Always take a compass

Training walk #4 - a 24mile loop from Michelmersh nr Romsey With our last training walk (not counting the short Test Way trip -  here ) on the Oxdrove Way totalling just over 20 miles (view the post here ) the plan for training walk #3 was to increase the distance by around 5 miles and, if possible, maintain of improve on the average speed. Deciding on a route for this walk presented a few challenges as my parents were, again, looking after Isabelle which meant that my initial route 25 mile along the Itchen Way from Fair Oak to Hinton Ampner had to be put to one side as logistically it wouldn't work. As mentioned in a previous post I now use View Ranger for my online route planning (backed up by a good old OS map spread out on the table!) and have moved from Trail Zilla for 2 main reasons; the map tiles downloaded to both phone (GS5 and Nexus 5) and tablet (Nexus 7) are full resolution OS maps of both 1:25k and 1:50k and give a great visual aid for quick, spot navigati

Training walk #3.5 - "speed training" on the Test Way With only a short window of time for a walk, and the need to plan one close to Romsey as my parents had offered to look after Isabelle for a few hours for us, we decided on a quick "there and back" walk along the Test Way from the main car park near Michelmersh. The plan was fairly simple; walk for 1 hour then turn around and walk back to the car - ideally maintaining the 1 hour that it took on the way out..... Walk stats Distance - 7.3 miles Time - 1hr 56m 50s Avg Speed - 3.75mph Height Gain - 399ft (pretty much flat!) As you can see from the above stats the return leg took just under 57 minutes so marginally faster on the return but hardly anything in it.  The main thing is that we managed not to slow down on the return leg and kept a fairly healthy 3.75mph average speed. The Test Way (from Michelmersh to Stockbridge) follows an old dismantled railway line so is pretty much dead flat and straig