As we needed to leave the lovely 300 year old George Hotel really early this morning, the manager said she could put "a few bits" out for us for breakfast, which she wouldn't charge us for. Suffice to say, I'm eating cheese rolls for supper as I wrote this as we had so much food. … Continue reading Day 41 – from sheer delight to Wales and sheer terror

It has been quite the profile today, with the same total elevation as yesterday but with a whole extra kilometre to enjoy it over. Well, as the saying goes, what goes up....... ....must come down. That makes perfect sense. The rest of the day has made us smile a lot more than the hills though. … Continue reading Day 40 – and “Strava’s having a laugh”

We left the beautiful Stanbrook Abbey hotel this morning in the rain, on well signposted, beautiful off road paths that showed us exactly the hills we were headed for. We dodged fallen trees; (no Strava hallucinations required); waded through bracken, now turning an autumnal, gold colour and wandered past impossibly pretty houses. Within the hour, … Continue reading Day 39 – today has been very up and down, but that’s the Malvern hills for you…

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 … Continue reading Day 38 – out of Mark’s family home, turn left and go south down memory lane…..

And a day late posting as we're realising that one day away from walking is not really enough. We need one day to rest and recover our aching legs. Then we could spend a second day doing all the things we needed to do like book a clinic appointment for rabies jabs; tweak the next … Continue reading Day 37 – rest-ish

It has been both pretty and slow for a full 44km/10.5 hours of walking. As we ended up at Mark's childhood home, it has been a day of memories with his school friends too. Laughter and love in plenty. We started so early this morning, the light was beautiful. The path started well - downhill … Continue reading Day 36 – a pretty, slow marathon day

We've left the outskirts of Telford (Wellington to be precise) and I won't miss it. Saturday night was a late one in Market Drayton as the hunt for pub food took us to a place with a lot of monosodium glutamate that you know about, but they were also playing 80s music, so we stayed … Continue reading Day 35 – need.more.sleep and less mediocrity

....leaving me to wonder why we thought 9 was a good idea on this stretch. We've just completed day 7 and it really feels like it. It was another day of starting with wet trainers thanks to the radiator not working in our room. The pictures of Prince Philip everywhere, in frames that didn't fit … Continue reading Day 34 – six days between rest days seems ideal….

The initial excitement about the farm shop food yesterday waned somewhat when neither of us could stomach the dry arancini balls seemingly made of granite chips last night. We moved rapidly onto the vanilla slices, which should have been an unctuous combination of a thin sheen of sweet icing, covering a crisp mille feuille pastry … Continue reading Day 33 – ditto yesterday, resilience is a thing

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 … Continue reading Day 32 – for the love of resilience