To be, or not to be...

To be, or not to be, walkers - that is the question.

The South Downs Way starts in the city of Winchester and ends, 160 kms later on the coast at Eastbourne. 

Our first day of walking began with a pleasant walk out of Winchester, beside the river, through golden fields of barley, woods and cute villages.

There was a stop for cake from a roadside coffee van and lunch at an excellent farm shop. Delicious. But by noon, it was very hot in the sun.

The Milbury was an interesting pub, located in the countryside, not in a village. Inside, near the bar, there is a human-powered treadmill once used to draw water from a 100 metre deep well. It would take the equivalent of a 3.2 km walk on the treadmill to lower a bucket to the bottom of the well to collect water and bring it up again.

It is a very long way down. There is still water down there.

The temperature rose, the sun beat down upon us, it became very hot in the afternoon.

The second morning began with a stroll through woods and fields, a big climb up Old Winchester Hill where there are the remains of an Iron Age hill fort and views of rolling hills.

The afternoon was hot again, more fields and sweating up hills. We were checking the weather forecast.

The next day began with a warm climb to a hill where we watched hang gliders take off.

Then it was down to the Queen Elizabeth Country Park where we ordered smoothies to cool down. The afternoon was a mix of beautiful forest and very hot sunny sections.

It was only our third night on the South Downs Way, but we were both struggling with the heat and humidity. Another heat wave was predicted, the third one in three months and we were in the hottest part of the country.  The temperatures were rising to over 30 degrees. Walking in this heat was not fun. It was also dangerous, especially for Sheryl. We made a decision. One more half day of walking and we'd stop. We'd just walk for a couple of hours in the morning to the next village, and stop at lunch time. We left the pretty village of Buriton in the relative of cool after breakfast.

Most of the walk was fairly ordinary and very hot, along roads between fields, except for a couple hours in a beautiful beech forest where we weren't supposed to be. We'd taken a wrong turn and got lost. Completely lost.

Fortunately, we had phone reception which enabled google maps to show us where we were so we could get back to where we were supposed to be, on a hot exposed road and a farm track.

Miraculously, we still managed to catch the bus we wanted to the city of Chichester.

Another cathedral to inspect.

We went to Chichester to collect a hire car because we'd decided to abandon the walk. And with warnings of possible train cancellations due to the hot weather, taking trains seemed too risky. Plus, the car would have air conditioning. Trains are not always air conditioned. 

We got lost again trying find our way out of Chichester to drive to the accomodation we already had booked for the walk. We eventually found our way. Dinner - sitting out in the garden of a village pub, looking at a huge gum tree, listening to local blokes jamming on their guitars, singing country music. A fitting end to our unexpected ending. We had walked 45kms of the 160kms.

We had cancelled bookings, made new ones, studied weather forecasts and decided we had to go north, to where it might be a little cooler.