Theatre Royal 200 for 200 Practice Walk

"As part of Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds 200th anniversary celebrations, a group of fundraisers are walking 200 miles to raise funds for Theatre Royal to deliver further work in the community. There’s plenty of opportunity to get involved with shorter distances!".

....says the Theatre Royal website. That sounds intriguing. I signed up to show interest and find out more. I got a pack with details of the walks (which are also on the website) and an invitation to join one or more "practice walks" with Tony and Dawn, the organisers.

I got an email...

"Dear all,
Just a quick reminder that the next walk is planned for Monday the 11th Feb. We shall be walking from Clare to Bury setting off from St Peter and St Pauls church in Clare at 0800hrs Dawn and I will be leaving the Rushbrook Arms in Sicklesmere at 0730 if this is a better meet. Please let me know if you can make it.
Cheers TK"

I contemplated the prospect. Hmm. I found it a decent challenge of a walk when I did it in September (as described here) and after the increasingly muddy experiences of walks on Friday and yesterday, I reckoned there could be quite a bit of mud to walk through, which would surely make it harder. But it was a chance to meet Tony and Dawn and find out more about the plans... and a chance to test my stamina.

We met at the church in Clare just after 8 a.m.

I was first there and wondered how many else would be walking. In the end it was just 4 of us, Tony and Dawn, of course, and Steve, who had led a lovely Saturday ramblers walk I went on in July from Acton. (See here for details). And I discovered Dawn knew lots of my other walking friends!

This was our route...

So off we went. Here are some photos from along the way. It was a great adventure. The weather was benign and we got grand vistas across the landscape and exciting encounters with wildlife along the way.

Looking back at Clare...

 My fellow walkers.

Being led, rather than leading, I wasn't always sure where we were. One thing about the route, I noticed, was that it was seemingly perversely avoiding civilisation instead of going through the villages. I think this was Poslingford in the valley below.

As anticipated, our route wasn't lacking in a little absence of dryness in parts. [As a certain fellow walker with a predeliction for setting me some linguistic challenge for the blog, didn't make it to the walk, I made up my own - to include a litotes! I hope you are impressed].

Yuck. We had some of that horrible stuff that tries to suck your boots off your feet and then clings on so your feet to make them weigh twice as much and you walk an inch taller; nicely modeled here by Steve after we got onto a better bit of track.

Tony and Dawn (so they claimed) laid on some treats for our delectation to observe on route: A trio of helicopters...

.. a hare

...some deer

...and a barn owl!

Can you see it? All of those were a bit of a challenge for me to capture with my camera.

And here in the woods were some more deer. Well spotted Tony!....

They are pretty well camouflaged, aren't they?

Here are a few more sights...

We stopped for our lunch break here.

We just had to check whether the pub was open....

... but it wasn't.

It turned out that, whilst we were going to be doing most of the Clare to Bury St. Edmunds walk, the plan was to finish in Sicklesmere. So here was journey's end, (and a drink, thanks to Dawn - Cheers!).

Hmm. Well I had planned on getting a bus back to Clare from the Bury St. Edmunds Bus Station. But, fortunately, Steve and Tony had done a car-at-either-end job and Steve kindly offered me a lift back to Clare with Tony to pick up Tony's car. Thanks, Steve!

And thanks to you all for the convivial company. A lovely day for walking, even if condition underfoot were less than ideal at times.

So to the verdict... after about 15 miles I was starting to struggle, but then I got my second wind and when we finished after 18.4 miles I could probably have carried on for a while longer. But to do more than 20 miles several days in a row? Well a year ago I was doing maybe 20-30 miles a week of steps and now I am doing more like 40-50, but I'm not yet, and maybe never will be, a long distance walker capable of doing the 220 miles in 10 days. But I should be able to do the last 2 days. So thanks to Tony and Dawn, but I won't be doing the full 200 for 200. Good luck with that!

Here is a slideshow of more of my photos (Flash required).

...or you can see the Album here on Flickr. You can also see more details of our walk here on Strava.