Physical preparation for the Dales Way

I will admit up front that I know the Dales Way will be a challenging walk. But, with some preparation and persistence, it should be a hard fun kind of experience.

The path is around 80 miles or 125 km, and I will be doing it in 6 days. Each day I will walk between 16 and 25 km. There are baggage services you can pay for so your luggage is transferred for you to your next hotel, but those services are usually bundled together with hotel reservation management, and since the trip is not that complicated I made all the reservations myself and will be walking with a backpack. I will only be staying in hotels/hostels, so I'm not carrying any camping materials like a tent or sleeping bag which make a bag very heavy.

When I decided to do the Dales Way, I knew I would need to practice walking/hiking, so with friends I organized two hikes in the Pyrénées Ariègeoises:

-Cascade d'Ars
-two day hike with a stay at the Refuge de Bassiès

These two hikes were both good for getting in shape, for "practice" with various equipment, and to learn my weakness. The Cascade d'Ars is very pretty, and now that I'm in better shape I'd like to do a loop that's possible up to some other lakes. The hike to the Refuge was really strenuous and while there were some nice lakes up in the mountains and some nice things to see (plus a more than decent Refuge), I don't know I would exactly recommend the hike because there are others with nicer views and more evenly paced paths.

I also did a walk around Léguevin and the Forêt de Bouconne near Toulouse.

All this led me to the following conclusions: I needed to work on strengthening my legs, plus flexibility (hips for example), and I needed to strengthen my arms/shoulders for carrying my pack.

Once I was on vacation from the university mid-July my self-created program began: alternating days of working out at home (mix of weight lifting exercises with 4kg dumbells, pilates, and stretching) and walking. I wanted to walk in conditions similar to the kind of trail I will have in England, so walking around downtown Toulouse was out of the question. I also didn't want to have to drive too far to get to a trail, and the walk had to be in the 6-15km range (too short and my feet wouldn't be getting practice, too long and I might injure myself).

Luckily I found this website by Sicoval, which groups together towns south of Toulouse. The printable walk instructions were also a big help because I didn't want to buy lots of 15€ IGN maps I will only use once or twice. On the trail I "cheated" a bit by consulting my phone gps when I had a doubt about the path to take. These walks were generally nice and I have to say it was a pleasure to discover random small towns and countryside I wouldn't otherwise visit. The walk around Clermont-le-Fort included a hill top where I could see 40-50km around and it was a delightful surprise.

One of my walking days there was an Alert Orange because of thunderstorms, so instead of walking in the countryside I ran stairs in Toulouse. I can't remember the last time I sweat so much in such a short time!

I'm now at my in-laws and will be visiting my husband's aunt and grandparents before a wedding on Saturday, so I'll admit that the last week before my trip has been too light on prep, but I did manage to go for a 10km walk around the local chaparral on Monday.

I never would have predicted this, but I've become a frequent visitor of the REI Outdoor School website (I learned there's a proper way to lift your pack onto your back so you don't strain you back) and Backpacker Magazine. If anyone has heard of a European backpacking/hiking magazine, please leave me a comment. So far I've only found magazines either 100% British or backpacking as in travel-on-the-cheap not hiking.

Given the fact that I started my dedicated physical training a bit late, I'm reasonably satisfied with my preparation. I can walk 4.5 km an hour no matter the terrain, which means I will have between 3.5 and 6 hours of walking each day on the Dales Way, a rather reasonable rhythm. If I had been at home right up until leaving I could have continued my work-out/walking program, but visiting family and the wedding make that difficult.

I know I will be dead tired at the end of the first day of walking, and a friend who did a long distance bike trip said the hardest is the second day, after which you feel more in the rhythm. I'm putting my faith in the good English breakfast I'll have each morning!