The Ridgeway - Ultralight 2008: The Diary

Context

This trip was designed as a shake-down for a lot of ultralight kit and as a training exercise for me. If I couldn't do this relatively straight-forward one-week trip there would be no point in doing another longer trip later in the year.

Since I was using a radically different pack on this trip and relying on trail-running shoes over what I knew might be a 'rough' trail I planned that Day 1 and Day 2 would be deliberately short.

Apart from Day 1 and Day 2 I had no planned mileages. I wasn't interested in covering any particular distance, merely in walking until it felt time to stop. At the end of the week I wanted to be still physically and mentally fresh.

The idea was that on Day 1 & 2 I'd acclimatise to the walking and so on and also to calibrate myself.

• I was interested in finding out how much water and food I was actually consuming between supply point.
• I was interested in measuring average speeds over a 'day'
• I was interested in working out which clothing was most comfortable for the weather.

Day 1: Avebury to Ogbourne St. George

I started at around lunchtime with a healthy vegetarian meal at "The Circle" restaurant in Avebury.

It was early April and the weather was still on the fresh side and so I started the day wearing walking trousers, a shirt and an Icebreaker T.

I took Green Lane from the centre of Avebury village to join The Ridgeway about a mile and a half from it's official start. This shortcut is itself about a mile and a half and is a lot more interesting since it passes through the circle, past some picturesque cottages and on up to the join the trail.

It took about half an hour or so for the pack to settle down to be comfortable and of course after an hour of so of walking I'd warmed up a fair bit and so decided on a change of clothing.

Trousers and shirt came off and I put on the Kilt and kept on the T. This was a lot more comfortable and cooling.

The initial path is quite rutted due to 4x4 traffic in places and so I did find myself sometimes hopping between ruts in order to make mud-free progress. This was the exception since the path itself tended to be very dry.

I did find that this rut-hopping was putting more strain on my big toes than I am used to - this is just part of getting used to a new way of walking.

I made Ogbourne St. George in about 4.5 hours after a leisurely walk with lots of picture-taking. OsG is a classic picture-postcard village in places with ancient thatched cottages looking out onto a farming landscape.

My scheduled stop was at a farm 'campsite'. It's marked on the map and in the guidebook but they don't advertise it as such. Really, it's just a field that they use for the odd tent. When I was there there was also a horse and some chickens in the field for daytime use.

Temerpatures dropped sharply as the Sun fell and so after a nice pub meal I was happy to jump into my three-season down bag.

That night was a very cold night with no air movement whatsoever. I was awake several times in the night because it was cold. I decided not to put on more clothing but just instead to get used to the coldness.

Day 2 - Ogbourne St. George to Ashbury

When I awoke (when amazingly the Cockerels hadn't crowed) there was a hard frost on everything. The tarp was frozen inside and out as was the outeredge of my pack. The tarp had also sagged under the moisture and weight. The down had also wetted out due to no airflow.

I awoke cold and quickly put on all my warm clothes and started to boil some water. My Orikaso Flatworld Mug was quite reluctant to fold into shape after a hard night's frost.

I used my DIY stove but with a large 1oz Hexamine tablet. There was a slight breeze that morning and somehow the hexamine tablet did manage to ignite the windshield and so I found myself blowing out the windshield.

When I did finally pour the coffee I found that a 1oz tablet had super-heated the mug (flame pattern is wide) and so the handle was very hot. The tablet would also not blow out - I had to douse it with water.

Whilst drinking that first coffee the Orikaso Mug wanted to keep unfolding itself - something it has never before done. This was disconcerting! It was a lot happier with the second cup of coffee.

I set off around 9am and after four hours of non-stop walking (in a kilt) I arrived at Ashbury ready to resupply.

There was a slight problem. The shop had closed forever 4 months ago.

I had planned to resupply here and then walk for another hour or so before camping out. But, without a resupply of food I was basically relying on the next resupply point (East/West Isley) being there and if it was not I would be totally out of food AND hungry.

