Today we walked along Mark’s past and, for most of the day, the very pretty Worcester and Birmingham canal. As soon as you leave Mark’s birthplace you get stories of him crashing his car as a teenager, into the hedge before we’ve even gone 5 metres down the road.

As we neared the canal, sites of school reunions and frequent haunts were pointed out and even the phrase “I remember when all this was fields” was uttered as we walked past an industrial estate.

The weather today has been perfect,  no more rain is forecasted for a few days, which is remarkable given the evidence of the changing seasons as we make our way further south.

The canal path was lovely too, a thousand shades of green, and my phone camera seems better equipped to capture the brown of the water, but it was lovely.

As we came into Worcester there was more reminiscing to be done as Mark spent a 3 months placement here at the start of his sponsored degree. An obligatory stop at a kebab shop ensued, of which you will be glad I am sparing you the photo.

Finally we left Worcester behind us and two things surprised us:

1. that anyone would pay to experience what we have tried to avoid several times thanks to Strava’s hallucinations. 

2. our hotel, which is costing us £145 including breakfast. This is £14 more than the average cost over the whole of this trip. It is £1 more than the place that was just a room with zero amenities and no breakfast, that smelled bad in Fort Augustus; £63 less than the place that had the neon green shower goop that gave us the impression you could rent the rooms by the hour in Fort William and less than £40 more a night than the Days Inn at Larkhall, where supper was from Burger King and breakfast was at Starbucks at the service station next door. This is what you get for £145 near Worcester:

Distance – 28.7 + Strava tax = 31.5km to this little bit of heaven (with a superfood salad on the bar menu)