A White Rose Journey: York to Minden

Days off visiting the family and giving our grand daughter, who's just 1 year old, some walking lessons. She's doing really well. Maybe we'll train her up to do the 300 years celebration walk.

We've managed to grab a few days to spend with our family. Taking the chance to rest our legs.

The drive down,from Yorkshire to Kent was almost exactly the same distance as the walk from York to Minden. Actually, the bit round the M25 over the Dartford crossing was done at about the speed we'll be walking!

With all the training over, except, perhaps, for a last run on Monday morning, it's really quite strange to be so inactive after weeks of training.

 

On one of the first training walks for the escort walkers, one of them, let's call him Don, as that happens to be his name, suggested a stop after about an hour and a half.. 

He explained that he is an elevenses person and always had a snack about that time to keep his energy levels up.

Don's choice of snack turned out to be a 'Waggon Wheel'.

At the next walk, the time was reached for Don's break and Chris produced, from her rucsac, sufficient 'Waggon Wheels' for everyone. This first stop of the day has now become known as the 'Waggon Wheel' stop and several of the walkers now produce them.

I sent this story to Burton's Bicuits who produce the aforesaid snack and we are now waiting, expectantly, for a large truckload of 'Waggon Wheels' to arrive. I'll keep you posted.

'Right little one, time for some more walking. What! You want a Waggon Wheel first!'

 

 

 

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We're walking all theway to Minden, in Germany and the weather there is cooler and wetter than it is here. Perhaps we'll look for somewhere warmer to walk.

It's all the fault of our IT advisor, Paul. No sooner have we sung his praises than he put us in touch with a German weather forecast and it's terrible. We're going to have to repack all the stuff to go in the motorhome and replace the t-shirts and shorts with waterproofs and warm gloves!

We actually had a sort of try out for the German weather today as we did the last training walk with the escort walkers.

As we gathered, the local press photographer turned up to take a photo. As luck would have it we'd taken the official shirts to distribute to the walkers. We, naturally, had to put the new shirts on for the photo so thet we looked the part. Then we had to take them off again and put them away so that they will look good next week. All this delayed our setting off by about fifteen minutes.

The sky was nice and bright when we set out so many of us didn't tane waterproof kit. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes from the finish, the heavens opened and we got soaked. If only we hadn't preened ourselves for the photo we'd probably have got back dry.

Have I mentioned the Waggon Wheels Yet? Well, perhaps this isn't quite the time, maybe tomorrow.

 

Oh yes. What is it that claims to be green but is actually blue?

 

We discovered that packing our kit into a containers which just fit into the cupboards in the motor home makes the whole process of packing much easier. It's simple really. We pack each container with clothes from the wadrobe/drawer/cupboard where it is usually stored, then carry the packed container sto the motor home and put them into the  cupboards. When we want kit out of a cupboard we remove the container, take out the item needed and replace the container No scrabbling in copboards. When we get home we remove the containers, each still containing most of what we put in them in the first place and upack their contents back into the wardrobe/drawer/cupboard they came from. We have found that the best containers for our cupbords are shopping bags from Tesco. These bags are sold as 'Big Green Bags', but they are blue! Don't get me started about the misuse or confusing use of our fair language or I'll still be ranting when I should be walking. But, I ask you, Surely someone at Tesco should have noticed that the bags are blue! They are very good bags for our purpose though.

Posted via email from A White Rose for Minden

Our walk to Minden starts a week tomorrow. We know we'll be ready, but how? The website (www.yorkshireridings.org) is up and running and it says we are doing it, so we must be.

As it says above, it is going to happen, and pretty soon. Missed posting yesterday, sorry, I nodded off checking the route details for the umpteenth time. It's got to be right, a mistake now could cost a lot of extra walking. something we're not keen on with a finish time to keep to.  I even checked the Google photos to make sure the bridges are still there. That took a while because we'll cross a lot of bridges.

