So last Saturday we held our first group training hike on the Trailwalker route proper: starting at Checkpoint 5 near Washington along to Checkpoint 8 (next to the Jack and Jill Windmills).

This is the section we'll be covering overnight on July 14th/15th, so besides becoming familiar with the general terrain of the route, covering this section was also useful in becoming familiar with the lay-of-the-land so we have more clue where to put our feet when we're walking by torch-light!

We'd hoped to be walking by 8AM, however due to a slight mis-navigation to the start by one of the other team-members (he was supposed to drive to the end and give John and Colin a lift back to the start, weren't you Phill!) but we eventually started walking around 9:30AM.

We reached Checkpoint 6 30 minutes ahead of the published 24-hour-pace, although we could have easily passed it without knowing (see the photo on the left: it's just an empty field 51 weeks of the year!).

At the start of May John and Colin, cycled the entire route, and despite having only covered the path on this one previous occasion, it was amazing how familiar the route was; it definitely helped make those hills seem a little shorter. It was also quite apparent that cycling (or at times trying to cycle) up those hills was a lot harder than just walking up them, although the downhill stetches weren't as much fun on foot!

We had a short lunch-stop on Edburton Hill and then continued over to Devils Dyke, resisting the urge to stop at The Devils Dyke Inn, this might have been a good move if the reviews at beerintheevening.com are anything to go by (and they usually are!).

Maybe it was the previous knowledge of the route, but it didn't seem much longer before we saw sight of the windmills just beyond Pyecombe. The Trailwalker route teases a little on the approach to Checkpoint 8, but we reached the Jack and Jill car park at 3:05PM. This was around 30 minutes longer than training walk #1 which was around 3 miles shorter and infinitely flatter!

We're clearly going in the right direction walking-wise; probably time to start working on that fundraising total!