Three of us ran off into the gathering darkness last night and re-emerged this morning, slightly damper and not so very refreshed from a questionable night’s sleep!
We gathered at Dai’s place in Patcham for a weigh-in last night with both Daren’s pack and mine showing 7.8kg. Dai’s was 1kg lighter, but then he’s not in training for the TMB!
We ran along to the Ditchling Road, following paths that lay to the East of it to the top of the Downs and then on up to Ditchling Beacon. Once the last glimmer of light disappeared from the sky there was little to see beyond the limit of the light from the head-torches, or night vision alone where the going was more regular. We were aware of the hills around us, but the gradients seemed flatted out which made for relatively easy running.
Thus we made reasonable progress, despite the darkness and the weight, making it the 7 miles to Home Hill in about 90 minutes. Here Dai had previously scoped out a place to bivouac, although it took a little time to find in the scrub. With firewood collected and a neat fire burning, we rolled out our Gore-Tex bivvy bags and drank hot chocolate cooked on a tiny gas stove.
Then Dai disappeared into the scrub, reappearing minutes later with a bag containing French cheese, Ardennes Pate, Nairn crackers, chocolate and a bottle of red wine! He had driven up earlier in the day to stash this surprise feast, along with a Basher sheet to make a small shelter.
We feasted merrily around a roaring little fire and agreed that this is about as good as life gets!
Up to this point there had been only random drops of rain in the mildness of the evening, but sometime after bedding down for the night the heavens opened with a vengeance! In itself this might not have been a problem, but we were trying out three variants of bivouacking fully clothed but sans sleeping bags.
Dai had a sleeping mat and was dry beneath his makeshift shelter, but cold and uncomfortable nevertheless. Daren had a new lightweight blow-up mat, but this turned out to be a problematic pneumatic as every time he blew it up, it gently let him down again. Thus he was left cold, uncomfortable, wet when the rain came in through the opening in the bivvy bag… and deflated to boot.
Meanwhile I had borrowed a pre-used Blizzard bag from Pete, which is kind of like a couple of mummy-sized crisp packets inside each other. It was initially too warm so I lay on top of it within the bivvy bag, but around 2am, with the rain coming down and the Gore-Tex wet to my cold touch, I climbed noisily inside. It was certainly warmer and dryer, but sadly no less uncomfortable on the hard and bumpy ground and the rest of the night passed very slowly indeed!
When we finally decided to get up just before 6.00am, the rain was on pause and it was a close and misty morning. In agreement about the extreme level of overnight discomfort, we breakfasted meagrely on tracker bars and more hot chocolate, packed wet gear into our rucsacs and ran off into the morning gloom.
The more direct route back took us past the Chantry memorial, looking beautiful in the mist, and on down to Dai’s place, the 3.3 miles taking us 38 minutes.
So a run over about 10.3 miles in 2.08 truncated by some night manoeuvres… I’m very glad to be back in the warm & dry and nursing my third quadspresso.
And please don’t be surprised if you walk past me today and find me asleep at my desk and with a smile on my face… I’ll be warm and comfortable and almost certainly dreaming about the sumptuous feast from last night.