Today we went for another really good run. Slight panic that we may be peaking too early. Actually the walk could have been off today as I got attacked by a particularly vicious mobility scooter which did a wild swerve as we ran through the pedestrian area. Another stride nearer  and there could have been a nast accident. I think it was my old rugby side step and lightning fast reactions which got me out of trouble. Well I can dream.

The motorhome has had a good clean and we are ready to start stuffing far more clothes than we can wear in ten weeks, let alone three, into the cupboards. Emergency rations, plasters, knee supports, compression bandages and portable x-ray equipment etc are all ready to go. There is just one problem which we are pondering. What claims to be green but is patently blue. Answer tomorrow. 

Posted via email from A White Rose for Minden

York to Minden walk.10days to go should we run or have steak pie for lunch? We can do both with a bit of help. The pie was good, the run....even better.

A good, healthy start. Bran flakes and prunes for breakfast. Well they're supposed to keep you going!

 

A couple of hours of organisation work, to let breakfast settle, then out for a steady run.. Kit on, shoes on, sports bags packed and ....it started to rain. Then it rained harder, then harder still.

Back to the paper work, emails and sewing walk badges onto kit, until it stopped, about lunchtime.

Off to the Leisure Centre and do the essentials. Amongst them, check what the lunchtime specials are. Wow, Homemade steak pie and mushy peas. Avril does a fine meat pie, but there are only two portions left!  Eat first, run after? Not a good move. Avril offers to save the two portions. Problem solved.

 

Off we go then. Five minutes later the rain starts again. Never mind, it won't last long. It didn't, we did. The best hour's run  in weeks, quick and smooth, just like it shoud be. It must be the thought of the pie.

A quick shower and the pie was as good as we thought it would be. Not much more food ration left for today then.

 

Another landmark. Some of the clean clothes are put away, some left in a basket for packing into the motor home. It starts to feel like we are getting ready to go.

We really should have done a lot more preparation but that run was really special. Just what we needed. Great day. We'll go for a walk tomorrow. Just for a change.

Is it really only 10 days?

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Eleven days to go and taking things fairly easily. Lots of paperwork to do.

Our IT adviser/advisor (both spellings are in the dictionary), Paul, has been setting up very clever systems to allow us to update twitter, the website our order at Tesco and lots of other things just by sending one email. He's very clever and ought to be putting his contact details on this site.

So, this is a try out to see if it all works If you can read it, it works. If not......oops, all the lights just went out. Is that supposed to happen, Paul?   Only kidding really!

 

With just eleven days to go we're trying to tidy up loose ends in the walk organisation. The walking is possibly going to be the easiest bit. The admin is certainly taking as much time.

In fact we only had time for a short, brisk walk first thing this morning. Just under 10km but we did it in under an hour and a half. That's 4 miles an hour in real money, quite quick but about the speed we usually walk.We'll only do a couple of short walks now before we start and perhaps two or three one hour runs. Not bad for a couple either side of 60 though.

 

 This morning we had four days of the route which needed some transport support. Now we have just one day. More emails to contacts in Germany to see if they can help. Lots of emails to friends, who may now be ex friends, as we  mentioned the donation website. It's www.bmycharity.com/awhiterosetominden if anyone is interested and is in support of the Royal British Legion.

 

The rest of the day has been crammed full of: Going to an outdoor band concert and sitting in the sun, then we had to watch The Tour de France and the Moto GP. It's been a really hard day. Tomorrow must be easier!

 

Thinking about it, This post most be at least as exciting as your average TV soap!

 

Another exciting instalment soon. Did the donation website get a mention?

 

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The York to Minden walkers

Our walkers, Chris and Roger Sewell, aren't exactly new to challenges like the one they've set themselves here.

Back in 2005, they decided the best way to bring attention to the aims of the Yorkshire Ridings Society was a mammoth, 600 mile walk along the boundary of England's largest county.

And here they are, part-way through, near the northernmost tip of the West Riding, in the rain. Smiling.

Will they make it from York to Minden on foot? 'Course they will. They're from Yorkshire!

Posted via email from A White Rose for Minden