On Friday Jean-Luc emailed the team letting us know that he will be doing a short walk on Sunday. It would be about 5 miles and take about two hours in the Lickey Hills if any of us wanted to join him.
Well I figured that after the past few treks I would get as much training in as possible to wear in my boots and build the leg muscles. I was up for it and let Jean-Luc know.
On Sunday I popped into work to clear up odds and ends. I often do that as my team work 7/24 and it’s a good time to catch up with those boring routine administrative tasks without the constant interruptions one gets during the week. In any event it gets me out the house for a couple of hours.
So leaving work at 13:30 I drove across town along the Bristol Road and past the now half demolished Longbridge plant and picked up the signs to the Lickey Hills car park.
I had specifically asked Jean-Luc if there would be plenty of parking and he re-assured me that there would be loads unless half of Birmingham decided to turn up. Yes, you guessed it, the car-parks were packed – Bugger!! . With the fine warm weather half of Birmingham had indeed descended on the place. So after going back and forth between car-parks for twenty minutes I finally found a place and parked up.
I met up with Jean-Luc a few minutes later and we donned our gear and put on our climbing boots. I realised I had forgotten my new walking sticks. I had picked these up for £7 discounted form £24 from T K Maxx the day before. No worries, I figured I would be able to manage without them for this walk. But, I do recall reading in Patricia Wheatley Burt's Diary of her climb up Mount Kilimanjaro with Jean-Luc over ten years ago how indispensable these walking sticks were.
Kitted out and map in hand, we set off through the picnic areas and into the woods. We passed through some gorgeous countryside climbing over sties and negotiating several kissing gates. We passed three reservoirs and a boating lake where all the small sailboats were out in force. It was a calming, soothing sight, with a clean fresh breeze blowing past us and magnificent scenery along the rest of the route.
We rambled over hills with 35% inclines, jumped over brooks and intruded on several sheep having the run of the fields we were walking through. It was refreshing to meet people and families that actually still said good afternoon and seeing couples and families with kids or people walking a fabulous range of dogs. Jean-Luc commented on how great the UK was for ramblers and how if this was France the landowners would shoot on sight. Hmmm… I must confess this thought had never occurred to me. Another reason why the UK is a great place to live.
We made our way up to the highest point of the hills the Beacon where, because of the clear skies we could see Birmingham in the distance and just make out the BT tower and the Radisson faintly on the horizon. From the Beacon we studied the Toposcope to get the lie of the land before gradually making our way back to our starting point. I was breaking a good sweat, but that I could cope with. What really caused agony was walking down what the guide book described as "The 100 Steps” which were spaced apart and pitched such that each step we took jarred the knees and sent shocks up the back of the legs and ankles? This was more hazardous than the walking.
I made a mental note to visit the area again on a nice summer’s day with friends and a picnic basket because it really was a nice place, and it's so close to the city. We got back to our cars for five and Jean-Luc suggested we had tea in the visitors centre. Unfortunately I had to rush back home to shower, change and go out again for some more fun…
The day was great, and refreshing. But, I can’t help feeling it was not taxing enough to prepare me for the real thing. I need more endurance training.
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