Day 2
After a hot and sticky night, we are up reasonably early so we could get back from our walk before it gets too hot. On our walks back home, our friend Greg normally plans the route using the All Trails app. But Greg is not with us and as Mel is a technophobe, the responsibility for route planning is left to me.
It can’t be that difficult and I find a route on the app which starts from the village, and we head off. We are finally beginning to understand the importance of packing our rucksacks wisely and although we are a long way from perfect, we have made great strides from where we were a year ago. Now we have with us:
- Packed lunch
- Water (Mel has squash)
- Sun cream
- Hat
- Paracetamol
- Power bank
- Money
We have however, left our walking poles at home.
Sensibly dressed for walking in the sun, and wearing our recently broken in boots, we set off. It is incredibly hot – over 30 degrees but once we get in the shade of the forest, it is perfect. I have the app open, ready for action and I am looking forward to next few hours.
Although we spend our evenings and weekends at home together, they are filled with the usual boring things like cooking and cleaning and when we do sit down, I play on my phone and Mel falls asleep. There doesn’t seem to be any time in normal life for talking. But when we walk, we find ourselves talking to each other. Proper talking about anything and everything. We laugh, we get serious, and we spend meaningfully time together. Add to that, beautiful scenery and good weather, what more could we want.
Ok, we could want an app that is clear!
It seems like the New Forest is one big footpath and there aren’t any signs showing the correct way. The forest floor looks the same everywhere and whilst it is a lovely surface to walk on, it’s not great to navigate through. All Trails is dependent on a good 4g signal and fortunately there was a good one where we were, but as there wwew so few waypoints in the forest to follow, it was very easy to stray off the designated route.
A route on All Trails indicates where you are with a red blob moving with you along the blue route line. But, because it was impossible to identify where we were, we kept going off the track and by the time we had got back to Ethel, I am sure we had walked much further as the red line bore no resemblance to the blue line!
We had a great time and sat on a log in the shade to eat our sandwiches and take a selfie in the silence. Bliss. The forest is so quiet and so, so big. Despite being in a place which is well visited by tourists, we met very few people. We listened to the sounds of the forest; the twigs cracking, the animals foraging and the birds singing. It was perfect.
We decided we would walk again the next morning and, on the way back to the site, I decided that I could work out a better route without All Trails and proudly announced this to Mel. Inwardly, I wasn’t sure if I could work it out, but it was worth a try.
Returning to Ethel, we were tired but happy and spent a quiet afternoon watching new arrivals struggling with setting up their vans with smug superiority, having quickly forgotten the problems we’d had yesterday.
2LadiesTravelling 