I've been spending a lot of time at work - whilst I'm not stabbing customers and hiding their lumpen carcasses in skips - thinking about how to do this entry.
The bare bones aren't terribly interesting. My brother and I walked from Chamonix in France to Zermatt in Switzerland, crossing over the Alps, using a route that most people do in 14/13 days. We took a week.
Before you start thinking that I'm some sort of herculean monster, who laughs at such challenges, I need to make ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that I would've given up on day four, because I was tired, hungry, and wanted to get home and have honey on toast and a set of new ankles. The fact I managed it at all is down entirely to the dedication and - let's be ABUNDANTLY CLEAR - enthusiastic sadism of my brother.
The phrase that sums up the trip is as follows:
"Your ankles are fine, you just need mental toughness..."
Bastard.
But yeah, I could - if you want - give you the facts and figures of where we went and how far we walked, along with interesting comments like "I was really tired that day, we'd walked for ages." AMAZING.
Instead, I thought I'd talk about some of the things that were actually important on the trip, like the discoveries you can only make about yourself when you've been walking since before sunrise and you've got a minimum of eight hours walking still ahead of you.
Food
Jesus Christ. HUNGER. It's one thing on a lazy sunday to realise that ooh, you've not eaten since breakfast and that a bit of cheese on toast would really hit the spot.
This doesn't compare to the terrifying cellular panic that will assail you when you are attempting to climb up to a col (mountain pass - in theory; a low point in a ridge system that allows for the easier passage of walkers. Ho ho ho, yeah, I had a good old chuckle about that, I can tell you.) on a handful of nuts and raisins.
The trip served to highlight essential differences between myself and my brother. I like food. I tend to eat every three hours, or else I get grumpy and fractious, like a three year old child.
In contrast, my brother doesn't really see what the big deal is with missing breakfast.
As a result, I spent most of the trip hungry, eating less food than I would normally, whilst climbing up and down the side of mountains everyday. As a result I lost shitloads of weight, most of it from my upper body.
You don't need biceps and a brutal set of shoulders when you're stomping up a mountain. You need snickers, and energy bars, and whatever other crap you can jam down your throat, to fuel the screaming metabolic furnace that is burning whatever material it can get it's hands on.
It was during the assault on probably the hardest col in the entire trip that my brother turned around to see me on my hands and knees, 2,000 feet plus up a mountainside attempting to crawl over the snow covered rocks, flailing and flapping like a beached dolphin.
I was so hungry, I was eating snow (For those of you who missed out on the SAS Survival Handbook by John Wiseman, ISBN 978-0002171854 during your formative years, this is pretty much the worst thing you can do.) just so I had something in my mouth.
It is at this point he mentioned he had an old 'ratpack' packet of chocolate pudding, which I received like it was communion wafer. The Chocolate pudding supplied to the fighting men of the British Army is designed primarily on it's ability to be stored for a long time, in a variety of climates. In terms of presentation, it resembles a flattish brick of spongy choad. I finished of my share in about two seconds, then tore into the packet and scooped the remaining sauce and pudding out with my hands, licking their traces off of my fingers.
Throughout, I made desperate keening, mewling noises, whilst I licked what resembled shit off of my hand and fingers. It was a personal low moment.
Food also served to remind me of home, and all the things I was missing. in Switzerland, there is a abundance of cheese based dishes. The Fondue is some kind of national obsession over there. It will be a long time before I can really properly enjoy some cheese on toast again.
Top Foodstuffs Craved whilst walking all day.
1# Weetabix - More of a reaction to the majority of 'continental breakfasts' which consist of some stale slices of bread and a croissant, if you're lucky, with butter and jam. I wanted proper cereal. I wanted something that I could make a little stonehenge out off that would then assume the consistency of baby food after two minutes expose to milk.
2# Honey - Lets not fuck around. This stuff is awesome. AWESOME. It's sweet and it's golden and it's good for you and it's made by bees and is essentially made of GOOD THINGS. If sunlight was a liquid, it'd be honey.
In fact, fuck it, Honey is probably one of the greatest foodstuff we have in the world today. There are nomadic people who base there movements around the acquisition of honey. Those guys are alright.
HONEY. Say it out loud. I did. Even the word tastes good.
