Acronychal Austria
The preperation for my perambulation my “preambulation” i did a weeks camping in Italy. You would be forgiven if you thought that it does not sound particularly taxing, you would be forgiven but WRONG. Its was in essence altitude training. We did rock climbing and walking at over 3000m and i dont think we were ever below 1500m. Things are different up there, there is much less oxygen and the occasional positron. Although the latter does not effect me directly the lack of oxygen does. You would be supprised how little exercise it takes to puff you out. I came to the conclusion the second day that a man had come in the night and misappropriated my fitness. This, i knew, was the start of the madness. I say the start because from this moment is made some seemingly deranged descisions.
On more than one occasion i chose to do the harder of the two activities on offer. The hardest of these will be put to shame in the second week but i am blissfully unaware of this. The Italians invented some sort of death-trap physical torture call Via-Ferrata. Its climbing, normal climbing but you clipped into a wire that’s attached to the rock. I call it a death-trap because you can allways fall about 2m. If this doesn’t seem like alot i would like to invite you to SHIT OFF and jump out a second story window.
You may be thinking “Yeah, but the weather was nice”, in response to that i cant stress how much you should PIPE DOWN and BACK OFF. The weather was the most changeable thing. The first day was lovely and sunny, so was the second. The third day snowed then the fourth rained. The rest were something but i forget what.
That brings me to the half way point NOT the interval if you get up to get a drink now dont come back, i will be deeply hurt.
Although my expodition in Austria was very hard, it was, at the same time, very easy. This is simple because it is easy to do anything when you’re promised a bed, a warm meal and a pint at the end of the day. The warm meals were some of the best I have ever had on a holiday. Maybe I’m just saying that because I can’t remeber any other holiday food but it think it was genuinly good. The days were long and filled with cows and crystal clear streams.
The streams were quite literally a life saver, something you could drink from and dip your burning feet in, just be carefull what order you do these things in. The water was bottled water quality and ice cold. This meant that we didnt have to carry more than 1 litre of water at any point. Water is heavy and when your bad alreay weighs 15Kg you don’t want another Kg of water on that aswell!
The hardest day was 12 hours of walking and ended in a much needed pint, pizza and night in a hotel. If you think that we shouldnt have used a hotel during an expodition, that it is in some way cheating I suggest you go to that town and find somewhere else to sleep! After my excersions abroad i lost alot of weight which I have, no doubt, piled back on since returning.
