The distance in metres?

The Firstborn finally got me on the first of our monthly walks around Hampshire as part of my training for the Great France walk. Trying to fit them in on Sundays around the plethora of family events and rehearsals for a huge range of different productions is no mean feat!
However we settled on a circular walk from Hambledon to the Bat and Ball pub, the cradle of cricket. This is officially a walk of six miles, which distance both the Firstborn and I can do easily enough. The terrain is easy going and the weather was lovely, indeed perfect for walking. We had the Hampshire version of a topo-guide with a description of the walk and points of interest. We also had a Pathfinder map, which I had used on previous occasions to mark in other circular walks recommended by the News columnist, John Price. We set off confidently and well, but had one hiccup finding the footpath across a field to a stile just before Hermitage Farm. We managed to find the stile and the farm, but, having passed the farm, we made our major bloomer. This doesn't presage well for the 1800 kilometres of the Great France Walk but I have no idea mentally or physically what 800 metres feels or looks like!

i am about to digress here for a moment, before returning to the problem we encountered on the walk. I visit B& Q on Wednesdays quite frequently these days, as I have a senior discount card, which gives me 10% off. It also seems the entire elderly or retired population of most of Hampshire do the same. This particular Wednesday I went to buy fence panels. I have already replaced the easily accessible ones to the east of my property, but have decided that the west could do with replacement as well, and hopefully in time for the 60th birthday celebrations of the Best Beloved in the first May weekend. Despite her reservations I went for the whole number in one go with a delivery date giving me two weeks to put the fence panels up. I measured up the task carefully: I needed them all to have the same width but three different heights of 1.2 metres, 1.5 metres and 1.8 metres. This took some mental arithmetic and careful measuring I can tell you but armed with my piece of paper I arrived at B&Q ready for the task. There were insufficient numbers of fence panels on display but I had needed to waylay a young assistant anyway to put my order in. He talked about the number of 6 x 4 I needed, and one 6 x 5, and one 6 x 6. You, intelligent reader, are probably already ahead of me on this one, but I really had difficulty equating what he was saying with my piece of paper. In the end, as we were finalising the order and delivery date, I asked him what measurements was he using. He replied, of course, that he was using imperial - 6ft by 4ft, etc, and instantly I could see the fence panel dimensions in my head and see how the three different sizes correlated. I asked him why he was using imperial when I had spent a lifetime and several tough minutes calculating this particular order in metric. His reply was simple - this was senior Wednesday and most of the clients felt easier with imperial. The moral of my tale is that I could visualise six feet so much easier than its metric equivalent.
Back to the walk. The Firstborn and I were looking for a path to the north, or on our left, at approximately 800 metres after Hermitage Farm. We had travelled 200 metres when we saw a couple of walkers coming down a path to our left and decided quite erroneously that this was the path we sought. We then discovered ourselves at odds with the topo-guide, which promised us a whole series of stiles, which of course we couldn't find, because we were some 600 metres to the west of them. Others might have turned back and retraced their steps, but there is a stubborn Corrigan streak, that at times can be a virtue, but at other times is less so. We eventually found tracks and paths northwards, even though they bore no comforting footpath signposts. My suggestion to cut across fields eastwards, in what I knew was the direction of the pub, were quite correctly turned down by the Firstborn ( she seems to have inherited her mother's quality of common sense and the ability to ignore my inarticulate grumblings). However our sojourn north finally brought us to HMS Mercury, which is some considerable distance north west of the Bat and Ball pub! When we finally arrived at the pub, I calculated the distance we had covered so far on our walk, by using the Pathfinder map. We had intended to do a six mile walk in total, but had already covered seven and a half miles, and had another four miles to get us back to the car at Hambledon! The lunch at the Bat and Ball, and the meeting with Peter Brown and his lovely wife (also having lunch at the pub after a stroll up from Horndean), did not really recompense for the doubling of the walk.
At this rate of misguided navigation, I am more likely to hit the Adriatic than the Mediterranean on the Great France walk.