The Vanguard Way

In my walking and running around Croydon, I'd often encountered signs mentioning the Vanguard Way. Since taking on a role with a new project which involves an enjoyable amount of looking at maps - new and old - my curiosity would often be piqued by this route.

Eventually, after telling everybody I spoke to how tempted I was to do it (Dom Tooze - self induced peer pressure extraordinaire), I picked the weekend I would do it. A 66 mile route and a whole weekend seemed like a good fit for a long walk with some running thrown in.

To keep myself going, I tweeted about my progress as I went. As I went along, I was glad to see that my updates were being read and responded to by others. The walk was long, challenging, and one of the best things I've made myself do in a while. As such, I thought it'd be good to have a look back on it and reflect a bit more.

The preparation

As I wasn't sure how much of this would be running and how much of it would be walking, I ended up doing the slightly foolish thing for preparing slightly for both of these things, but not terribly well for either. In terms of running, I wore some of my speedier running kit - the relatively short shorts were definitely not appropriate for the often overgrown and thorny route I was taking. I also tried to pack light - why bring warm layers, since I could just speed up if I wanted to warm up?

The walking side of my packing was alright; most of my fuel consisted of chewy sweets, I erred of the side of caution in terms of carrying water (guys, that stuff is HEAVY), and made a few small but massively good decisions, like bringing a first aid kit and torch.

The moving

On day 1, I quickly learned that while I was having a great time and taking everything in, this did run the risk of eating into my walking time. As such, rather than a formal run/walk plan (run 30 walk 60, etc), I decided just to run on the bits which were a bit more boring, usually straight lines, and ideally paved. This worked fairly well; I did take a diversion at the end of the first day as I wanted to avoid a particular couple hundred metres of footpath while I was losing light.

On the last stretch of day one - cracking views made the difficult bits worth it

An unexpected, and oddly useful, issue was that an injury was beginning to be apparent from the beginning of day 2; unclear what it was but my lower shin/ankle were swollen and moving my foot was a bit painful. The odd payoff of this was that it was far less painful to run than it was to walk; I'm not planning on a rigorous post-mortem on my strava for each day, but the running (while slow) definitely made day 2 feel a bit faster.

The challenges

Cows, maps, and a last minute diversion.

I've never been one to be concerned about cows on rights of way, and am usually with someone a bit more nervous than I am about them. Unfortunately, shortly after my first break on day 1, I was crossing a field and had a group of cows trot over to greet/eat me. While I've read and heard all the advice on how to manage such situations, I was a bit unnerved a couple of cows at the front (who I believe were bullocks) stamping and trying to budge me with their heads. This led to an impromptu dive over some barbed wire and I'm now a big believer in 'look before you leap', because the far side of this was covered in thorns and nettles. While I shredded my legs, I was able to patch myself up and keep on going with a newfound fear of the cow community (cowmunity?).

Another challenge, possibly bigger, was due to a lapse in my map reading skills. I'd always thought I was a decent (if not perfect) map reader, but something I learned on this trip is that one can't always trust big, named walks, especially when it comes to open access land. This became after my stop in Forest Row, towards the end of day 1; I stuck to the route as shown on the OS map, but there was no corresponding physical track to follow. This ended in me having a bit of a tantrum - wading through thick 5ft ferns in the rain while wearing shorts will do this to you - and after some time and reflection (and contemplation of my dad's offer of a rescue pickup), I figured out how to stick on unofficial, but physically present and unquestionable, tracks for the remainder of the weekend.

Apart from the injury on day 2, there weren't many challenges (other than needing to adjust my planned stops due to a pub closure - though this worked out well) then. The worst bit was as I was homing in on Newhaven Harbour station, getting to a footbridge about 500m from the end of my trip, then seeing that it was closed and completely impassable. This meant doubling back, adding an extra kilometer or two in, and almost missing the train home - fortunately my desperation for food and a bath led to some surprisingly speedy running over this last bit, and I made it.

The learning

It was a great experience doing this. Since my walking phase a few years back, and my running over the last few, I've not managed to do many challenges by myself.

• I learned a bit about managing my expectations of myself; in marathon training season I could probably have done both days a bit more swiftly, but that was some time ago.

• On reflection, I probably could have given myself a third day to complete this, but I'm still glad I managed it in two. I'll be more generous to myself in future.

• Even when doing this sort of thing solo where usually one of the challenges I feel most is the lack of immediate support and validation, the beautiful thing about technology these days is that it can offer these things even during a more solitary experience.

So, 71 miles in the bag (thanks to a few navigational mishaps), and a great weekend. What's next? Thinking I might try and crack the Capital Ring...