In the Medieval period, the source of honey was unclear. It was believed that bees somehow generated honey from the aether, and as a result, bees became a symbol of messengers of wisdom.
Honey carries mild antiseptic properties, and was used to treat wounds. As a result honey, and the waxen honey comb became associated with ideas of purity and with the Virgin Mary.
On Glycaemic Indexes, Honey scores at around 84-86, where as refined sugar scores 100, this means that it is broken down more slowly in the body, giving a slower release of energy, prevent the energy spikes and dips that come from more refined foods.
HONEY IS FUCKING BRILLIANT AND I HAVE HUNGERED FOR IT INTENSELY.
3# Porridge - Hearty, Filling, Oatbased. Mix it with some honey, everyones a winner! SCORE.
Crushing Revelations Of My Own Personal Weakness
Ahhh, the trip was full of them. Fairly early on, I realised that I was not, and will probably never be, an endurance athlete. I'm built and geared for the SPRINT, a nice big flashy display of power, and then maybe something to eat, perhaps some chips, or maybe some honey on toast...
My brother found the whole thing a lot easier than I did, almost as if he'd undergone some form of training with an military organisation. It also made me really glad that he'd talked me out of joining the Paras, after he remarked that the hardest day we'd done all week, when we set out at five in the morning and stopped walking at quarter to ten the following evening, was nothing compared to "a hot day in helmand."
But the exhaustion, coupled with the intense pain that can only come from consistently walking on ankles that feel that they're slowing fracturing and grinding themselves down to jagged fragments, leads to an extreme sense of... I'm still not sure. At times, I felt as though I could never again recall how it felt to walk on feet that did not hurt, ankles that did not burn, without a heavy backpack on.
A lot of the time I felt as though every aspect of my personalty had fallen away, was lost and gone forever, and all I was left with was the weak animal thing that clung on and kept on walking with it's pain and hunger, because the only other option was to cry and scream and refuse to walk another step, and that would achieve precisely nothing, because the nearest form of rest food and accommodation was miles and three or four cols the other direction, and your only real option was to press on.
It was at once utterly shit and soul destroying, and also one of the most beneficial experiences of my life.
Most reasonable people would've said "We're knackered, and you're obviously in intense pain. We'll stop."
My brother kept us going, and thus did I learn that I can persevere (primarily because there was no other choice). I realised that there is a lot of bullshit that we surround ourselves with, and that limits us. People say, "I can't go on". This is trash, this is lies. You can, everyone can. I did.
I didn't want to, but I did.
On balance, the whole trip had a sharpening effect, grinding away that which is unnecessary, the self deceptions and easy lies. It makes it really easy to decide what is truly important, and what is so much empty chaff, when all you really care about is;
"Where am I going to sleep, what am I going to eat?"
The total upside to all of this is that when I got home, I felt free to indulge in all those things I'd missed, like computers games and acres of carbohydrates and frequent masturbation, because FUCK ME, I'd earnt it.
When the things you did missed arrive though, it was sometimes hard to deal with. After six days of walking through the hills, we arrived in Grimnetz, a small and quiet village with one hotel, run by a pair of pretty pretty girls who looked like they dressed exclusively at H&M and Topshop (a massive personal weaknessof mine).
After nearly a week of seeing little more than "walking and hiking types" (They tend to be heavy set and mostly dykey, wearing stout sensible shoes and utility mac things and all of them over the ages of 40 with ruddy red cheeks and wind dry hair - THIS DOES NOT COUNT AS A PROPER GIRL) these two left me feeling completely weird and distressed and out of shape, like a beaten dog.
I was panicking a bit, on the verge of looking for somewhere to hide, not least because I looked like a sweaty backpacker, which is what I was, essentially. FUNNY.
And now I'm home. There are still too many fat people. On arriving, I spent about a day with my girl, before ignoring her for ages to play computer games, then taking her home, and spending the next two days missing her intensely. Thanks Brain. Amazing work.
I might do some pictures later, but it makes my feet hurt to look at them at the moment, so don't get your hopes up.
What've you all been up to?
The bare bones aren't terribly interesting. My brother and I walked from Chamonix in France to Zermatt in Switzerland, crossing over the Alps, using a route that most people do in 14/13 days. We took a week.
