so I had to temporarily follow the road until I reached East Runton where I made my way down to the beach. I had just missed high tide so I was able to walk along the beach - as the tide was still quite high I had to keep switching between walking on the rocks and walking on sand, both provided a pretty tough work out which has to be a good thing training-wise, even if I didn't totally enjoy it.

beach walking

I walked along the beach until I reached West Runton, and specifically the West Runton Beach Cafe. Here I stopped for a very welcome My Whippy ice cream (with flake of course!) and a bit of a breather. Ok, ok I know I'm not going to be able to do this during the actual Three Peaks but once in a while can't hurt surely.....? 

After my pit stop I then continued along the cliff path, over Beeston Bump, through Sheringham and along to Skeldon Hill (where the Sheringham Coastwatch volunteers are based); this is a pretty good hill (again, by Norfolk standards) for training. I went over this hill and then stopped and did it again before heading into Sheringham to get the bus back. 

In total the walk was 10 miles and gave me a good mix of uphill and downhill walking as well as different surfaces. Coupled with yesterday's 11 mile walk I'm pretty pleased with what I've achieved and really am starting to feel like the hard work I'm been putting into my training is really starting to pay off, and hopefully putting me in good stead for the challenge. It of course remains to be seen how I'll feel tomorrow after these past two days of activity, the current plan is to do Gas Hill during my lunch break tomorrow, let's see how that goes......

today's route

The accidental shepherdess.....

Today's walk was from Great Yarmouth to Reedham, along Wherryman's Way - I'd estimated this walk to be around 9 miles but in reality it turned out to be over 11 miles, so I'm a little more tired right now than I was expecting to be.

The walk started off in Great Yarmouth, I came in by train and Wherryman's Way starts just over the road so is easy to get to. Unfortunately this means it starts in the Asda car park, not the most promising start to a walk I've ever had....

not the best start.....

I have to say I wasn't particularly enamoured with the first mile of so of the walk. From the Asda car park the walk continued around Breydon Water, which in itself is very nice, but being close to the town much of the start of the route was marred by an array of litter - beer cans, fast food packaging and even a sleeping bag or two. Then to the right was the train line and not far beyond that was the busy A47 - not the peaceful riverside walk I had been expecting. I didn't need to worry too much though as soon the scenery opened up to what I've grown to expect from a Wherryman's Way walk - river to the left, grazing marshes to the right....

The route continued along to Berney Arms and then through to Reedham, a section that I have walked before. When I last did this part of the route one thing that confused us is that there was clear, erm, evidence that sheep had been there, but no sign of the actual sheep - this changed today! Usually when doing these walks there are sheep and cows in the grazing marshes, usually they are positioned in a field, separated from me by a stream of some description. Unfortunately today they, and by they I mean loads of them, were right along the path. I then became some sort of shepherd for the next 4 or so miles of the walk, gathering a line of sheep running in front of me as a passed. Occasionally one would try to stand their ground in front of me so I soon developed a system of shouting 'move' followed by wiggling my walking pole until they eventually got the message. Did feel a little bit like the non-forgetful version of Little Bo Peep though.....

So I've now walked most of Wherryman's Way, the only bit I'm missing is between Surlingham and Reedham. This bit is going to prove tricky as there is little in the way of public transport at the Surlingham end. I have however walked this section of the river, just on the north side of the river instead of the south so maybe I can get away with saying I've walked the whole distance.......

I'll be doing another long walk tomorrow, on the coast this time. I'm really starting to feel those unexpected extra miles from today so it should be an interesting one......

Getting the word out.....

So, over the last couple of week I've been trying to get the word out about my challenge - both to try to raise a bit of awareness for what I'm doing and, of course, to see if I can raise some sponsorship ( http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Amys_3_Peaks_Challenge if you're interested !) I've started to get a bit of luck with this over the last few weeks.

Firstly I was lucky enough to get a piece in the local paper, the EDP. Sadly they omitted to include a link to either this blog or the the sponsorhsip page which was rather disappointing.

