Friday 23 March 2012

Feature Friday No.1 - The Trek!

Welcome to the first Feature Friday! Here I will be giving you a little more insight into all sorts of things, not just trek related. Feature Friday will be alternated with Fundraising Friday where I'll be letting you know the latest total and what I've been doing to raise the money.

So the trek... where is it and how hard is it actually going to be?!

The vague description tells me this:

'...a forbidding landscape punctuated by stark peaks, formidable gorges and bright oases.'



We fly into Ouarzazate, Morocco and the 5 days trekking starts off in Achberou, (the 'Door of the Desert') and the first day is a mere 2 hours covering just 9km. They are clearly trying to ease us in gently, the following 4 days look much much harder!
Days 2-5 are 6-7 hours walking each, covering between 16 and 28km on a variety of terrains from dry river beds to sand dunes, rocks to palm gorges. I tried to see the route on Google Maps but couldn't work it out and all the locations I searched for came back with no results

The average high temperature for nearby Ouarzazate in October is 26°c with 9hrs of sunshine a day so sun protection is going to be a big issue for me, especially with my blonde hair and freckles. I joke about returning from the trek looking like a sundried tomato but I'd really rather not! (Note to self: buy a BIG hat)

Other than the heat and sun issue, there will obviously also be the distance & terrain to think about. So that's 3 fairly major obstacles to deal with, only 1 of which I can prepare for with any real certainty - distance. As you will have seen I'll be doing plenty of training, both in the gym and out walking in the UK, so the distance is OK; it's not going to be easy for 5 days in a row but I'm confident I could cover those distances now without too much bother, the real test is going to be putting all 3 together, which I can't do until I get there, by which time it will be too late if I can't handle it... getting nervous yet?!

I'll be honest, the more I think about it the more scared I get, but if that wasn't the case then it wouldn't be a challenge, and that's really what this is all about. So all I can do is train hard before I go, and hope for the best when I get there.

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