Posts Tagged ‘wind’
Extreme Dog Walking
This is the new, ultra hip, super cool sport for happenin’ dudes, dudesses and their doggies.
Started on the Dorset coast in the autumn of 2010, it has finally brought together the noble traditions of dog walking, singing in the rain and mad, British malarkey. Contrasted with the idea that only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, this is the sport where only bonkers Brits and adventurous dogs go out in a torrential storm.
You’ve never been really wet until you’ve been Extreme Dog Walking. When the rain has been blown past horizontal, round to vertical but going upwards, then you begin to get a flavour of this exciting and challenging sport. When you have to walk with your face turned away from the stinging shotgun pellets that are rain drops while the dogs whimper and scuttle about your feet, only then will you begin to understand the determination, courage and true grit necessary to survive and succeed in this competition to end all competitions. Far below the sea can just be seen as a seething mass of whitewater. As the squalls come in the whole environment darkens and the gale force winds thrash and tangle at hat and clothing. Even with the air temperature at 17 C, the rain makes your hands freeze and your face smart. All you can do is call the dogs on, put your head down, gird your loins, steel your determination and go forth into the turbulence. There is no option to stop. It is as far to go on as it is to retreat. Forwards is the only option. Onwards to the end, to glory and glorious triumph!
As in all such endurance events the best bit is when it stops. A first layer of saturated “waterproofs” is peeled off and then the dogs are towelled down. Then off come the boots, often with gushes of water as each one is removed. Finally, right down to the underwear, each soaking layer is removed and the steam begins to rise. Then we begin to yarn, to talk of how every gust seemed bigger than the last. To boast of how we just made it through when all seemed lost, how we nearly got caught by that “gnarly” one, how we feel so “stoked” and “trashed” by our experience. Then we sit around in our “baggies”, drinking beer and smokin’ weed, knowing that we know what others never can, knowing that up there in them thar hills is where we feel really alive, where our sport of Extreme Dog Walking makes life worthwhile!
Walking The Dog 11
The lights on Portland are warming up orange in the distance. Everywhere there’s a gunmetal grey murk with a few billowing black threats. It is cold, chilling cold and the wind is biting and penetrating. This is the very nub of dusk and here we are back on the beach after a break of over a week.
It’s been a tough week, travelling everywhere, bad news about my Dad, a disastrous episode with my car. Saturday morning in the valley was a welcome relief. The ground was very very wet but the sun shone strong and as we hit the toughest part of the trek up the mountain a ginger blur up the near-vertical slope, the dogs in pursuit, the healthiest, most muscly fox I’ve ever seen. And on top, two bobbing, weaving white backsides of deer escaping towards Dorchester.
I’m in the little red Citroen loan car from The Cartshed, generously offered as “you’re welcome to put your dogs in there” and I knew I had an appropriate stick stored in the garden. Now I’m slipping and sliding down the grass bank to the beach while Capone and Carla tumble, fight and slither through the shingle to the water.
At high tide a three foot windblown chop is breaking 20 yards out but the undertow is ready to pull Capone 
right back under the next one. Once, twice, three times he is wiped out, thumped in the face and chest with icy white water. He ploughs on like a Chieftan tank, shaken but not stirred and reaches the stick at the very crest.
Around he comes, half drowned, half propelled by another wave, he disappears underneath a crashing cauldron of surf and then he’s back, Carla already grabbing the stick from him. His fierce but playful growl penetrates all of nature’s noise. They scamper away up the beach carrying the stick together and turn to the most satisfying tussle and chew while I give them a few moments to rest.
Carla is no fool and although I throw her a little twig while Capone is busy she frolicks into the shallowest surf but thinks better of it and turns back. It’s much more fun to wait for Capone to go in, do the work and intercept him on the way back.
Man Of The Match - Andy Powell
What more perfect end to a day when Wales have almost beaten the South Africans in Cardiff and shown enormous promise, invention and the usual courage.
In these conditions I have to be careful how much I push him because he would try and try, keep going back, ignoring the cold and the shortness of breath and the sucking, churning, remorseless waves. He tackles the surf like a second row forward and nothing stands in his way.
He wants nothing more than another chance. He would die for me in that seething, heaving water.
This connection with my animals, my countryside, my sea, my sky, my wind is my salvation. When we understand what matters, who matters, whatever happens, then contentment comes a little easier.
Life makes a little more sense.
Walking The Dog 2
Walking The Dog 2
Apart from herons and wealthy, attractive, single women (which seem to be virtually extinct), the main focus of our daily rambles is sticks.
Of course, sticks come in all shapes and sizes but Capone prefers something, shall we say, robust. I suppose the ideal is about four feet long and perhaps three inches thick but the crucial factor in stick style is the way it is carried. It must be held at one end, not in the middle. I think Capone believes this is more flamboyant in the same way the way that a quiff or fringe sweeps back or a fighter pilot’s scarf flies to one side. Of course, even the most perfectly fashioned stick is merely debris on the ground until I have thrown it. Then it becomes the most exciting, the most important thing in life and if it is thrown into the sea he would swim until he sank before giving up the chase.
At the weekend we tackled Thorney Island, all the way around – an eight mile walk in a force eight gale. Out along a one mile dyke, straight as an arrow, then pass through the MOD security gate keeping to the public footpath beyond. The oystercatchers are still here on Thorney although in much smaller numbers but another mile or so on and we put up a roe deer. In the open, not as you usually see them in woods. It ran and Capone ran too but made my heart burst with pride when he responded immediately to the signal, dropped and looked back at me. We watched it run two, three hundred yards inland and continued on our way.
As you approach the most southerly point on Thorney you see to your right the end of Hayling Island and to your left, East Head at the tip of West Wittering. Between is open ocean and a direct line to the Falklands. A couple of months ago when we first made this journey, I spotted an Army Land Rover ahead and we found two men laying the foundations for a bench in memory of a “fallen comrade”. Now, the bench is there. It’s not the usual railway sleeper design. It’s much more elegant and the inscription reads “In memory of Steve Jones, 264 (SAS) Signals Squadron & the crew of ‘Hilton 22’”.
These were our boys, shot down just north of Baghdad three years ago. If I had a son who died a hero in the service of his country, I could think of no more poignant and intense place to remember him amidst the wind, the sea, the sky and the solitude.
Capone and I duly honoured their memory and sat for a cigarette, he accorded the privilege of sitting beside me on the bench for such a special occasion. We remembered them, lachrymose old Welshman that I am.
Thorney turns much warmer and gentler as you move to the east side away from the wind. Nearly seventy years ago, other young heroes took off from here during the Battle of Britain. Now the RAF sailing club provides the local excitement and past Thornham marina and Emsworth harbour back to the mainland.
A pint of beer never tastes better than when you deserve it. So with aching legs and an exhausted dog we made a brief stop at the Bluebell Inn before home for sustenance and sleep.
In the back garden lies a pile of sticks, proudly retrieved, collected and preserved. Out there in the wind and the rain a pile of sticks fashioned into a bench remembers much more than another walk with the dog.
Peter Reynolds 02-04-08
