So how far did we go in the end?

I just sorted out the track data from the GPS, and added it up and...
Day 1: 17 Miles
Day 2: 18.1 Miles
Day 3: 17 miles
Total: 52.1 Miles!!!

No wonder my feet hurt.

The Crown & Anchor - Shoreham by Sea.

Stowford, Doom Bar, London Pride. Lovely food, wives and friends. It's all done. Full route data, available later.

Royal George - Shoreham-By-Sea

Greene King IPA

The Shepherd & Dog - Fulking

Doom Bar, Ringwood Best. Cheesy moments and Scampi Fries.

The White Horse - Hurstpierpoint

Stowford Press + Harvey's Sussex Best. 2 x Roast chicken and a burger. Lovely pub.

Ansty Cross - Ansty

Forgot pic again. Dark Star something or other + Stowford Press + Stella + Scotch.
Loz, Chicken & Chris & Armanda come to visit.
We are late. 4 miles tnrough woods in the dark is neavy going.

The Fox and Hounds, Haywards Heath

Forgot to take picture, but it's pretty uninspiring anyway.
Strongbow + Sussex Best. Reasonable food (it's an ember inn)
Matty rejoins the Team. Hurrah.
It gets dark; four miles to go

The Farmers - Scaynes Hill

Swift halves of Magners

The Sloop - Middle of Fucking Nowhere

Stowford Press & Greene King IPA.

Nutley Arms - Nutley

Strongbow & Harvey's Sussex Best + pub grub. Just the job after hard slog uphill through overgrown track. Friendly Barmaid; good grub.

The Maypole - High Hurstwood

Strongbow & Harvey's Sussex Best. Friendly generous locals + one enthusiastic but skint madwoman. Arrived too late to get food. Lost Matty en route :(

Change of plans?

We may end up in the maypole tonight instead of crow and gate. Anyone who's coming should text or ring one of us to find out.

The Wheatsheaf - Crowborough

Pints of Harvey's Olympia. Matty arrives.

The Huntsman - Hamsell Bridge

Pints of "Lemony Cricket"

The Junction, Groombridge

Pints of Grasshopper

Opera House - Tunbridge Wells

Full English Breakfast + Mordue Five Bridges bitter

Thanks Pips

Thanks to Pips, we no longer have to suffer the indignity of using public transport to get to Tunbridge Wells, and I can get out of bed an hour later. Double unfail!

More stuff

I now have these cos I couldn't find the legs to me old ones (and I've lost a bit of weight) and a hydration pack too! Yey!

Evening Pubs

In case anyone wants to join us for beers and/or food in the evenings, here are the pubs we're planning to frequent:

Friday 25th: The Crow and Gate Vintage Inn, Crowborough [Map]
Saturday 26th: The Ansty Cross, Ansty [Map]
Sunday 27th: The Crown and Anchor, Shoreham-by-sea [Map]

We can't tell you exactly what time we'll be there, or what state we'll be in, but it's always good to see familiar faces if you can stand to potentially be sitting in a pub waiting for us for a bit.

Of course to minimise wait time you can check our progress on Google Latitude.

New Socks Old Boots

For those of you interested on my footwear choice, for this year's walk I will be mostly wearing my Oakley walking boots which came apart last year (upper from sole) but seem to be OK now:

I shall also be wearing the nice new socks wot Dave bought me for my birthday.

Trews are Bear Grylls.

Pants will be from Next.

How cool is this?

Of course you might not actually be able to see where we are currently with any accuracy, or possibly even at all, unless I've got the GPS on and linked up with Google maps, but you will when we're walking (providing we have coverage and I've remembered to set it up in the morning.)
Click here for a larger map

Keep going!

We've reached our target of five hundred knicker already. Let's push for the thousand!

Day 3 Plan - 16½ Miles

Day 2 Plan - 19 miles

Day 1 plan - 15 Miles

New shoes

I bought myself some of these on Saturday. They're the same as the ones I wore last year, but a size larger. A little more toe-room will hopefully prevent any more toenail losses.
Now to spend every moment wearing them between now and the walk to get a bit of flexibility in to them.

Strange days.

Had a bizarre moment on Tuesday whilst doing my lunchtime walk, got about ¾ of the way round the loop and started hearing musical notes through the trees, after a while I recognise it as flute music, gradually as I walk along it gets louder until I realise it’s coming from behind a small copse. There is a tiny track leading to a clearing and as I poke my head around the trees I see a bloke playing a flute, he stops playing and I say ‘alright’ he says ‘alright’ and then goes back to his playing. I walk back to the main track shaking my head and wondering if I’ve had one coffee too many. Before anyone asks he didn’t have horns or furry legs and it was an orchestral flute not pan pipes. However I have to say it did sound fantastic echoing off the trees, really surreal. All I can say is every day is different ! Added a picture of my lunchtime training ground.

Another charity hike that weekend.

Ben, one of our mates, is also doing a charity walk with his dog Sansa. They're walking the south downs way from Winchester to Shoreham, arriving at the same pub as us on the Sunday (The Crown and Anchor). It's a bit longer, but he's spreading it out over more days, and probably less beer, so we'll have to see who's the most broken at the end.

They're doing it for the RSPB. Well, Ben's doing it for the RSPB; Sansa's doing it for the Bonios

Please consider donating to this cause.

But not until after you've donated to ours of course ;)

My Socks Are Better Than Your Socks.

Continued with the beer training over the weekend by visiting the Amberley Ale Festival (Muddles Mild Choice of the day). Also manged to aquire new socks made from Merino sheep wool (sadly they don't do goats hair !) which blokey in the hiking shop said would be his personal choice for the task. Finally did another two miles walking in the wood today and added a piccy just to prove I'm trying.

Dual Layer socks

Just got some of these beauties to try to minimise the blisterage this year. The idea is that they have an inner layer that moves with your foot, and an outer layer the moves with the boot, to prevent the rubbing that cause the blisters.
We'll see how well it works.
Last year's foot taping improved things on previous years but was still less than ideal and really made a permanent mess of my socks.

Put some detail on the route plans yesterday. It's nearer 50 miles once all the little twists and turn are taken into account. And that's not including the walk to the pub and back from the B&Bs in the evening. :-/
Day two is the biggie at nearly 19 miles.

Continued training today, trying to walk about 3miles every day on my lunch hour(done three days of this so far). Today I decided to be slightly adventurous so didn't take map or compass and got mildly lost in Whiteley wood, still it was good practice and probably added 1/2mile to the walk. I'm practicing the real ale drinking in the evenings !