10 miles, 2 pints and a curry! (and 8 deer and numerous pheasants!!)

Saturday 16th January, our first proper day's training together took us along the Pencaitland railway walk on what was a very blustery, dreich, miserable, damp, dank (you get the picture) afternoon.

The walk started after a great deal, of debate and procrastination as to the merits of doing it on Saturday or Sunday! Lesley was more than keen to point out that Sunday's weather forecast was far more conducive to walking than Saturday's was- I have a funny feeling this argument was supported by the fact Hearts were meant to be playing United on Sky Sports 1 in the pub!! Saturday prevailed!

Off we set only to find the old railway track resembled a river/canal! We were not perturbed however and traversed this watery hurdle with great athleticism!

Fortunately the weather DID improved and we made it to Pencaitland within 2.5 hours. En route, we discovered three totem poles which- believe it or not- were carved by my cousin, Susheila Jamieson when she was artist in residence at East Lothian Council!

Once in Pencaitland we searched for a wee pub- it was so wee we couldn't actually find it so settled for a tuna piece and flask of coffee against the route sign for our return journey followed by some Moam sweeties -the following being the result!!

We continued merrily on our way only to find a thing which resembled an over sized dog kennel!! I hope the bunk houses and hostels on the Way are more to our standard!!

As we made our way back along a different route, we found to our dismay, the path totally submerged in flood water. Upon doing the stick test, we found it to be almost a foot deep so Ray Mears skills had to come into play! We found a log and made a footbridge over the burn as we didn't fancy having soaking wet feet for the remainder of the journey. At this point Darkness began to fall and the creatures returned to their homes for the evening. This was fine in the open areas of the walk but we really did become a couple of big girls jumping and squealing as pheasants etc took off from the trees squawking and making one heck of a racket! We covered the last 2.5 miles in just over half an hour. As our eyes began playing tricks on us in the dark, we convinced ourselves of "lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!". We did however see 8 deer along the way- not sure what kind- to us they were just the scary kind!

We eventually (almost sprinting) returned to the car- I was a little fearful of there being a Wolf Creek moment but no, all was good! We did however have a lucky escape because when we were leaving the car park en route to the pub, we saw a sign saying that the car park closes at 4pm- by this time it was 5.25!! How lucky were we?

We ended our days adventure with a couple of pints and a well deserved curry! We both really enjoyed it and what's even better is that we feel fine today and had GREAT fun popping Lesley's blister!!