The 50th Birthday Walk for Prostate Cancer UK

Later this month, I will turn 50 years old. I wanted to mark the occasion with something more than some gifts, a few cards and a hang-over. Four years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and it was by no means certain that I would reach 50 years old. Thank goodness, that is now in the past. In celebration of my new "all clear" tumour-free status, I decided to do something to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK.

I have been amazingly lucky. I was diagnosed with cancer the very first time I had a PSA test (which I thought was going to be a formality as I had no symptoms, it just seemed like a good idea). Through a combination of a great GP in Downton and a new treatment being trialled by Consultant Urologist Chris Ogden's team at the Royal Marsden Hospital, I have not only survived it but have done so with all my bits intact and in working order. The secret was High Intensity Focused Ultrasound. After lots of MRI scanning and a god-awful operation called a 'mapping biopsy' where 74 teeny bits of my prostate were snipped out and tested, one half of the organ was zapped with a laser-like beam of ultra-sound. This turned the plump pink lump of my prostate's left hand side into a frazzled scrap of flesh. It was pretty dramatic stuff and I really hope that it sounded like a diving Spitfire, super-charger screaming and guns blazing; but I think that in reality the only noise was the sound that urologists make when they are concentrating: perhaps a slight hum or a tuneless whistle. (For more information about HIFU and the various trials, read more here: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancers-in-general/treatment/other/high-intensity-focused-ultrasound-hifu and get the info sheet here http://prostatecanceruk.org/prostate-information/our-publications/publications/hifu). Having been this lucky, I wanted to do what I could to give other men the same chance.

A few weeks ago, I put up a Just Giving page (https://www.justgiving.com/David-Blake7), set a target of £200 and started to plan a walk of about 25 miles from my partner's house in Erlestoke, across Salisbury Plain and the West Wiltshire Downs, to my home in Chilmark. I managed to persuade nearly twenty sponsors to donate various sums that amounted to over £450 (THANK YOU!) and on Sunday 15th November, I set off.

7.30 am, ready to go.

From Erlestoke, I climbed up through Erlestoke Woods and Coulston Hollow to join the Imber Range Perimeter Path (IRPP). This is sometimes a wide metalled road and sometimes a farm track. It is part of the public path that goes right round the Army's Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA). As I joined it at the top of Coulston Hill I was met by a young gale that was driving across the wide expanse of Salisbury Plain.

I screwed my iPod ear buds in a bit harder, turned up the volume on my collection of 70s and 80s guilty pleasures and marched off. This is what the Army call an ARE (Acronym-Rich Environment), but as you pass the Videttes (cavalry-speak for look-out), they pit up signs in Civilian-ese so that we mere mortals can understand what they are about.

The SPTA is always being used by units on it somewhere. There are a few 'open days' when you can access the interesting places such as Imber Village, but most of it, such as the Impact Areas, remain closed off. The Army has been using the Plain since the 1890s and there is an awful lot of stuff lying about that has yet to explode. You see more innocuous things like Illume flares cases and parachutes, old smoke grenades, sandbags, spent cartridge cases and masses of barbed wire lying all over the place. Training for war is a messy business!

I passed a bit of early morning Army traffic as I made my way round Edington and on to Bratton. Redwings and fieldfares were feeding across the ploughed fields. At one point they all rose up in to the air, clacking in alarm as a sparrow hawk sliced across the track in front of me. On the top of Bratton Down I passed Bratton Camp, an Iron Age Hillfort built close to a Neolithic long barrow. This is the site of one of the greatest and most decisive battles in British history. It was here that King Alfred's army of Saxon farmers engaged Guthrum's viking army of Danes and Norsemen. Guthrum made his shield wall across the ramparts of Bratton Camp, inviting Alfred to break his army of amateurs on the mailed might of his professional warriors. Alfred lead his men into battle and they pushed the vikings back over the precipitous slope behind them, sending them skittering down into the valley to be slaughtered. Now it is a place where locals go to walk their dogs, look across the vale to Trowbridge. There's also a good view of the old cement works and when they finally come to knock down the chimney, Bratton Camp will once again be thronged with people!

I was now no longer walking directly into the wind as I skirted the Westbury Chalk Pit and walked on to Upton Cow Down where I turned down across a wide coombe and headed towards Warminster.

The trackway of the IRPP gives way to a grassy track, and then to a chalky, wet climb up the other side.

