Today was our fourth rainy day. No big deal out of 32, given that the average for this route at this time of year should be ~16 by now. It’s just that starting the day putting wet trainers on reminds you of how this trip is about getting up every morning, rain or shine, sleep or no sleep, blisters or no blisters, starting Strava and the GoPro camera and walking south. It’s as reassuring as it is exhausting.

There’s no opportunity to get to the end of the day and say, “well, at least we can put all our wet clothes in the washing machine and just chill tomorrow”. That’s 4 days away still…..

A couple of days ago our BnB owner for the night smiled at us and said that it was good we clearly enjoyed each other’s company as she had been married to her husband for 25 years, but if she had to walk the length of the UK with him, she would have murdered him by now. Mark and I, on the other hand have probably alternated for the last few days: one of us has had aching feet, tired legs and felt generally under the weather, and the other has cheerfully ignored this for 30+km, talking absolute rubbish about something or other to drag the other person along. It’s a match made in heaven.

All joking aside, days like today remind you that even when it’s raining, this life is for living, so do it with fun and adventure, otherwise, what’s the point? We have received emails about our next adventure to Africa, letting us know that there will be 8 people in total doing the full 11 month trip and we’re wondering what the other 6 are like already. Who else signs up to this kind of adventure? Will they be retirees like us or gap year students, something else entirely? The truck will have 19 people on it from Fes to Accra; how do you cook a meal for 20 people on the edge of the Sahara, with only 2 gas hobs and a kettle? The people we’ve met on our only other Overland trip really made it the amazing experience it was, even to the extent of cooking a full mexican taco evening one night, music and guacamole included, so we have high hopes and expectations.

Closer to home, the route we took today wasn’t all bad, once we got past the strange combination of a quite lovely building opposite the vape-shop-nail-bar-boarded-up-take-away combo we all know and love in Warrington.

Once we joined the waterways we had a wide flat path and no-one to share it with other than birds and each other.

We’ve seen the salt mine that Winsford is famous for, which looked deserted and the locks and ship building areas that were definitely deserted.

We’ve experienced the Strava hallucination again that this is supposed to be a path:

and dodged cars together again on the last stretch of road before reaching our farm shop / room for the night. Of course it also rained again, just as we had dried out, before we got here.

What a farm shop though…. all the usual home made pies and snacks for supper, local delicacies and home made cakes.

Plus of course an entire wall of flavoured spirits

and a cabinet of sugar disguised as something distantly related to a doughnut or cookie, or both. New one on me, according to the internet these may be dookies, or cooknuts.

I’ll pass on the doughnut I think (neglecting to mention the vanilla slice that sneaked into the supper purchases to go with the bottle of wine in the rucksack) and look forward to the evening with Mark, drying trainers on a radiator again and planning adventures together again.

Distance 35.8km and yes, of course, again, it was supposed to be 33.something.