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August Strider has just landed on the doormat and I take my hat off to Graham Smith. There can't be many worse situations to cope with as an editor than when the two main staples of your magazine, social walks and events, have been wiped out and you find yourself with a lot of blank pages to fill. Graham turned it into such a great read that I barely noticed the difference. Congratulations, too, to Gail Elrick for her fine obituary of Ann Sayer.
I had managed to dig out a couple of photos for Graham and was delighted to see them on page 89. One is of Graham, Tony Cartwright and Chris Baines-Holmes pictured at the start of the 2012 White Cliffs Challenge, which coincided with Kent Group's 40th anniversary and was the Kent leg of the KSS (Kent, Surrey and Sussex) Triple Challenge. To mark the anniversary, members of the three groups baked cakes to be presented to all entrants when they returned, along with special mugs. Which brings me on to the fact that London Group's 25th anniversary is fast approaching. How are we going to celebrate it, bearing in mind the restrictions we will probably still be operating under? Ideas will be discussed at the next committee meeting, among them a number of socially distanced walks on the date, perhaps 'satellite' walks in different parts of London. Time for walk leaders to get thinking about possible routes?
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Most of the long walks I take at the moment are solitary as my family are those strange sort of people who don't like spending a day in the great outdoors on foot, However, we did manage a trip to the Surrey hills at the weekend, and a spin around Abinger. A few of you will already have met Morty, my son's diminutive Jack Russell-Chihuahua cross - he attended a London Group committee meeting one night when I was dog-minding. Anyway, the little fellow distinguished himself on the hills by trotting 10k in fine style. Since he is roughly ten times smaller than me, I computed that in human terms he had completed at least the White Cliffs 50 and then some.
Morty conquers the Surrey Hills. A long drink and he was fine, though he put n a good night's sleep afterwards
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As a PS to last week's Jabber, here's a nice follow-up from Rod Smith: 'I enjoyed your comments about our Social Walk Titles. Six (!) years ago I called one ‘gone for a Burton so to Speke’ which linked Richard Burton’s tomb at Mortlake with his fellow explorer John Speke’s memorial in Hyde Park 150 years after Speke died.' He adds: 'I also liked the picture taken by one of the ‘B.I.G.3’ – Barry, Ian & Gavin have been very active in their interesting walks recently.'
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Group News! Graham Smith of Kent Group writes:
Regarding the 'new normal', a few of us have been going out in groups, and we have had some very nice walks (effectively walkouts for group walks). Then, when the NEC gave the go-ahead for limited social walks, we had a meeting and decided to restart social walks - from Sunday. In the meantime, we finished the Cinque Ports 100 yesterday when Don Arthurs, Dale Moorhouse, Mike Pursey and myself walked from Deal's Sandown Castle to Sandwich and then on to the Chance Inn, Guston, where we had a celebratory drink (of course!).
We did about 18 miles and it was the end of a series of very pleasant walks on the CP100 route. We have been out every Saturday (and before that on two Sundays) for the last seven weeks, walking stretches of the route, starting with Tenterden-Appledore. I suppose we should call ourselves the Saturday Strollers.
I must say that walking the CP100 did bring home to me just what a fine route it is, with so much variety of terrain. A lot of work went into the CP100 route and no one worked harder than Mike, who put in so much effort and thought into it and wrote most of the route description. All Mike's hard work on the route, plus that of Neal O'Rourke, Peter Jull and Michael Headley, was worthwhile.
Dale Moorhouse, Don Arthurs and Mike Pursey of Kent Group pose beside one of the world's great signposts
PHOTO Graham Smith
Old Striders wanted!
Can you help out Tim Glenn, LDWA Merchandising Officer (and Events Secretary)?
'I have a simple request, which will either be a straight forward yes or no, although if the latter there is no need to get in touch.
On Wednesday 17th June the area of my garage where I store copies of back-Striders was flooded during a freak storm and because of what turned out to be a faulty drainage installation. All is well again now, but saturated Striders, unfortunately, do not recover their good looks and easily-flicked page control. We have lost numbers 137 to 145, which is 2017-2019 inclusive. I had 15 copies of each. I have been promised 9 copies of Strider 139 from fellow NEC member, Julian White, and therefore need quantities of the others. At this stage, I would be happy with five or six of each number, with anything more a bonus; single copies gratefully accepted. If you happen to have any of those numbers laying around from the likes of publicity promotion at challenge events or in general and can spare them, they would be greatly appreciated. No worries if you can't, but worth asking, I thought. Thanks very much indeed.'
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Life imitating art
Sorry, but as a Spurs supporter and following their triumphant demolition of Leicester City at the weekend, I can't resist this
Above: Lucas Moura celebrates as Spurs beat Manchester Utd 3-0 at Old Trafford in the 2018-19 season. Below: I think this speaks for itself
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