Three months to go!! Christmas excesses over and serious training is well underway. Now that 2014 is here, Wainwright's epic adventure is suddenly becoming very real and very, very exciting.   So, the question is, have I been a good boy, despite the festive season?   Well, even if I say so myself, I've done pretty well, stacking up plenty of training miles - with and without the golf!!

And now, as a special treat, I've ratched up the training a notch or two and the last few days have been a major C2C test.....3 consecutive days of walking, covering a total of 30 miles.  It's all very well walking 10-14 miles in a day, but it's doing that sort of mileage day after day, is what it will all be about. To be honest, it should have been 4 consecutive days, but the weather was so bad on Sunday I chickened out; just didn't really feel like getting drenched, until I really have to, if you know what I mean.

But before I natter on about this 'mini-milestone', I must mention one fantastic walk that Tim Horan and I did on Saturday 14th December.   Now, not only was this a training exercise for Tim & I, but we also had a 'special guest' on this hike, namely Tim's son David.   Regular readers (as if!!!) will recall me mentioning David earlier in this blog; he's the fine young man who I've known all his life and, to be fair, he's always been slightly bonkers!   Well, he's taking it to extremes this time and is trekking up Mount Kilimanjaro in February.   Why's he doing it?   Cos' it's there I suppose.   But he's also raising money for Mencap at the same time under the catchy strap line of 'David's Kilimanjaro-a-thon' - nothing to do with me, I promise! Deep respect David!!!

Anyway, back to the 14th December.  Because David is gonna be climbing up this 20,000 ft hillock in Africa, he wanted to get as much hill walking in as possible beforehand. The thing is, there really aren't that many 'mountains' in the Home Counties.   And going further afield for just one day, wasn't really practical. So, the best we could find was a route that took in 4 separate hill climbs straddling Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, but somewhat disappointingly, around the south side of Luton!  

But we needn't have worried.   This was a glorious walk in fabulous winter weather and even the tower blocks of Luton looked pretty attractive. 14 miles in all and whilst we probably only reached about 1/20th as high as Kili, we did have 4 different climbs in total up Galley Hill, Warden Hill, Telegraph Hill and Derry Hill - not a bad test really.  

Anyway, the title of this entry is 'Nothing like a nice relaxing weekend!' or, as I said earlier, 30 miles in three days. Well, I'm pleased to report, it went well. 8 miles on Thursday with Mandy and Vicky's hound Betsy (the Three Locks route) and another 8 miles on Friday (same route), but this time on my own - Mandy decided to wimp out this time and went to see The Bodyguard in London with the girls. Then on Saturday, it was a 14 miler with Tim and David again, this time with David's girlfriend Mie as well.

The route we chose this time was the Marston Vale Timberland Trail - definitely no mountains (and only a modest hill for David this time), but a terrific walk nevertheless. The walk takes in the villages of Marston Moretaine, Lidlington, Milbrook, Ampthill and Stewartby and passes the historic Houghton Hall and King's Wood (where Henry VIII used to hunt) and Katherine's Cross, a memorial to Henry's first spurned Queen. Whilst the weather was kind, the going was really tough under foot with a number of really boggy fields - poor Mie was wearing a pair of borrowed hiking shoes, half a size too big and the mud was trying to suck my boots off, so how she coped Lord knows! Still, we made it just before the heavens opened with a massive rain and hail thunderstorm - we were forced to shelter in the village pub!!

A tiring weekend, certainly not relaxing, but well worth it and legs felt pretty good afterwards!