Forget me not

A friend and fellow walker on Facebook reminded me that yesterday, today and tomorrow are the 12th anniversary of a challenge walk along the Staffordshire Way we completed in 2009.  

Before then I might have described myself as an occasional walker.  10 miles had probably been the furthest I'd walked in one go.  I had completed the Three Peaks Challenge in 1999, but as far as multi day long distance walking, it hadn't even entered my mind.  The event had been proposed by the Signals Regiment, based in Stafford as an engagement event for first responders.  I remember clearly a lunchtime meeting organised by the chief executive to see whether we could put together a team to take part.  A small group of us turned up and a walk of 8 miles was proposed for the coming Sunday to see how we felt about the challenge.

Over the coming weeks the group met regularly to walk, building up the distances until we were competent walking up to 20 miles in a day.  The problem was we needed to be able to walk 97 miles over 3 days.  We tested ourselves by walking on two consecutive days, 25 miles each day and confirmed with confidence we were ready to go!

The team was whittled down to 6 of us and we duly arrived at Mow Cop in the north of the County at 6:00 am on 22nd May 2009.  34 miles later we arrived in Rochester in various states of fatigue.  on the 23rd we rolled out of our tents and continued southwards to Cannock Chase, a mere 26 miles.  It was the warmest day of the three and took almost as much out of us.  Injuries were mounting up, but we still stuck together.  The final day, a mammoth 37 miles, was across the District I worked in.  We made it in gathering gloom having been walking for over 14 hours.  I was a broken man, various toe nails fell off in the following days.

To say it was one of the best experiences of my life was to understate things.  I made a life long friend and we have done various other long distance walks since then.  It was also a testament to team spirit and pulling together, something that helped me in my continuing working life.  We were supported by other colleagues and I will never forget walking into the garden of The Cat Inn, Enville literally in floods of tears to meet friends and family who supported us in our final few miles to Kinver Edge.  The licensee had even opened especially during the afternoon when she realised we were planning to meet up at the pub.

I imagine the days of walking such distances in such a short time are now behind me, but I would certainly enjoy the prospect of another long distance walk, with more reasonable distances on each day.