Climbing up towards Cradle Hill behind the rifle ranges, I was going up a slope that was greasy with churned up chalky clay, each footstep slipping back infuriatingly. From the top of Cradle Hill, I dropped down into Warminster Garrison and got great view of Battlesbury: another Iron Age hill fort.

Warminster Garrison is typical of many Army camps in that there is a huge amount of very neat mown grass. Garrison commandants obviously like to have things tidy, green and above all else short. What always amazes me is that, even though there is a]obviously some industrial-scale mowing operation going on, there is never a big heap of grass cuttings. I have a small lawn and a small mountain of cut grass. What does the Army do with all the cut grass?

Battlesbury Hill is one of a line of three hills in the escarpment that hangs over Warminster and the Wylye Valley like a great green wave. From the top of Battlesbury, I looked out over the garrison with its lines of parked armoured cars, lorries and tanks, still in desert camouflage from the was in Afghanistan.

In the distance, to the right of the image above, I could see Cley Hill and beyond that the wooded greensand hills of Longleat and Stourhead. As I climbed the defensive ditches of Battlesbury, I saw the last of the Clustered-Bellflower, still in purple flower after this very mild autumn.

The Clustred bell-flower is also called Dane's Blood, as it springs up wherever brave Wessex men slaughtered vikings and other Norse Ne'er-do-wells 

Then I had Middle Hill and Scratchbury Hill to climb. Siegfried Sassoon lived at Heytesbury after the Second World War - where I would cross down into the Wylye Valley. He used to walk up Scratchbury and do the kind of awfully clever thinking that only poets and novelists with large private incomes can afford. What I can never understand is why he moved from Teffont Magna, which is far prettier.

The views from Scratchbury out across the Plain are fantastic.

The white ribbon of road in the foreground is the southern military road that takes armour from Warminster onto the Plain without scuffing up the grass. It cost £20 million to build. It's great on a skateboard.

You can see deep into the Ranges; haunt of short-eared owls, hen harriers, merlins and (reputedly) big cats! It was not a great day for landscape photography. The heavy low cloud turned the light into a dull grey glow. The grass and greening fields reflected the grey-ness and the great rolling expanse of the Plain was hammered into two dimensions.

I reached the second highest point of my walk at Cotley Hill, which has a cairn on a round barrow and that means a photo has to be taken. It was a bit hurried as by now I was nearly an hour late getting to my rendezvous at Corton where joyous crowds were waiting to welcome me, so the selfie was a bit wonky.

Me - on a barrow, beside a cairn, for charity.

I was in a hurry now, as I was getting phone calls wondering what I was up to. As I dropped down into the valley and crossed the A36 into Heytesbury, I started to run and walk. Running for four strides, then walking four strides takes you forward in surges and eats up the ground. I crossed the Wylye at Heytesbury Mill, where a stoat ran down the track towards me, saw me, and zoomed back the way he had come.  I got onto a sloppy, sticky muddy track that took me to Corton and the The Dove where everyone was waiting. Rapturous applause of "What took you so long?" and "we've already had lunch" greeted me as I rolled in, puffing, red-faced and bathed in sweat.

A quick change of Tee-shirt (another one supplied by Prostate Cancer UK!), some more water and I was ready for the off. The next ten miles were much easier: a gentler pace and great company made it so much more enjoyable.

Tom and Fin, appropriately dressed in Prostate Cancer UK t-shirts,  ready to beat me with sticks should I slow down.

We worked our way up the Dairy Road to Snails Creep Hanging and then onwards up to the highest point of the whole day (204 metres) at Stockton Down. Here I introduced everyone to one of my favourite trees: a knurled old beech that is covered in carvings and memorials (some of them a bit rude!).

L-R Me, Lou George and Merlin, Fin, Laurie, Tom and DJ

From there we went through Stockton Wood, a quick dash across the A303 and then down the last two miles or so to Chilmark and home.

Then I remembered that I had left my house keys back at Lou's house. I had prepared milled wine and spaghetti bolognese for our triumphal return, so the final challenge of the day was to break into my own house. This was, of course, another photo opportunity!

If you are a burglar, please disregard this  photo.

A great day, with great friends walking across 25 miles of wonderful landscapes. Raising money for a very serious and important cause.

To all those who supported me, cured me and sustained me over the last four years - thank you!