Not really last night, but after a good night's sleep and a study of the map I reckoned I could walk out to Whitchurch today despite the poor forecast, and it wouldn't matter how wet I got.
I was off by 6:45 after packing up in foul rain. Initial walking was tedious until I climbed up onto the sandstone ridges again. Here there was a brief interlude in the bad weather and the red sandstone outcrops mixed with silver birch, pine and heather, and massive panoramic views accross the Cheshire plain made the whole trip worthwhile
After that the route degenerated into farmers' crop fields, long wet grass, overhead branches in the face and endless, endless stiles encased in nettles, thistle and hawthorne. I don't want to see another stile again for a long time.
At one point I had no altermative but wade through a huge swamp of cow muck and mud, that stuff that has rainbow oily appearance, and I was right up to my knees. Later I found a galvanised cattle water trough and just stood in,footwear and all, to get cleaned off.
At long last I hit the canal and had a brisk 5km walk into Whitchurch. There was a cafe canalside and I had my first food of the day, a buttered scone and a pot of tea for two.
I arrived at the station about 5:30 and there is a train out at 6.09 so I have just had time to type this up while waiting.
what a tremendous 'all senses singing and trumpeting' coda to the trip
ReplyDeleteI am glad you did it all in the end - it didn't look that far when tracing your journeyings on the map this morning, but the AA Golden Map book has no symbols for slurry pits or mucky miles!
Well done Conrad - you deserve to have that nice (dry) comfy bed tonight!
ReplyDeleteWhere next then?
JJ
Brilliant. You rescued the trip even if you felt some of the route was tedious [maybe the weather influenced you].No mention of the that knee.
ReplyDeleteAll - I have now been back and corrected some of the worst typos, and answered comments where appropriate.
ReplyDeleteGimmer - Your are right. My daily distances have not been impressive, but I set out with the intention of having comfortable walking days. The problem is that the distance is dictated by the availability of accommodation, so you may have a day when distance is undesirably short, and others that become uncomfortably extended. The walk out yesterday was 18.5 miles which is way beyond anything I have done since my Welsh boundary walk in 2011 before my knee replacement.
BC - I was glad I finished the walk so that I can give a properly considered view, which I have done to some extent in my posts. JJ who joined me with Mick and Gayle on the rainy Sunday and who invited me onto the music train told me about a veteran TGOer with a tough reputation who proclaims, "pain is temporary, but failure is permanent". JJ had been very encouraging and I sent him a picture of the name board for Whitchurch railway station when I got there saying, "winning is also permanent".