Before you start thinking that I'm some sort of herculean monster, who laughs at such challenges, I need to make ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that I would've given up on day four, because I was tired, hungry, and wanted to get home and have honey on toast and a set of new ankles. The fact I managed it at all is down entirely to the dedication and - let's be ABUNDANTLY CLEAR - enthusiastic sadism of my brother.
The phrase that sums up the trip is as follows:
"Your ankles are fine, you just need mental toughness..."
Bastard.
But yeah, I could - if you want - give you the facts and figures of where we went and how far we walked, along with interesting comments like "I was really tired that day, we'd walked for ages." AMAZING.
Instead, I thought I'd talk about some of the things that were actually important on the trip, like the discoveries you can only make about yourself when you've been walking since before sunrise and you've got a minimum of eight hours walking still ahead of you.
Food
Jesus Christ. HUNGER. It's one thing on a lazy sunday to realise that ooh, you've not eaten since breakfast and that a bit of cheese on toast would really hit the spot.
This doesn't compare to the terrifying cellular panic that will assail you when you are attempting to climb up to a col (mountain pass - in theory; a low point in a ridge system that allows for the easier passage of walkers. Ho ho ho, yeah, I had a good old chuckle about that, I can tell you.) on a handful of nuts and raisins.
The trip served to highlight essential differences between myself and my brother. I like food. I tend to eat every three hours, or else I get grumpy and fractious, like a three year old child.
In contrast, my brother doesn't really see what the big deal is with missing breakfast.
As a result, I spent most of the trip hungry, eating less food than I would normally, whilst climbing up and down the side of mountains everyday. As a result I lost shitloads of weight, most of it from my upper body.
You don't need biceps and a brutal set of shoulders when you're stomping up a mountain. You need snickers, and energy bars, and whatever other crap you can jam down your throat, to fuel the screaming metabolic furnace that is burning whatever material it can get it's hands on.
It was during the assault on probably the hardest col in the entire trip that my brother turned around to see me on my hands and knees, 2,000 feet plus up a mountainside attempting to crawl over the snow covered rocks, flailing and flapping like a beached dolphin.
I was so hungry, I was eating snow (For those of you who missed out on the SAS Survival Handbook by John Wiseman, ISBN 978-0002171854 during your formative years, this is pretty much the worst thing you can do.) just so I had something in my mouth.
It is at this point he mentioned he had an old 'ratpack' packet of chocolate pudding, which I received like it was communion wafer. The Chocolate pudding supplied to the fighting men of the British Army is designed primarily on it's ability to be stored for a long time, in a variety of climates. In terms of presentation, it resembles a flattish brick of spongy choad. I finished of my share in about two seconds, then tore into the packet and scooped the remaining sauce and pudding out with my hands, licking their traces off of my fingers.
Throughout, I made desperate keening, mewling noises, whilst I licked what resembled shit off of my hand and fingers. It was a personal low moment.
Food also served to remind me of home, and all the things I was missing. in Switzerland, there is a abundance of cheese based dishes. The Fondue is some kind of national obsession over there. It will be a long time before I can really properly enjoy some cheese on toast again.
Top Foodstuffs Craved whilst walking all day.
1# Weetabix - More of a reaction to the majority of 'continental breakfasts' which consist of some stale slices of bread and a croissant, if you're lucky, with butter and jam. I wanted proper cereal. I wanted something that I could make a little stonehenge out off that would then assume the consistency of baby food after two minutes expose to milk.
2# Honey - Lets not fuck around. This stuff is awesome. AWESOME. It's sweet and it's golden and it's good for you and it's made by bees and is essentially made of GOOD THINGS. If sunlight was a liquid, it'd be honey.
In fact, fuck it, Honey is probably one of the greatest foodstuff we have in the world today. There are nomadic people who base there movements around the acquisition of honey. Those guys are alright.
HONEY. Say it out loud. I did. Even the word tastes good.
In the Medieval period, the source of honey was unclear. It was believed that bees somehow generated honey from the aether, and as a result, bees became a symbol of messengers of wisdom.
