Woes of a hiker.

Growing up in Ghana, I never really understood why summer time was so often mentioned in western pop songs as. 1. ''We are going on summer holidae'' 2. ''Summer time and your mama is good looking''.
Having gone through the terrible weather in London I now understood why there was so much fuss about summer.

Summer is sunny and green , the earth seem to be alive all of a sudden.
Anyway in search of something to do last weekend I looked around for new thing to do.(ie in keeping with my mantra of never staying at home over the weekend ever except in sickness) I decided to go a walking adventure with some friends.

On the website it was listed as being 20 miles and strenuous. I knew 20 miles was long but had no idea how it was that long.In Ghana we measure distance in time. Oh is it far ... noooo its 20 minutes drive from Sankara Circle (this 20 mins does not specify whether there is traffic or not).

Even if it is long I am from Ghana and I walk (okay I used to walk a lot) esp. in Uni. - hiking from the Great Hall to Bush canteen is not exactly on a walkers trail especially with the prospect of hot steamy delicious banku urging me on but it did give my feet something to t/walk about.

Being conscious of time I arrived early at the embarking point in my fake hiking attire ( boots (wrong kind),packed bag with lunch and jeans(wrong kind). I realised my wrong attire only after the other hikers in the group started arriving. But I was lucky because the rain did not fall and we enjoyed fairly good sunshine. Otherwise I was told I would have looked looking like a wet dog looking for its owner after a few showers. By the way whilst still waiting for the other members to turn up, I noticed a Debenhams store nearby was running a sales. I quickly rushed in a saw some nice khaki trousers/pants at a really affordable price (cheap paa) I had to take a good look at it b4 buying it ''2 good to be tru''. So if you see me next time donning some nice khaki you know where I got it from.

To say the least it was a long journey. 20 miles is 20 miles. The walk lasted from 10:30 am to 7:30 pm. with a 1 hour stop in between for lunch. My feet nearly gave up on me but I persevered till the end. It was a long along the end of the Thames with some detours to the country side, we finished in Rochester which happened to have a medieval castle and also was the home of Charles Dickens and most importantly happened to host good pub """hmmm!!!.

It was a tiring journey . Spent half of Sunday in bed. But my... it was well worth it,, various scenes along the journey from country side views to coastal scenes to some abondoned forts and World War 2 bunkers( part of the English preparation of a Nazi attack up the Thames during the world war).

Met some great people on the walk too. It was a long walk so in between taking pictures, ''refuelling'', or thinking of sore toes we interacted a lot. Met a volunteer who had just returned from Ghana on a 3 month assignment.We had an interesting chat along the way. Join me next time as I give you a narrative and her interesting views on Ghana and its people.
Please as usual accept and correct any spelling and grammatical errors.Leave your comments if you please.