Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other: From Land's End to John O'Groats

Today I walked with my Mum from my parents' house to the ruins of Dolforwyn Castle, which like most castles sits at the top of a steep climb. I wish I could say we reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap, but realistically it was more of a trudge with Mum following me. The first primroses aren't out yet but the woods were sprinkled with snowdrops in their little clumps, and as well as the calf born at the farm we saw a few lambs out in the fields already. I spent a reasonable amount of the walk checking how slowly we seemed to be walking on my tracking app and accusing Mum of slowing me down- but when we got back and I noted we'd still been almost an hour quicker than the route planners anticipated, we put our route through Naismith's rule and established we took a grand 1 minute 47 seconds longer than that would predict. I feel this bodes well for my ability to predict how long my stages will take me once I've actually plotted route! Blister coun...

Today was- and I cannot emphasise this enough- not a good day.  I stopped at work as I went past this morning to collect a debit card a colleague very kindly rescued from the scrubs laundry bin, and things went almost relentlessly downhill from there. Let me count the ways: Not a good day because the whole walk was along A-roads, barring an excruciating mile (mile 12, in fact) on soft sand. A-roads were bad because there was no nice scenery to distract me, because I was dusted in road debris every time a vehicle passed, because I spent the duration worrying I was lost because surely, surely the Wales Coast Path couldn't have 11 consecutive miles running along the A48 (spoilers: it can, F-, would not buy again), and because relentless tarmac is no fun to walk along. Soft sand at mile 12 was bad because by that point my ankles were sore and the extra effort of each step made it all worse. Also, lack of any scenery meant nowhere to sit to eat anything until partway into mile 10, b...

I write this sitting not in the kitchen sink but in the bath- sideways, with my tablet somewhat precariously balanced on the rim and a handle not designed for this purpose (thankfully despite my walk I'm not yet at the point of needing it to lower myself into or heave myself from the bathwater). I am in the bath because I walked something over 13 miles today around Swansea Bay and I think onto the Gower peninsula, although I've no idea where the boundary lies, and have every intention of doing something similar tomorrow and am of the firm belief that if you're going to do something that ridiculous twice in a row you should try to trick your legs into believing you've repented in between times. Baths are the way to do that. Pleasingly, I'm not actually terribly sore or stiff at the moment, despite having done nothing to prevent it and in fact having spent the latter part of my day alternately lying at an awkward angle on the sofa knitting and sitting in front of ...