I decided to stay in Ashbury overnight at the pub and so effectively get three meals at that one stop. That gave me a chance to fully air the sleeping bag and restore it's loft and to do a clothing wash.

As part of my overnight I did an assessment of how much food I had left. I noticed that some of it was last season's food and seriously out of date - 6 months in some cases!!!!! I ditched that stuff and worked out what was left.

I had around 1800 calories - 1500 calories reserve and 300 other. I'd had to throw away almost a 1000 calories which was most annoying - the best part of half a kilo carried for two days that was junk.

Anyway, with that amount of food left it meant that I had to plan for a resupply at West/East Isley and I'd also have to manage my food the following day.

Day 3 - Ashbury to East Isley

Another Sunny day!!!

My big toes were both a bit sore - they were doing more work than they were used to. I planned to do a full days walking to get to the next resupply point and to have a good look around the White Horse at Uffington which is the oldest one in Britian. [It's a stylistic chalk horse carved into the hillside]. I also planned to look at a number of ancient monuments on route.

It was esential today that I made the resupply point. With 1900 calories at the start it would make for a cold night and a hungry morning if I could not. I also had to be aware that I had to budget that the resupply point might not be there and so that food might have to do for 36 or more hours.

I kicked things off at 9:30 with a steep climb to rejoin the ridgeway and then it was on to look at Wayland's Smithy (an ancient burial chamber) and then the Uffington White horse.

I arrived at the horse at around 12:30 and decided to descend the hillside to try and get a good picture of it. It was pointless. The best pictures can be had quite a bit further along the B-road at the base of the hill and not from where I was willing to walk to.

For practice I decided to climb straight up the side of it rather than use the well-worn paths. It was a steep grassland climb but I wanted to see how the trail shoes did in this terrain with a full pack.

In all I spent a rather high-energy hour at the White horse and burnt a lot of calories there.

Although I wasn't carrying a lot of food I did make sure that I had a hearty breakfast (the pub's food) and eat on-trail snacks and a high-calorie lunch.

At around 2:30pm with at least a couple of more hour's of walking planned I was beginning to feel quite pissy - you know, sheep giving me angry looks that sort of thing!

That gradual-mood change is for me a strong sign that my body is burning almost entirely fat and has not much easy carbohydrate available.

I decided to stop and rest for a while, have a cup of coffee and also to slowly eat a KitKat.

When I get like this I know it is wise not to rush to eat anything because it just causes an insulin spike. Instead I ate the KitKat over the course of 20-30 minutes - just a nibble now and then.

This and the coffee quite rapidly lifted my mood and I was back to a brisk walking pace and heading for West Isley.

I'd chosen the Isley's as a resupply point because they are each shown as having a shop. The alternative was Chilton. I figured that even if one shop had shut or was on a half-day or whatever that the other might have a shop.

When I reached West Isley at 5pm my food was down to a large bag of dried fruit (500 calories) and a Kit Kat. At East Isley the village shop had clearly closed down some time ago.

Although the last Kit Kat had seen me through three hours I was beginning to feel peckish now.

I wasn't carrying enough food to see me comfortably through the night and the next morning and so I decided to press on to East Isley along the connecting road - a distance of a couple of miles in the hope that a shop might be there. Since it was after 5 I wasn't sure if the shop would still be open or even exist!

On an offchance I rang ahead to see if one of the pubs in East Isley had any rooms. They had.

After a full day's hike today I wasn't keen on hiking out of the village to find a discrete spot and then hiking back in to resupply.

As it was, when I arrived at East Isley somewhat hungry I found there was no longer a shop there.

Of course, life being what it is, since my body had moved over into fat-burning mode I wasn't particularly hungry that night and didn't eat anywhere near enough calories to refuel.

I was pleased to have a warm bed that night. With 7 hours of walking and not quite enough food I was glad of a warm bed.

Day 4 - Asbury to CrowMarsh / Wallingford

TBC