It was a bit of a damp and misty start but the day turned out to be beautiful and hot. One purpose of training is familiarise yourself with equipment; I had a new pair of poles to try out and took ages to work out how to strap them on - I didn't spot that they were marked L & R until over half way through the walk! Our support team were with us and there was never a more welcome sight as we arrived at the checkpoint after 10.3k to see them in the car park with chairs set out and drink and food waiting for us - pasta salad never tasted so good. We set off on the second leg which contained quite a lot of tracks, some chalk paths were still being laid and walking on them was very easy on the feet - the paths were like wearing a new pair of air filled springy trainers - they were really comfortable to walk on. The last drop down to the view point we were meeting at was a killer on the knees, hopefully this will get better with training. We were rather pleased with ourselves for arriving at the meeting place 10 minutes early. In total (including our 20minutes break) we took 4 hours 35 minutes.
