Training begins

Walking. Easy, right? You pick one foot up and put it in front of the other. Why, I walked all the way down to the shops the other day, can't see what all the fuss is about.

Except the funny thing is, you put one foot in front of the other enough times and things start to accumulate. Bits of muscle you didn't know you had seize up, the friction on your toes has the cumulative effect of brushing them repeatedly against a brick covered in sandpaper, and you develop chafing in places other activities cannot reach. The only cure for it is training. So today was my first training walk.

You might think I'd begin with a nice gentle stroll through easy terrain to get used to it. No sir, for I am made of sterner stuff. I took as my inspiration the mystical monks of the High Himalaya and chose for my first training walk a pilgrimage to a legendary temple where highly skilled acolytes practice their finely honed pugilistic skills.

Yes, my first challenge was the tricky ascent of Twickenham Stadium, via the arduous and little used Richmond Park col. Without, I should add, supplementary oxygen. And so it was, on a sunny august morning, I bid my loved ones farewell and set out along the Upper Richmond Road.

The Ur-Road (as it is known in ancient scripts) is one of the great commerce routes of Southern England, daily traversed by caravans of merchants trafficking rare goods from east to west and west to east, often stuck behind caravans of holidaymakers trafficking screaming kids from... well, you get the picture. For many years, the very idea of the Ur-Road was a joke among North Londoners, who believed that no serious commercial traffic could negotiate the narrow passes and treacherous obstacles. Yet here I was, traversing the very route that Marco Polo might have taken if he'd decided to go to Chiswick instead of China.

At least until I turned off up Sheen Lane. A short, technical climb past the dangerous LTA, with its ever-present threat of falling tennis balls, and I was at the Sheen Gate. Often ignored in travel guides in favour of other, more famous (and, let's be honest, bigger) portals such as Tiananmen Gate, this wrought iron monstrosity stands still as a reminder of Victorian England, when the British Empire covered so much of the world that the sun never set upon it. Nobody had pointed out to them that they could achieve the same effect with less administrative burden if they just claimed the North and South Poles. Or maybe that's what Captain Scott was trying to do.

Here, my map suggested a direct route, cutting a bold segment across the park from South East to North North West. But I, I took the one less travelled by. Has it made all the difference? That's for me and Robert Frost to know, and you to find out. If butterfly can flap its wings and change the course of a hurricane, I think the chances for a bloke out walking are far higher. I'm much bigger than a butterfly. All I can tell you is that my feet didn't start hurting until I reached the end of the park.

From there, it was just a quick stride down through the outskirts of Richmond and into Twickenham, with a little detour to St Margarets (one of those places the train stops at and you think "What a pretty name for a station. I bet it's lovely." It's always disappointing to find out that, these days, it's just another bit of suburbia). Of course, I say it's a quick stride, but by this point that old cumulative effect thing (remember the top of the blog? Back when you were young and all this were fields?) had kicked in and it was more a medium-pace trudge-shuffle-wince.

Once there, I met my family for the traditional rugby-day tradition of a curry. It's also quite appropriate training for a trek in Nepal, of course. Except I picked the one restaurant in Twickenham that serves Keralan cuisine, from southern India. But I don't care, because it's a nice restaurant, child-friendly and we like it. It's called Pallavi, if you want to look it up.

After that, we made our way to the mystical temple that is Twickenham Stadium. We only went as far as the metaphorical base camp of the Lower North Tier (under 5s like my son are not allowed in the higher tiers. Presumably the medical research of taking them that high has not been completed, though I've heard rumours that the doctor who's taking his kids to Everest this summer is planning that for his next trick).

Finally, we settled in to watch the real experts do their stuff. But despite valiant efforts, the Welsh team were unable to scale the mountainous peak that is Simon Shaw and were eventually buried under an avalanche of tries. No-one ever said this stuff was safe.

Which, oddly enough, was a thought that had come back to haunt me when I finally got home and inspected my feet. I'd walked about 8 miles - not, if I'm honest, that far - but I'd been going quite quickly, under two hours for the lot. The little whoosh of hot, moist air that greeted me when I unlaced my boots was worryingly reminiscent of the one you get when you open one of those trendy "steam it in the microwave" ready meals. I was half expecting to find some lightly cooked quinoa in my socks. Maybe next time I'll go more slowly.

So overall, how am I bearing up? Sore enough that I wince when I climb the stairs, stiff enough that I walk bow-legged like a John Wayne impersonator, but nothing that won't fade by the end of the weekend. Training has started, and it was OK.