Me, a name I call myself. Far, a long long way to run...

Carrying on from the entry yesterday.

So, anyway. Glenn was planning this trip with his trusty map and compass. Everyone else was either making coffee (you find that making coffee seems to happen quite frequently when there is not much else to do), reading, or cycling around the campsite while this was going on. Glenn finally decided which route to take and took great delight in telling us this. So, we all got on our bikes, made sure our bags had anough food for lunch and we had a hoodie or coat incase it rained, and set off in the direction of the exit. Most of the journey went well. About a quarter of the way through we came to a stream (you find quite a few of these in the New Forest, they are soooo beautiful) and rested our aching limbs. As it was one o'clock Tom decided that lunch was about the right thing to do so we all sat down on the grass with our feet dipping into the cool water and munched away on sandwiches that either contained tuna or corned beef (thank goodness there were no vegetarians present!), each sandwich had an inch thick of butter "spread" on it... Jill made these sandwiches so we kind of expected it. Anyway, we were busily munching away on our breaded delights and our fried potato snacks when about 50 spanish school children came past. They were of all ages, ranging from about 12 to 16 or so. We stayed there and kept eating and chatting. The spaniards trooped down the stream and placed themselves under the trees. They didn't bother us... But throughout our journey we did come across them several more times.

We finished lunch and mounted our bikes once more. We rode off into the woods and carried on for about another 4 miles with a break or so inbetween. The route wasn't circular so there had to be a point when we would have to turn round to make the journey back. By this time our bums, hands, legs, arms, backs were bruised and battered. We had no choice but to carry on cycling. At this point Glenn wanted to "try another route!" which involved the words "shortcut" and "not so many ups and downs" so we obliged. We went back past the stream and carried on for another mile. This is when the route changed. We turned left and we came face to face with a heathland. The area looked reasonably flat and dry so we agreed to this ludicrous plan. A few metres or so in we came across a strip of damp to wet (depending on where along the strip you were) mud. We had no choice but to cycle around the edge on the fairly dry parts... We only did this because, at first, we thought it was a one off. Oh, how wrong we were. This sequence of wet strips of land became a regular occurance as we carried on over the field. Many of us gave up on trying to keep dry and just rode through the squishy mud, resulting in our clothes becoming a horrible brown stain rather than the glorious reds, greens, yellows, blues and pinks that we had set out in. I was about the only one who didn't want to sacrifice my new leggings and denim skirt (they are actually really easy to ride a bike in!) so I kept to avoiding the muddy ruins. This ordeal must have last for about a mile, or maybe it just felt like a mile because it was so hellish. We got to a wood which was when Glenn told us we were nearly home. Oh, how wrong he was. And how supid we were for believing anything that comes out of his mouth. We rode through some of the wood with ease until we came to another stream which we needed to cross. There was no bridge like it said on the map. So, Tom, Jack and Will went on a "reckie" to see if they could find one. Their little trip bore no fantistic results, however, they found a relatively shallow part of the stream that was smooth enough for us to ride through. So we rode through the stream with ease and up onto the bank. That was the easy part, believe me. We carried on for about 25 metres until we met the stream again. This time it was much deeper and there, again, was no bridge. So, the Mills' decided to ride through the stream which resulted in all their trainers getting wet and most of their clothes too. Us sensible Brinsleys opted for the "I'm just gunna take my shoes and socks off and walk my bike across" which was far better and meant that our shoes were in tact by the end of the journey. By this time we were all slightly fed up, the heat was getting to us and our bruises had become so painful that we could no longer sit down on our bicycle seats. But we came across no more streams and finally got to the main road. There was a narrow flight of steps up to the main road which was a challenge within itself and took us a total of 10 mintues to complete. We were on the main road back home! HURRAY! We cycled along the road and into the entrance. My legs were on the verge of collapsing when we finally got back to camp. I immediately dropped my bike and headed in the tent to grab a towel, soap and a change of clothes and walked slowly over to the wash block. It was ten minutes to four o'clock and everyone else was stewing themselves in the sun while I opted to for the clean version of myself rather than the agitated, dirty version.

I had a great shower, washed my hair (again!) and went back to camp. No one had moved from where I had left them 10 minutes before. I avoided most of the smelly boys and headed over to where Jill was making tea. The rest of the evening went smoothly, we all massaged our backs and other limbs to get rid of the aches and pains of the day.

More coming soon. XX