Honey carries mild antiseptic properties, and was used to treat wounds. As a result honey, and the waxen honey comb became associated with ideas of purity and with the Virgin Mary.
On Glycaemic Indexes, Honey scores at around 84-86, where as refined sugar scores 100, this means that it is broken down more slowly in the body, giving a slower release of energy, prevent the energy spikes and dips that come from more refined foods.
HONEY IS FUCKING BRILLIANT AND I HAVE HUNGERED FOR IT INTENSELY.
3# Porridge - Hearty, Filling, Oatbased. Mix it with some honey, everyones a winner! SCORE.
Crushing Revelations Of My Own Personal Weakness
Ahhh, the trip was full of them. Fairly early on, I realised that I was not, and will probably never be, an endurance athlete. I'm built and geared for the SPRINT, a nice big flashy display of power, and then maybe something to eat, perhaps some chips, or maybe some honey on toast...
My brother found the whole thing a lot easier than I did, almost as if he'd undergone some form of training with an military organisation. It also made me really glad that he'd talked me out of joining the Paras, after he remarked that the hardest day we'd done all week, when we set out at five in the morning and stopped walking at quarter to ten the following evening, was nothing compared to "a hot day in helmand."
But the exhaustion, coupled with the intense pain that can only come from consistently walking on ankles that feel that they're slowing fracturing and grinding themselves down to jagged fragments, leads to an extreme sense of... I'm still not sure. At times, I felt as though I could never again recall how it felt to walk on feet that did not hurt, ankles that did not burn, without a heavy backpack on.
A lot of the time I felt as though every aspect of my personalty had fallen away, was lost and gone forever, and all I was left with was the weak animal thing that clung on and kept on walking with it's pain and hunger, because the only other option was to cry and scream and refuse to walk another step, and that would achieve precisely nothing, because the nearest form of rest food and accommodation was miles and three or four cols the other direction, and your only real option was to press on.
It was at once utterly shit and soul destroying, and also one of the most beneficial experiences of my life.
Most reasonable people would've said "We're knackered, and you're obviously in intense pain. We'll stop."
My brother kept us going, and thus did I learn that I can persevere (primarily because there was no other choice). I realised that there is a lot of bullshit that we surround ourselves with, and that limits us. People say, "I can't go on". This is trash, this is lies. You can, everyone can. I did.
I didn't want to, but I did.
On balance, the whole trip had a sharpening effect, grinding away that which is unnecessary, the self deceptions and easy lies. It makes it really easy to decide what is truly important, and what is so much empty chaff, when all you really care about is;
"Where am I going to sleep, what am I going to eat?"
The total upside to all of this is that when I got home, I felt free to indulge in all those things I'd missed, like computers games and acres of carbohydrates and frequent masturbation, because FUCK ME, I'd earnt it.
When the things you did missed arrive though, it was sometimes hard to deal with. After six days of walking through the hills, we arrived in Grimnetz, a small and quiet village with one hotel, run by a pair of pretty pretty girls who looked like they dressed exclusively at H&M and Topshop (a massive personal weaknessof mine).
After nearly a week of seeing little more than "walking and hiking types" (They tend to be heavy set and mostly dykey, wearing stout sensible shoes and utility mac things and all of them over the ages of 40 with ruddy red cheeks and wind dry hair - THIS DOES NOT COUNT AS A PROPER GIRL) these two left me feeling completely weird and distressed and out of shape, like a beaten dog.
I was panicking a bit, on the verge of looking for somewhere to hide, not least because I looked like a sweaty backpacker, which is what I was, essentially. FUNNY.
And now I'm home. There are still too many fat people. On arriving, I spent about a day with my girl, before ignoring her for ages to play computer games, then taking her home, and spending the next two days missing her intensely. Thanks Brain. Amazing work.
I might do some pictures later, but it makes my feet hurt to look at them at the moment, so don't get your hopes up.
What've you all been up to?
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
Damn this habit.
Congratulations on completing such a gruelling trek! The last time I climbed a mountain, it was just the one (Cader Idris) and I was ten years old, so I can't imagine what an epic, border-crosing hike such as yours was like. Oh, also honey is one of my very favourite foods and when I'm ailing for something, a teaspoonful of the 10+ Manuka variety every day sorts me out a treat.