One thing that I learned in Austria is that a mountain is a lot more hospitable if you cater it. It’s even more hospitable if you stick a cable car on it too, but while I can hope that I might remember to take some Maltesers up the mountain, I have come to terms with the idea that all that performance footwear might come in handy for something more than swinging around in a metal box making Moonraker jokes.
But it’s been a long week, full of days riddled with people talking about revpar in the budget hotel industry and lectures on social media where our un-awesome selves were repeatedly assured that we were, in fact, fully awesome.
So I wasn’t ready for a return to the wild lands of, well, the South Downs and it was Wendy’s turn to pick a route, so Urban Hiking was born. So great was Wendy’s skill that she was able to take us past an estate by the name of Wendling. A personalised training regime indeed.
Rather like Austria, Urban Hiking was riddled with excellent catering, leaning towards the cake in Highgate and Primrose Hill, although leading to fears that fatter, rather than fitter, was a likely conclusion.
It certainly was efficient though. In a mere two hours we saw hills, forests, cricket pitches, running tracks, people in Hunter wellies on tarmac’d paths, more than you’d see in an afternoon or more on an average hike. But then an average hike usually ends with an anonymous slink back home in Richard Hammond’s trousers, rather than a mainline train full of shoppers wondering why none of their trousers zipped off at the knee.
What we have learned:
There will be no cupcakes in Africa.
Boot update:
We avoided bothering Bill Nighy on our Primrose Hill latte stop, on the grounds that he might not share our enthusiasm for our matching boots.
No comments:
Post a Comment