I certainly learned a lot and I was grateful that I could learn this early on and in a relatively safe environment. The experience inspired this list of very basic tips that you might find useful if you are getting into walking and hiking as a serious past time. They will make your experience more enjoyable which will mean you are more likely to stick with it.
The problem was that we were not all that sure of our route. It really brought home to me how important good planning is to a good hike and that if you neglect to plan well you could be seriously neglecting your own safety.
I am no expert but I do learn from my mistakes so hopefully if I tell you what they were you can avoid them!
The lack of knowledge about the route was my fault. As the organiser and finder of walks in Essex it was up to me to dig up a hike for the weekend but I kind of ran out of time. I wanted something fairly close to home so we wouldn’t have to drive a long way and something fairly tame as I was breaking in my new boots.
So when I found this walk on the Brentwood council website all I really took in was that it involved a good deal of the country park (meaning good trails) and that there was a ready made map. I didn’t really read through what I thought were the directions or look too closely at the quality of the map.
The map was terrible but even where a map is terrible you can muddle through with good directions. But what I thought were directions (because what else could they possibly be? This is about a WALK for goodness sake) turned out to be a whole lot of useless information about species of horned beetles and pygmy gophers and other such mythical creatures and fungi that are supposed to inhabit the area but no one actually ever sees let alone kills and eats.
But in the end the map was only terrible because I prepared badly. And as I have said before preparation and planning are key to having an enjoyable, safe, and grump free hike.
What I should have done was take the website map home with me, read what it said, and then got out my OS map and figured out what the actual route was. I left too much up to some half assed civil servant who obviously had no idea what sort of information people actually need when trying to navigate the English countryside. The website map was OK but only if you knew the area or had familiarised yourself with the area using a good map.
Apart from the fact that we didn’t really know where we were for about an hour it was a very good walk.
We were in a rural/suburban environment with roads and people around. It was sunny. We were wearing clothing and shoes appropriate to the weather and terrain. David was able to use his cel phone to triangulate our position so we had a vague idea of where we were in relation to several major roads. We were never in any danger except for an almost fatal sense of humour failure at mile 9. But I learned some very valuable lessons for our future adventures where the terrain will be less friendly and more remote.
If you are considering expanding your hiking horizons here are some handy tips to make your own adventures enjoyable, safe, and grump free.
Don't
Don’t leave anything up to someone you don’t know or trust. And this is exactly what I did when I trusted a complete stranger, and a civil servant at that, to provide me with a good map and clear directions.
Don’t assume familiarity will save you. We were out in an area I know fairly well though I have never walked that particular route. I let the fact that I thought I knew the area dictate the amount of time I thought I needed to spend planning. Which was not enough.
Don’t rely solely on technology. The internet is a great and vast resource for hikers but don’t assume that everything it tells you is accurate or well researched and produced to the standard required for your safety and comfort. The person who put together the map and directions for our walk obviously had no idea what is involved in a hike across the English countryside. Always check the facts the facts yourself.
Do
Do take your OS map with you. This seems like a pain but it may save you a lot of pain as well.
Do take water. If your walk is even that little bit longer than you planned you will be glad you did. We took water and were VERY glad of it.
Do work together. Although I organise a lot of our walks David is by far the better navigator. His sense of direction is better so while we are walking I let him take charge of the map. But sometimes his direction reading and map reading don’t quite match up. When this happens I will have a look and we help each other figure it out. This is why I have forbidden SatNav on our walks. Half of the fun is reading a map and navigating and bickering about landmarks. David might disagree with this.
Do take your phone. I was resistant to this idea at first. One of the reasons why I love getting out and hiking is the absence of technology. After all we all used to cope without having a phone with us 24/7. But I will concede that having the phone does make us safer and has helped us by triangulating our position when we were unsure of the route. David and I are not the sort of people who like talking on the phone or checking our messages so really the phone is there only for emergencies. So if you do decide to take your phone please consider other countryside users and switch it off until you actually need it. FYI you do not NEED to update your twitter every 100 metres.
Review Your Route
If you find that you have gone wrong some where it is always useful to review the route you should have taken with the route you did take. By looking at the route against another map source it helps to hone one's map reading skills. Like athletes who watch videos of themselves you can see not only WHERE you went wrong but HOW you might have taken the wrong turn in the first place.
Below I have mapped out the original route in Google Maps using the Google distance measuring tool and my OS map.
I then figured out the route we actually walked.
I compared both of them against the woefully inadequate instructions and map illustration we had and I saw almost at once where we went wrong and why. And found that the website map was not quite so bad as we thought. We assumed that is was too poor to represent any landmarks accurately and so did not watch out for those landmarks closely enough. When actually the feature that would have told us the right direction was right there in front of us.
The Mapped Route
The Route We Walked
A view across the Weald in Brentwood
The bitterness of misdirection can sometimes yield tasty fruits. If we had not gone astray we would not have seen this totally mad house on the footpath leading from the junction of Tan House Lane, Horseman Side and Dytchleys Road. It was so bizarre. Italianate nude sculpture garden and a duck pond with up turned gypsy wagons, Chinese ducks, and black swans. We didn't know what to make of it.
Of course, no matter where we go, I am always guaranteed the best view of all. Unless he wears that long coat of his.
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