An olympic athlete..... and blisters

So its been a busy couple of weeks, well that's my excuse for the delay in this post.
I have however discovered that I am in fact an Olympic athlete.
What?
It's all down to GPS.
I don't often use the "track my exercise" on the Fitbit, but over the last couple of weekends I have started walks which I have not done before, just getting out and seeing a bit more of the Devon countryside.
So I packed the boys in the car drove out to the edge of Dartmoor parked up and just went wherever the dogs wanted to go, well nearly.
Occasionally I get the "I don't want to go that way" stand off usually from Alfie

however Freddie has now picked up this little way and if he wants to go a different way will just plant his feet and refuse to move

With a little coaxing and some tugging at the lead I usually win.

So we head off towards nowhere in particular with the track exercise on. I don't usually take much notice of the route on my phone as I am going along, however, I was quite astonished to find about 20 minutes into our walk we had actually covered around 3 miles, and better still after an hour we had walked around 10 miles! When I looked at the track it was a little off our route, poor GPS, although probably what the beagles had actually walked as it zig zagged along the path that I had walked. I console myself with a sandwich and the boys get a quick treat, before we head back.

I suspect on any walk we do, they always cover twice as much ground as me in their quest to sniff out the best rubbish dropped by people.

It does infuriate me somewhat that people moan about the amount of dog dirt that lazy owners leave, when others just think it acceptable to discard fast food half eaten and even a whole bag of pick and mix that I had to try and prise out of Fred's mouth the other day!

Just digressing even further, I had to chuckle at the news in London recently about the DNA testing of  dog poo and that the first place it was going to happen would be in Barking!How apt.

So I probably wouldn't get far in any Olympic try out, but we are enjoying the nice walks that we are discovering.

My now, not so new boots, are also getting a good "wearing in" and no blisters so far, unlike Neil's friend Mark when he tried to do the Great Glen Ways 2 years ago with new "un-broken in" boots and was rewarded with this little beauty!

A lesson to us all, make sure new boots are well broken in before heading off on a 100 mile trek!

Varying levels of training are being undertaken by the girls, Claire B did a 15k walk this week, Clare C won the weekly challenge when we did one two weeks ago and we have no idea what Suzanne is up to as she has lost her Fitbit! 

More Scotland next time