Stage 8 from Devil's Dyke to Jack & Jill went smoothly, with a number of cows to dodge on the path but only one fairly steep hill to climb, and was comfortably completed in around 1h20m (20 mins ahead of the planned timings if we aim for a 24-hour finish).
Stage 9 was mainly downhill and again I could comfortably walk this quicker than our planned timings - good news as this will definitely be a section walked in the dark. Less good news is how hard it was to follow the directions!
Somewhere after tracing the edge of the old Lewes Racecourse 'Gallops', I made the turn "left" into what I assumed was Farm Road but ended up near Lewes Prison. Despite a ridiculous amount of time spent looking for a railway bridge so I could rejoin the trail, I had to give up just short of the end of Stage 9, having walked just under 20km. I was also completely freezing - the exposed South Downs are not quite as warm as the desert Southwest!
On arriving home I logged into the Trailwalker Facebook page, only to find several other teams have had exactly the same problem at this point... and that one of the other Trailwalker teams has very kindly posted up photos and video footage to show the tricky turns and to "clarify" the directions in our packs! Wish I had seen this sooner! But there will be another chance to get it right, as we will be walking some of this section again next weekend as a full team... hopefully greater success to report next week!
Jennifer x
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| Leaving Devil's Dyke checkpoint... |
