I have just got back from a great week in Charmouth, where a group of twenty of us rented an enormous house – Stonebarrow Manor – which has eighteen bedrooms. I have been part of the group for nearly twenty years. Some people have left us and others have come – and we have stayed in lots of different houses, mostly in the West country. On the very first such week, we rented a whole youth hostel. However, although we loved going out walking every day and cooking for ourselves and arranging evening entertainments, we decided bunk bed rooms and two showers between us all, was not what we wanted. Nowadays every person/couple has a room and most also an en suite bath/shower. We still walk every day, with other activities too. On offer this year we had painting lessons, a book group, Scottish dancing and a poetry evening.
Our first day was just fabulous. We walked up the lane beside the house and over lovely footpaths, taking in masses of blue bells, primroses, pink campion, wild garlic and other such delights on the way. At the top of the lane we looked across to Golden Cap, and girded our loins ready for the assault on it. All fifteen who set out made it, and were rewarded with a picnic lunch at the top.
On our way down, a rather elderly lady suddenly appeared out of a hedge, and told us that if we went back the way she had just come, it would avoid walking on the road. So through the hedge we went, and across a couple of fields. We were rather aghast when we hit the third field to discover that not only was it full of cows, but also almost perpendicular! I doubt if even Kilimanjaro is as steep! We made it to the top and collapsed on the grass. It was rather pleasant, as the sun was out, so we lay there for a while. I was next to Anne S. who said that lying there reminded her of lying beside the road on an Easter weekend in the 1960s after walking for many miles on an Aldermaston March.
Wikipedia says that: “The Aldermaston marches were anti-nuclear weapons demonstrations in the 1950s and 1960s, taking place on Easter weekend between the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, and London, over a distance of fifty-two miles, or roughly 83 km. At their height in the early 1960s they attracted tens of thousands of people and were the highlight of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) calendar”.
She said that she remembers lying beside someone who told her that if your feet are completely done in by walking, what you need to do is lie on your back with your feet in the air for a while and they will soon feel better. It seemed to help at the time, she thought. So she and I, lying in a field in Dorset half a century later, decided to give it another try. I am not too sure whether it helped my feet or not, but it seemed to give my stomach muscles quite a good work out and caused general hilarity among the group.
We can give it another try during the Kilimanjaro challenge. I am sure we will be looking for things to entertain ourselves with in the evenings, others than card games, so a bit of leg up might be just the ticket!
