stop and lie down at the end of each day. And strangely, I don’t recall ever experiencing a pang of disappointment at the sight of the finish line after staggering across 20-odd miles of blistering desert under a rucksack the size of Phil Jupitus

rucksack for the map. I stared at it with my most rugged and eagle-eyed outdoor look. It smirked back at me and stuck its tongue out. I turned it upside down – or was it downside up? I refuse to be intimidated by a pattern of wiggly, coloured lines. So I

the equipment list as best I could. With the result that my rucksack contained the following: a stuffed spider monkey; a speculum; a plaster effigy of the Russian mystic Gurdjieff; the horn of a black rhinoceros; Risk!, the game of international diplomacy

and tracks that were supposed to lead us to the ridge of the Malverns.Steeple chase: the race was run against a backdrop of villages, churches and rolling hillsI suppose propelling us up a 1:4 incline bearing 10kg rucksacks at the height of a heatwave