Well, finally the clocks have gone forward and the longer evenings are here! This means that it will still be daylight when I get in from work and Justine and I can do our 3 mile circuit during the week. We've set ourselves a tougher target for the weekends. Yesterday we took ourselves off to The Gallops, which is just outside of Kingsclere slap bang in the middle of the Hampshire Downs. There are some pretty big hills for us to walk up and down and we figured that this would be better training for us as doing a relatively flat 3 or 6 mile walk on a weekend was no longer proving as much of a challenge as it had at first. Unfortunately, what did prove a challenge was reading the OS map we'd taken with us. In true girly style, we held it upside down and turned left off the road instead of right, walking away from the beautiful hills at Watership Down - where the author of the famous novel grew up. Instead, we wandered up and down a muddy track and found ourselved in a Caravan Club park. Lovely though it was, Watership Down, it wasn't!

Having said that, it served the same purpose, we did 4 very hilly miles and our calves and thighs certainly felt it later in the day! At least we'll know where to go next weekend, and my other half thought it was hillarious - although he had the forethought to be a little concerned that the same two that couldn't hold a map the right way up were going to climb a big ruddy mountain in Africa - luckily, we'll have a little man with us who'll do the map reading and the guiding and the carrying of very heavy bags, so that's sure to be a relief. My mini schnauzer is loving all these long walks, although he was utterly pooped when we got home yesterday as he'd walked his little paws off and had just about worn out his nose.

We're now planning for our first event on 2nd May - we're having a cream tea in our local village hall. Hopefully the weather will be kind to us. Pictures and review of the day will follow.

Well, I'm off for a lovely Easter Sunday roast, happy easter everyone and see you soon.