Cancer Can Keep Taking A Hike

If you haven't been keeping score of the faultless journeys I've had travelling to charity hiking events, it's 0 for 2.
Not that the 45 minute train suspension mid-journey this year compares with last year's blazing wreck, but still, the consistent foreshadowing on these trips merits attention.

This was to be the second 26-mile hike of my life raising funds in aid of cancer support, this time for charity MacMillan. Much like the Cancer Research event last year, the course was plotted along an expanse of Dorset's Jurassic Coastline, the training I'd put in to best the course was negligible and the weather forecast predicted the sort of atrocities that sink ships and turn houses inside out.

We set off at around 8am - an iniquitous hour for any activity that isn't wholly pyjama-centric - leaving behind the stage and flags and microphones of the pre-hike hype-up, and disappeared through a cleft in the adjacent tree line. Immediately immured in shadowy woodland, dewy fields and a chorus of boots breaking over stones, I was struck by an overwhelming familiarity. A sense of doing and seeing and smelling exactly all of this as though it were a staple of my week. It's quite difficult to describe the magnitude of conversance with it all. In a strange way it was comforting.

Familiarity aside there were notable differences between participating this year and last. For instance, us duo of hikers were now a trio, as my good friend Paul and I were joined by our other good friend Dave.
Dave is a pillar of health - a sports enthusiast who earns his living working in the Scottish wilderness. If anyone could breeze a marathon across rocky crags and forests of brambles, it would be Dave. He was a fine addition to our team of otherwise infirm, exertion-scarce relics.
He also optimistically slathered himself in suncream before setting off, much to my and Paul's bemusement.

On the subject of the infinitesimal chance of remaining dry this day, we'd all invested in brand new waterproof clothing - something which we perniciously overooked last year. I, a new waterproof coat, Dave some new boots and socks and Paul... well, Paul was wearing a full-body outfit akin to a wet suit merged with angling waders.
We quite fancied our chances against Mother Nature this year.

Hiking across this pocket of England was as tough as I recall. The crumbling coastal paths to traverse and stony hills to scale made quick work of dicing up my feet quite early in the trek, converting my legs into omnipresent pain stalks. I spent much of the first half of the course with sharp sores burning across my toes - so much so that at the second checkpoint I had to entirely re-lace both war-torn boots to slacken them off, much to the immediate relief garnered.

Farmland, dirt tracks and stiles were each again core components of the course, as were intense climbs and perilous descents through staircases scraped out of the cliff faces. That same dreadful crawl up Houns Tout was on the route this year - an unforgiving, drawn-out slog up to the highest point of the headlands.
With a hard sigh and defiant surge I forced myself into it, defeating the climb with what felt like slightly less intensity than last year's effort.
Celebration was brief though as greeting us at the summit was the infamously grim weather, forcing deployment of our aforementioned waterproof clobber.
Saturation from the skies would start here and would continue, unrelenting, for the remainder of the day. A force 10 mood dampener.

New features and hazards introduced this year included the mobilisation of Corfe Castle. At regular bouts of stumbling across the landscape we were most disorientated to have left the huge, ruined monuments of the castle at the start line only for them to loom up in front of us every couple of miles, as if being wheeled about by unseen machinery. Surely the effect of some delirium induced mirage; a trick of the grass or a sweeping heathland illusion, doing its best to convince us we were perpetually lost.
And the moving castle wouldn't be the only hallucination of the day. At one moment well into the hike our weary minds began to observe farm animals materialise and dissolve. A midnight black cow, within arm's reach, strolled casually out of a hedge to our right without warning, crossed our path directly into an adjacent hedge, and then totally disintegrated with no trace at all. None. We checked. The hedge and field beyond were totally cowless.
A mile or so later we were still debating whether or not this creature had existed in the same dimension as we, when a family of boars spilled out beside a dilapidated barn. They too transcended our comprehension, adding to the menagerie of beastly apparitions. Either our minds were synchronously unravelling or this leg of the hike was plotted through haunted farmland.

Whilst providing him the desired dryness, it seemed they did not afford him adequate ventilation, so he was steadily cooking himself with every steaming stride he took, adding to his collection of ailments.
This encouraged a hearty round of I-told-you-so's from Dave, who was simultaneously getting me hooked on the glucose energy tablets he kept shovelling at me.
Dave certainly was a valuable asset to our team.

Suddenly we were engulfed by Morris dancers.

As we descended into Swanage, tattered and feathered clans began circling and shouting and jingling and swarming in all directions. We were about to write them off as yet more hallucinations when it transpired a Folk Festival was taking place this very day and our hike route was chartered right through the middle of it. Literally through the middle of it - to make passage we had to weave between twirling pinafores and avoid glancing blows from wooden clubs. Tangling with them was either a monumental scheduling conflict or the Sidmouth Steppers and the Whitehorn Women were intentional obstacles to tackle on this year's course.

The hazard jar wasn't quite empty yet - there was one more fiendish surprise for us.
Ahead of setting off we were warned that some last minute re-routing had occurred, since the preceding days' of rainfall had made areas of the course impassable.
During the final miles of the hike we encountered what we perceived to be a section that was borderline ripe for re-routing, but wasn't. Several snaking tracks through what was essentially trenches of swampy liquid earth. Muddy bogs, sodden grasslands and deep pools, each exacerbated by the day's kneading of hiking boots. Proper "can't go over it, can't go under it, squelch squerch" terrain for about half an hour straight. We'd detoured from Macmillan's Mighty Hike and unwittingly enrolled into Tough Mudder. Mere hours ago we were clawing at dry chalky rock faces under the mild iridescent sunlight and now we were engaged in calamitous hopping across chunks of mysterious sludge, hoping our feet would connect with only the shallowest parts.

Thick with mud, trousers aflame, high on glucose, soaked in rain, cut, blistered and aching, the three of us finally began to recognise trees and fields and landmarks - we were on the home-straight.
Indeed, at around 6pm, signs of civilisation broke through the hedgerows and metal railings guided us towards a huge green finish line. It was a bit of a blur; I recall our names and finish time read aloud over the PA system, I remember a medal being slipped over my head, and I remember slumping into a bustling marquee eating warm fish and chips with a cup of tea, which was all tremendously welcome.

We'd done it. 10 hours of blundering through the natural landscape of southern England was complete.
An hour shaved off our personal best and a layer of skin shaved off our feet.
We were happy, hungry, exhausted, and ready to commence recuperation.
Our combined fundraising efforts contributed towards the total £10 million raised by Mighty Hike participants this year!

***

To add insult to injury my return journey home extended the escapade into greater despair. A rail-replacement bus was operating for the final leg of my trip but unbeknown to me it wasn't serving all the stations en route. This resulted in me disembarking at the nearest mainline station some 1.5 miles from my house. At any other moment this wouldn't have presented all that much of a problem, however, tonight, the local bus services had concluded their rounds owing to the late hour and both the local taxi and Uber apps were suspended owing to extreme demand from masses unable to catch trains.
So despite the lining of my clothing being icy with hours-old rainfall, despite the flesh of my thighs being reconstituted as hardwood and despite my toenails having turned blacker than the night sky drawing in now, I triumphed over adversity and bumped my marathon hiking mileage for the day from 26 up to 27.5.