Today’s route was supposed to be 33.9km and ended up being 35.5, but that’s nothing new. Likewise the elevation was 210m, which I feel is called “a step” in Scotland. So that wasn’t impressive either. Even the environment being grey and dull from the start couldn’t stop us. Although the sound of rush hour traffic and puddles combined to make conversation impossible.

The long straight pavement alongside the road turned into the longest and straightest footpath:

It’s called the strawberry line and there are a tonne of rules to walk along this footpath:

I’ve spent years trying to get junior consultants to make information NOT look like this so that people actually read it. If you read more than one line, you did better than me.

Anyway the strawberry line continued for almost as many miles as the long, grey, loud road until it didn’t:

We did have to read this sign to find out where we could rejoin the dullest pathway in the world. Turns out, the path was closed for phase 1 of tree felling works, up to “the tunnel”.

There were a couple of issues with this:

– “the tunnel” was not named or drawn on the map provided, so we had no idea where “the tunnel” was

– the alternative route to the footpath, according to the map was a tiny road labelled A38. This we did recognise, it’s a major road, nearly 300 miles long, and 8km away to the west.

It takes a lot more than this to stop us though, so we doubled back and joined a slippery, muddy path through the woods:

until it tried to rejoining the strawberry line in the middle of the tree felling works and we had to do the same manoeuvre all over again.

At this point we admitted we were exhausted. Not just physically tired of the fact that every walk gets longer every day for random reasons like today’s, although that is certainly true. Today’s random extension of the distance actually means our total mileage cannot drop below 1,000 miles now. We’ve been wondering how we would feel if we did this whole adventure and spent the rest of our lives telling people we walked 989 miles down the length of the UK without feeling just a tiny bit frustrated or constantly hearing the next thing someone says being, “could you not have found 11 miles from somewhere?” So that’s one minor frustration removed.

No, in marathon terms we have reached the ~30km point now. It’s 75-80% of the way through, so not insignificant, but critically, not far enough that you can think mentally “I’ve got less than 10km left, you’ve got this”. For me, the 20-30km bit of a marathon is the hardest. A half feels great, easy, and also a real achievement; you briefly think, “I feel fantastic, I can do that distance all over again, let’s go for it!” Then 2km later you’re reaching for the caffeine chews, tailwind sugar rehydration fluids and counting down every 100 metres, every muscle hurts and your most comfortable, age old, running clothes have discovered a new way of chafing you.

When we start out every day now it’s amazing the repair our bodies do in our sleep to make us feel ready to take not just that first step of the day, but also the last one, over 30km later. Currently though, ask either one of us to go up or down a short flight of stairs in between the first or last step and we will not be responsible for our actions. Every day it feels as though we have run a marathon the day before. To be fair, we have walked 4 individual marathons in the last 6 weeks and over 800 miles in total so that’s not an unreasonable feeling. We’ve mapped most of the 11 walking days left and the one in Dartmoor is nearly 40km long with ~1,000m of elevation. We’ve done longer walks and we’ve done nearly that elevation, but the combination is formidable. It looks like this long walk isn’t going to let us stroll to the finish line after all.

We have found laughs where we could, though, even on the Burton Row rat run that has zero pavement.

This road is where, excuse the language, only arseholes appear to drive. It’s just off the aforementioned A38, and we lost count of the number of drivers who came within two feet of us because waiting until the cars passed them on the other side would have presumably taken a second more of their precious time than they could spare. Much easier to drive at pace between us and oncoming traffic.

This road was also a sobering reminder today that being able to walk anywhere is still a gift and to remain careful when dodging cars. Only 10 days ago, a pedestrian was killed by a vehicle, just 2km down the road from where we turned off onto Burton Row. When I was Googling to find where the accident happened, I found a map of exactly the turning onto Burton Row from the A38. It turns out this was where a pedestrian was killed by a car in 2019. I don’t know how many people have to be killed here before something changes. 

Thankfully we made it to Burnham on Sea safe and sound, which lived up to its name.

Surprisingly, Burnham on Sea also has a very good Japanese restaurant which we ate in tonight and have rebooked for tomorrow. No soba noodles, but fantastic tempura that normally I would say was, “to die for”.

Distance – a very circuitous 35.5km, a long “Death of Robin Hood” cinema visit and a life affirming day with Mark before a much needed rest day tomorrow.