Then, last Thursday, I was invited along to talk to Future Radio's Community Chest show about the challenge and they very kindly put a piece about the challenge on their website: http://futureradio.co.uk/blog/mike-stevens/2011/july/18/amy-turners-three-peaks-challenge

And lastly, JDRF which is one of the charities I am fundraising for added a piece about the challenge to their website at:
http://www.jdrf.org.uk/news.asp?section=354&sectionTitle=News&year=&month=&itemid=2088

So, it seems I'm getting there, here's looking forward to where else I can get to cover the challenge....looking forward to it!

mud, mud, glorious mud....

Yesterday I visited family in North Walsham for Sunday lunch so took the opportunity to do a walk in that area. It was only a 6 mile walk this time, shorter than I would like but, as you will see, the conditions meant it was plenty long enough....

The walk started at the water towers in North Walsham on the Norwich Road. From there it took me along several field edge paths and through to the edge of  Lord Anson's wood. From there the route took me on to Weavers Way, a footpath that leads from Cromer to Great Yarmouth along the disused railway line. From there I followed it into the small village of Felmingham before taking a path through Bryant's Heath and back onto Weavers Way into North Walsham. The walk itself was good, plenty of varied scenery, an unbelievable amount of butterflies to see and very quiet and peaceful. There were also a surprising number of small frogs jumping through the fields...! All in all it should have been a great walk, but of course I didn't count on the weather.....

I've said before how I've only got a few more bits of kit to buy before I'm ready for the challenge, my experiences yesterday confirmed for me that the next piece I am buying will be waterproof trousers! I set out in glorious sunshine, sadly 20 minutes later I heard the distant rumble of thunder, before one of the most torrential showers of rain I have ever experience. The first lesson I leant was that I need to get more efficient system for getting my rain gear on, or at least a warning system so I start sooner. My waterproof and bag cover are great, but by the time I managed to get them on I may as well have not bothered. The second lesson was, it doesn't matter how waterproof your top half is, if you don't have waterproof trousers the rest of the walk is going to be pretty miserable.

I kept walking and about 5 minutes on I came across a bridge to shelter under along with two other walkers so together we did our best troll impressions until the rain got lighter. The bridge helped to keep the rain off for a bit, but soon the ground started to fill up with water, this didn't help with my rain soaked trousers issue....

The rest of the walk was, I have to admit, pretty miserable damp soggy kit, regular showers and the threatening distance rumble of thunder. Returned home with mud up to my kness and boots that are in severe need of a good clean. Still, it's likely I'm going to encounter some sort of rain during the challenge, so practice has to be a good thing.....right?

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside......

There was no blog update last weekend - although I am pleased to say that it wasn't because I'd let the training slip. Last weekend was a really busy weekend - and by busy I mean I spent most of it baking....

My housemate Hetal and I decided to try 'just a short walk' from our house, to and round Whittlingham Broad and back again, a walk that we estimated to be around 5 miles. As it turned out, Whittlingham is further away than we had thought and the walk was in fact 8 miles. It was a particularly warm weekend which made for tough going but we did it - the unexpected long walk! Was particularly impressed with the sighting of this 'Tigger' caterpillar we saw as we neared home!

For today's walk we ventured to Cromer for a 7mile walk, starting off in the town centre and heading straight up the Overstrand Road and into Northrepps along the aptly signposted 'quite lanes'. We were greeted by an unusual sight as we started the walk...

We followed the 'quiet lanes' through into Northrepps through woodland (welcome shade in the hot weather) through past Northrepps Cottage Hotel and eventually into Overstrand where we passed through the village and to the cliffs. We then ventured down to the beach and along the promenade as far as the high tide allowed before returning to the cliff tops which we followed along into Cromer. The cliffs along that stretch of the coast are known for having problems with erosion and it is slighly ominious when you see signs like the below:

Despite a few hairy moments when trying to pass people on the narrow footpath there were some great views as we made our way into Cromer, and once again we were very lucky with the sunny weather which seemed to change to heavy rain almost instantly once we'd finished walking. The only disappointment was the lack of doughnuts once we'd got to Cromer. About halfway through the walk we'd promised ourselves doughnuts as a end of walk treat so the response that 'doughnuts aren't on today' was disheartening to say the least.

Next week is something of a miracle in that I will be in my office everyday, this means lots of Gas Hill walks to get through - I'll be ready for those mountains in no time...... Speaking of which, maybe it's time for a little plug of my fundraising page in case anyone is feeling generous....

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Amys_3_Peaks_Challenge

76 days to go and counting......