Walkers: Mrs Adams, Mrs Lindfield, Miss McNabb, Miss Waters, Mrs Hoiles, Mr Balaam, Mrs Cherry, Mrs Spooner, Miss Alexander, Mrs Robbins, Mrs Barton, Mrs Whitren & Mrs Holtham.
Support Team: Mrs Belbin, Mr Belbin, Mrs Harder and Mrs Paul.
We met at school at 6am and Mrs Paul drove us to Salisbury in Springhill’s minibus - Thank you to Springhill Catholic Primary School for the kind loan.
We set off from the Cathedral at 7am to embark on the walk to Winchester Cathedral.
After 3 ½ miles we arrived at the ruin of Clarendon Palace where we met some friendly llamas! Clarendon Palace used to be a royal residence in the middle ages but there's not much left of it now!
We walked on for another 4 hours, passing some stunning views of the countryside and some very large cows! Then we went through a lovely wood and over a river to our first rest stop at the village of Broughton, where we had some much needed refreshments!
From Broughton we walked to Kings Somborne (a further 5 miles), along the way we passed through fields of sheep and climbed some pretty HUGE hills!
We had a short rest in Kings Somborne and then continued on the next leg, climbing higher up the hills and through Parnholt Woods (7.5 miles) – everyone was starting to feel the pain by now! The tracks were very muddy and were pretty tricky to walk along in places but we persevered!
Next was Farley Mount and then down into Oliver’s Battery where our support team met us with chips! Best. Chips. Ever.
It was getting dark now so we put on our head-torches and ploughed on though the water meadows (although we couldn’t see them as it was too dark! Our torches actually startled some cows who were trying to sleep!))
3 miles later we finally reached Winchester Cathedral exhausted but happy,and were met by our wonderful support team, Mrs Burrows (who brought Prosecco) and Mr Lobo.
HUGE thanks to our wonderful support team, Mr and Mrs Belbin, Mrs Harder and Mrs Paul, who met us at each rest stop with water, refreshments and lots of encouragement!
All in all it was a great day for a very worthwhile cause. We had so much fun on the way, Mr Balaam had great fun jumping out from behind trees and scaring us - thank you Miss McNabb for doing the same to him later! Miss McNabb and Miss Waters were the great motivators, encouraging the rest of us along and helping some of us "oldies" down some particularly dodgy slopes. The memory of us walking down to Oliver's Battery singing "Give me a P! Give me an A!, Give me a T!, Give me an R!, Give me an I!, Give me a C!, Give me a K! Give me an S! What have we got? ST PATRICKS!!" will stay with us forever.
Although some of us have vowed NEVER to do as long a walk again others are saying "never say never"!
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