By: Blonde Two
The Two Blondes embarked on a three day Silver DofE practice expedition last weekend which brought with it a rather peculiar challenge. We had a youngster with us who had a very good reason to need to take things slowly. DofE allows for this, you just have to adjust distance, timings and route cards accordingly. What proved difficult for both us and our Young Leaders was walking as slowly as we had planned to.
We timed ourselves, paced ourselves and were generally strict with ourselves but even up hill (even on our way to a place called Uphill) we failed miserably to walk slower than 3 kilometres an hour. I have to admit to quite enjoying the challenge as I am often to be found struggling along behind everyone else. Our Young Leaders however, found it to be much more of a chore. They are used to charging up hills at 8 km per hour (they really are, I have been timing them).
We proved to be rather inventive in our attempts to slow down the pace. I decided that Chopin’s Funeral March http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyFyAqLtHq8&feature=kp was about the correct tempo and had a happy half an hour walking along to it until Blonde One (in charge of time) pointed out that I was still walking too quickly. The Young Leaders led a most excellent series of alphabet games which involved them running up and down the line of walkers thus keeping up a pace that was acceptable to them but not actually progressing too quickly. They also worked out a “paces forward” to “paces backward” ratio that worked quite well so that while the rest of us were advancing, they appeared to be doing a rather unusual dance. I wish we could have recorded it all to show you.
For those old enough to remember it reminds me of the Goons’ song: I’m walking backwards to Christmas.
Which begs the question, “Is it a good idea to go backwards to Christmas because you will know what all of your presents are?”
On the way, do you have to un-buy all the lovely things you bought, and reclaim all the rubbish you threw away? And then there is all the food you would have to un-eat – – -(apologies)
The next part of the refrain goes: “…across the Irish Sea”, so I suppose that puts the lack of logic into perspective, otherwise I’m afraid I can’t answer your profound questions, sorry.
I may be wrong, perhaps it’s “…across the sea to Ireland”.
One solution is to confuse your minds with something that appears to be superficially simple but turns out to be a mare’s nest. Counting backwards as fast as you can, for instance, although too fast can cause you to trip up. And if that gets too easy do it in French, simultaneously posing the question: how could a sophisticated nation end up with such a cock-up in the seventies and the nineties?
Applying mascara really slows you down, though I do not speak from personal experience.
Am I caught up now?
Most excellent catching up skills Mr Robinson. And I speak as someone who spends a lot of time catching up. You are wrong about the mascara though, I reckon we Blondes could do that whilst walking across the moor at 5 km per hour. We are now going to have to accept this self-issued challenge!
Set yourselves to study one square metre of ground in detail every half kilometre and record its flora, insect life, and animal traces such as footprints and droppings. Take a magnifying glass and a square metre of string loop, and laminated field cards for sedges and grasses, and a camera to record anything you can’t identify. I promise you, it will slow you down, hee.
I used plant naming as an opportunity to check that I could still talk whilst climbing a big hill yesterday.