Day 11 - Winchester to Pitton

The route (all links open in a new window)
Start point: Winchester Train Station

Today signals the start of something new for this Dover to Weston-super-Mare route - thru-hiking! What is thru-hiking? I wrote "thru-hiking vs backpacking or day-hiking" which explains in more detail what thru-hiking is but essentially I now won't be leaving the trail until it is finished! This is a different style of long-distance hiking because you carry a lot more kit (this is where light-weight gear comes into its element) and you sleep where your tired feet take you to. I decided to finish the final few days as a thru-hike due to the train ticket fiasco of Day 10.

You can wild camp (literally find a place to pitch a tent and hope you don't get moved on) but this is not my style. I have an aversion to wild camping. I don't mind if others do it but, for me, I like knowing I won't be moved on in the middle of the night. Usually there are cheap enough campsites that offer amenities such as showers, cooking areas or equipment, toilets, that kind of thing for wild camping to not be worth its while (unless you are on a REALLY tight budget).

With that in mind, I was heading to Pitton where I would be staying at White Hill Farm Caravan Park for the night. There would be toilets, a pitch site, and, importantly, a shower! I often get so far through a day and start dreaming of a shower. Getting rid of the salt from the days efforts is cleansing for the mind as well as the body.

Before we get there though, we have 21 miles to cover! That is the other thing with thru-hiking. As I didn't need to rush for a train, I could take my sweet time and 21 miles would be far easier now that I could go slower. This was a bit of a God-send as last night I had very little sleep. I'd driven a 400 mile round trip to see my daughter and got caught on the M20. They had blocked the road to allow workmen to work in safety.

If only I'd left 30 seconds earlier I would have missed this road block.

Heading out of Winchester was a case of navigating the busy streets and avoid the commuters heading the other way. I felt a bit like a salmon swimming upstream but this was early morning commute time so it could have been far worse.

Freeing myself from the city (is Winchester a city?) I found myself on a well-defined woodland trail. The going was nice and easy. A lady came the other way, we exchanged pleasantries and stopped for a quick chin-wag. She had worked all through lockdown from home but had been 'invited' back into the office to work post-lockdown. She had realised she was still productive from home (as she had been for the previous 2 years) and requested that she continued to work from home. Her boss declined and explained that maybe this was not the job for her. This seems wrong to me. There are a number of reasons to work from home. Time for employees is used more efficiently, their mental health improves, the energy cost with moving that human from one place to another are negligible. For me, if the boss wants to gather metrics on a person working from home, do so. Don't force them to get back into a soulless office.

These are just my views. I am sure there are counter arguments but, for me, a good worker will show their worth whether they are at home or in an office. Talking of which, I had seen a small, seemingly out of place building in a field. On closer inspection I think this may have been someone's office at home. It was a few fields away from the nearest house but built with views in mind. I would imagine this place was a delight to work from. Can you spot it?

Spot the office (yes, there is one!)


Throughout the day I was dodging rain storms. I only got hit with a few brief showers but these dried in no time at all. It was coming back to me how 'at one with nature' one feels when exposed to the elements in this way. When it rained, you got wet. When it was sunny, you got dry. Simple. You could see your immediate fate by looking to the skies. This wasn't the life for someone who likes to plan far ahead!

One thing I hadn't brought with me was food for lunch. My thinking behind this was to rely on village shops or post offices. Unfortunately these were sparse so, by the afternoon I was tired, hungry, and now exhausted. I had been running on fumes since about 10am which was not great considering I had yet to pitch my tent, shower, cook, and sort myself out for tomorrow's hike. Not the ideal way to start a 5 day thru-hike.

My energy levels were like a roller-coaster so I couldn't wait for my rest stop for the night. A largely uneventful day but Day 11 was done and so was I!

Tired guy puts up tent


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 1 - Dover to Sandling

Image
The route (all links open in a new window) Starting point: Dover seafront w3w: ///allowable.bleaching.sits Distance: 14 miles Accompanying video Dipping my feet here in Dover signalled the start The day started well. I got up, saw to my ablutions and headed to Dover via train. Leaving the station at Dover I didn't have a sense of anything other than "get me to the starting line!" In this case the starting line was me dipping my foot in the sea off the coast of Dover because I knew I'd be wanting to close that 'start' off with a 'finish' in Weston-super-mare some 280 miles west of my starting position. A nice easy start with Samphire Hoe in the distance to the left. As you can imagine the coastal path at any sea port is flat and Dover is no exception. Stretching out ahead of me was lots of sunny coastline but there is a small hill which has a bit of a sting in its tail at only a couple of kilometers in. However, once on top of the hill you are blessed...
Read more

Day 4 - Headcorn to Yalding

Image
The route (all links open in a new window) Start point: Headcorn w3w: ///mermaids.contain.munched Distance: 14 miles Accompanying video My first objective today was to get back on the Greensand Way trail. I knew the path was a good one and more importantly was taking me in the right direction, passing right next to Yalding station, my finish point for the day. Weather-wise it was a strange day. I recorded an introduction which took just a few short minutes (see  Day 4 video ) and it went from bright sunshine to overcast and windy in those minutes. As long as the rain stayed away, I was fine. I hadn't taken any wet weather gear. Luckily my gamble paid off and I stayed dry! I was setting off from my back garden, almost literally, since I had planned the route on Day 3 to finish at my home in Headcorn. This meant the start of the route was all very familiar to me since I've done many short walks across these fields. It felt a bit wrong to say I was on a 280 mile journey given I w...
Read more

Day 2 - Sandling to Ashford international

Image
The route (all links open in a new window) Start point: Sandling w3w: ///openly.novel.dunk Distance: 16 miles Accompanying video Day 2 started off in Sandling. Sandling station is a small station with, as it turns out, a bit of a history when it comes to train lines as I found out in the first 5 minutes of the walk. A tunnel had caught my eye on the previous day which gave me cause to research why this piece of infrastructure was abandoned and why it was built in the first place. The abandoned infrastructure was a train line known as the Sandgate branch and it looks like the Sandgate branch actually created the necessity for a station at Sandling. In 1874 the Sandgate branch was built and the Sandling station opened 1 January 1888. The Sandgate branch struggled to attract use and was eventually closed, likely as part of the Beeching cuts in 1951. It is quite extraordinary what history can be right underneath our feet sometimes. Pedlinge Chapel-of-ease. Another piece of history along ...
Read more