165 days to go

I woke up this morning with a pressing need to blow the cobwebs away. And for ‘cobwebs’ you can read ‘stinking hangover’. Billy-oing students. As I considered my options from my vantage point face down in bed, the eyes of a judgmental cat boring into the back of my head, I suspected that bacon sandwich/writing a feature about hotel check-in machines might not cut it.

I was also aware that, with the average British summer lasting around 72 hours - much of that at night - if I wanted to remedy the truckers’ tan that I acquired last week going east to west along the South Downs, I was going to have to get onto it.

A mere several hours later I found myself walking west to east, all the better to even up the scorching. All the better having managed to avoid last week’s adventure along the hard shoulder of the A273 too. What I also discovered was that, much as you can’t traverse Mayfair without bumping into a member of the hotel financing community, neither can you walk along the Downs.

When I wasn’t discussing RBS’s labyrinthine corporate structure, I considered to myself the international language of backpack wearing. Here in Brighton, we are not quite a multicultural haven in the manner of, say, the Green Lanes, but we do have an awful lot of French people rocking up every summer. And good luck to them. I can’t imagine what the Gallic palate makes of Brighton rock and deep-fried doughnuts, but they seem to enjoy it. And how do I know that these doughnut-eaters are French? They’re wearing their backpacks over both shoulders.

It’s better for the back, I know, but for the English, it’s something of an anathema. However, in this, the performance-outwear devotee has come over all Continental. And not just over both shoulders, but with a little strap that attaches across the front. Over the whole 11 miles, I didn’t see a single moment of jaunty one-shoulder action.

I decided to compromise - one shoulder in the city and car park areas, two shoulders after checking carefully for other people and in front of sheep. I’m happy to be part of the EU, but I’m not ready to join the Euro just yet.



What we have learned:
You know how trees at the top of hills are all slanted from the constant wind? That happens to your hair on the Downs
Confused hikers can rest assured that, if they don’t know what a sheep is, there are handy pictures
Scotch eggs are back


Boot update:
Carrying a pack of Compeed all the time is to blisters what carrying an umbrella is to keeping the sun shining. Thus far
Actual mud touched them today. They look marginally more credible