Trailwalker - the full story

It's the morning after the day before, and as promised, the full story of our experience of Trailwalker.

We arrived in the Travelodge in Basingstoke on Friday night, having decided not to camp at the start and choose a real bed instead. As it happened this was a good call, given that it rained hard on Friday night, but at the time a motel behind a Harvester on a ring road commercial estate didn't feel like the most salubrious place in the world.

We headed down to the start in Petersfield that evening, registered with the Trailwalker team and enjoyed a quick barbie cooked by the Gurkha support crews. Then back to Basingstoke for a last pint and fitful sleep.

We woke at 4.30am on Saturday morning, packed our bags and headed down to the Start. It was a grey morning, but people were excited and chatty as they waited for the start. At 6am we were off on the first stage, an average run of 10k.

Trailwalker is organised into 11 stages. The first four are on average 10k, typically with a climb at the start, a long flat bit, and then a descent, and we gobbled them up pretty well. Our first support crew (well, crew is a big word for one brother, Phil, but he did a great job) kept us fed on scotch eggs and brunch bars, and we were feeling fine and dandy. But then came a 13k stage, only three k longer than the average, and for the first time we felt genuinely tired. We got it back together on the next two stages. But then, night fell.

The first genuinely unpleasant experience was at twilight high on the Downs. We were walking down a farm track, and suddenly there were gigantic bees anywhere. They were buzzing around the hedgerows, and for the best part of a kilometre they were buzzing us, too. No-one was stung, but when you're tired and strung out the feeling of gigantic bees crashing into your face and head is genuinely alarming.

As night came on, it became harder to walk on the chalky trail without stumbling over rocks, and when we finished this stage, at the top of Devil's Dyke, we were very tired. In front of us was the longest stage of the trail, 13.8 k, and it was very dark. iPods were donned for the first time, two on and two off, in an attempt to keep spirits up, and it worked pretty well for a time. Comms in the team broke down for a while, as some of us decided to get a cracking speed on to get the stage over with, while other thought a more circumspect approach might be wise. But we careered through the stage, down off the downs and through a really unpleasant bit where the trail was narrow and, in the darkness, even with head torches on, it was virtually impossible to keep secure footing. It seemed to take forever, that stage, and a new low point was reached. We were exhausted, and at the end we walked through a silent village to the 9th checkpoint, the last one where we would see our support team.

This, for me, is where I nearly lost it. I sat down and suddently felt unbelievably ill and faint. I almost passed out, but my brother John took over and got me sitting up straight, breathing slowly through the nose and out of the mouth, and after a few minutes I started to recover. We got ready for the final push: two stages, two climbs, 5 k for the first, 6.4 k for the second.

The worst thing about the Trailwalker is the way it pushes you and pushes you, until you think you can be pushed no more, and nowhere is this worse than in the final two stages. At the start of the first, penultimate, stage, there is a brutal 220m climb, then down through green fields to the 10th and final checkpoint. And, with 750 m to go before the checkpoint, what do you know? Thunder, lightning, rain, the whole thing. And I had left my waterproofs in the car, in my rucksack which I'd taken off to avoid the weight.

So we made it to the final checkpoint, soaked and cold and unbelievably tired. I borrowed a bin liner from a Gurkha, turned it into a sort-of rain vest, and then we started off, in the rain, on the final stage to the finish. 6.8 k to go.

A long, slow shallow climb, in the rain. The summit. Then 2-3 k of a muddy, rocky, awful track. Then the first site of the Brighton race track, the finish. But we're not done yet - we have to walk around the bloody thing to get to the finish. Then 750 metres along the final straight of the track, into the finish. Handshakes, clapping, medals. Done. And done.

I can't say this is something I would ever do again. It was hard, almost impossibly hard, ridiculously hard. My main emotion at the end was a kind of low-burn irritated anger at how hard it actually was. I felt idiotic for trying it without enough training, and as a 40-year old I can say I now understand, probably for the first time, that I now know how old I am.

But in a few days those feelings will fade. I started to feel proud of myself when I spoke to my wife, who seemed genuinely proud of what I'd done and who formed our support crew for the middle part of the walk, and when Alick's girlfriend Caroline, who supported us at the end when we were at our lowest ebb, sent an email last night to say how we'd done something amazing and how proud we should be of ourselves. This morning, after some judicious stretching, I maybe don't feel as bad I thought I would, and slowly, surely the memory of the horrors of Saturday/Sunday night are beginning to fade. I'm sure in a month's time I'll be thinking about doing it again next year. I won't, no question. But I bet I'll be thinking about it.