Dads Go Wild

Could three friends of varying fitness levels cover 50 miles on the Ridgeway in a weekend (and still be mates by the end)?

- Damian Hall

My good pals Bevo, James and I have always seen ourselves as Men of the Wilds. We all went to Army Cadets, we’ve been camping a lot (at Glastonbury Festival) and between us there’s always at least one chin with some stubble on.

There have been a few mountains sumitted, a few ultra marathons run and a lot of football played. But that was largely before we all became dads. We’re still Men of the Wilds. It’s just nowadays our adventures are more likely to involve wellies and wailing kids than wild camps on Dartmoor. In fact, we couldn’t remember the last time the three of us had gone into the Great Outdoors together. It was therefore time for a Dads’ Adventure Weekend.

However, our fitness levels vary markedly. I used to do peak bagging challenges with Bevo, but my midlife crisis has led to an obsession with ultra marathon running, while his fitness fix is mostly football and hiking. James has more recently caught the running bug, notching up a first ultra, but with three kids rarely gets time to train. So what would suit us all?

I found the solution: fast packing. “What’s that then?” they asked. I didn’t really know. It turns out, no one is really sure. Fast packing is a trendy American term, for hiking fast or travelling light, or a combination of hiking and running. I’d been researching the 19th century’s amazing pedestrianism movement and it sort of fitted in with that too.

“It’ll be, you know, mostly hiking,” I told them, but was thinking, “It’ll be, you know, mostly running.” A combination of hiking the uphills and running the flats and downhills is after all the way of most ultra marathoners.