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

I am in Somerset! County number three! I have been in Somerset for about a mile and a half, but have walked along a road only about 200 feet over the border for most of that. I walked along the A road from the bed and breakfast, taking a last photo of Bickleigh castle as I went (apparently the oldest inhabited castle in England, open by appointment) and the followed the last 3.5 miles of the Exe Valley Way to Tiverton. Tiverton, via M&S, furnished me with lunch and then I hit the beginning of the West Country Way (apparently) along the Grand Western Canal Towpath. This continued approximately forever, mainly because I knew Emma would be the other end, waiting (I have an over-inflated sense of my own importance in other people's entertainment). Normally I like towpaths, but today there were not enough ducklings and not enough people said "hello" back to me. But it did go by quite quickly, in retrospect. I arrived at the B&B, which is really more like a miniat...

I think that when most people conjure an image of English countryside, they're imagining the bits of Devon I've walked through today. Rolling, green hills and scattered villages- much gentler than Cornwall, which was a bit rugged. As I set off this morning, last night's host, Dennis, who has cycled LEJOG and will be doing it in reverse (JOGLE) with his son later this summer, let me know that Devon is the hilliest bit of my walk. I reminded him that the Pennines exist, and cyclists don't do that bit of the route. Nonetheless, today was indeed very up-and-down-y, which is how you get beautiful views. I walked along miles of empty (and nearly-empty) country roads - I even saw two deer who bounded away into roadside woods as I approached, flashing their white tails like rabbits do - and every time the hedges were low enough to look over, I got another view of hills and valleys, green fields and animals grazing and thatched houses - and very red earth in the ploughed field...

I spent a good part of this afternoon really very cross with a range of individuals, committees, people and animals. But we'll get to that in a moment. Yesterday I had a much-needed and thoroughly appreciated day off, which I spent in Okehampton while the hostess did my laundry for me. I had a poke around the supermarkets on a hunt for travel wash to assist in the sink-laundry, with no joy; then I paid £4 for admission to the Museum of Dartmoor life because I was too embarrassed to back out when I realised it wasn't free. Like all small museums, there were some alarmingly unlifelike wax models frozen in the act of carrying out various Olde Worlde tasks, and some borderline informative videos, but also a reasonable display and it passed the time. Not sure I'll be hanging onto the card to allow me to return any time in the next year for free, though. It did give me a discount to look around the ruins of Okehampton Castle, which was good as otherwise it would have been even ...

OK, you can all ignore the general tone of yesterday's blog: turns out if you don't eat lunch when walking you feel very ill and miserable. I ate a lot more during the course of today and I'm much happier overall! Also thanks go to Gwilym, a friend from Cambridge who is a proper doctor who looks after grown-ups, who suggested the rash on my legs may not be a bilateral cellulitis but sweat urticaria which while it sounds manky is a definite improvement because I already have the means of treating it in my backpack. So I've decided that that's what it is, covered it in antihistamine cream and laced my boots more loosely, and with the cooler weather today it's much improved. Hurrah! So today's walk was a rather fun trip along about three quarters of the Two Castles Trail, which runs between Launceston Castle in Cornwall and Okehampton Castle in Devon. Oh yes- I've made it out of the never-endingly long county of Cornwall, after a mere week and 108 miles o...

What a day. I spent a reasonable amount of last night awake, worrying about both today's and tomorrow's routes, but solved both with one good decision- which I then followed with several bad ones. My worry about today's route was the A30- specifically, crossing it on foot. Now I appreciate that if you are driving or possibly cycling through Cornwall, the A30 is a very useful thing, but from my point of view it may as well be a 20-foot barbed wire fence up the middle of a minefield for how easy it is to cross, especially as I know from the drive along it last week that there are roadworks at the minute around Bodmin Moor. It's a dual carriageway which periodically likes to divide into two and often hides in cuttings, and it's a magnet for every other road nearby- they all run into it, and all the footpaths run up to it and then stop, completely uselessly. My worry about tomorrow's route was that it's nearly 21 miles long and I've already walked over 1...

I apologise in advance for this post, it's not sure where it's going. I spent a bit of today convinced it was going to be a "today was not much fun" post; then it was going to be a "I was going to complain but now I've had a cup of tea everything's better" post; then a "no, really, today was an unmitigated disaster" post, which would have been an exaggeration; but now I'm sitting in a very comfy chair in a B&B with a cup of tea and all bets are off. Right, now the meta-blogging is out of the way, let's get on with it. I gave myself (and the lady at the B&B) a lie-in this morning on the basis that a) today was meant to be a rest day until Bodmin Moor robbed me of it and b) the actual walk today was less than 14 miles so I needed to leave late in order to arrive in time for tea. As I left Bodmin, I called my parents ("I'm leaving now. Yes, I'm still doing this. Yes, I know I'm mad" [some parts of this c...

Today I went off-road! Only for a little while but for long enough to miss the tarmac. I started off with a mile or so of small villages, which felt quite a lot like walking through suburbia; but suburbia has its charms, chief amongst them: pavements. Seriously, they're a wonderful idea. They mean walkers and drivers can travel along the same paths without fear of death/insurance claims. They also mean I'm spared my own internal monologue which plays every time a car passes me: if they wave to say 'thank you', my monologue goes "it's ok, I don't particularly want to be run over" and if they don't, my internal monologue says a sarcastic "you're welcome " so you can't win, really. After this, I got a reminder of how not-fun it is to walk along the edge of a road without pavements with traffic, walked past an owl sanctuary with great yearning (half an hour's owl handling for £30! I don't know how you can put a price on th...