Land’s End to John O’Groats

Yes we have already resorted to cheating. But before you cross our names from your Christmas card list in disgust let me explain…

I’ve hurt my foot. Now you may bebthinking something along the lines of “well, duh, if you’re stupid enough to try to walk hundreds of miles carrying heavy weights your feet will hurt” but this is no longer just sore feet. 80 miles ago it was just sore feet, I reached sore feet stage at about the 100 mile mark and we’re now 188.9 miles along. The ball of my right foot is now permanently swollen enough for every step ( or, more precisely, every other step) to have hurt for four days now. This has led to multiple other pains because I haven’t been walking properly. I possibly could make it to Bristol but I would almost certainly make it no further. We can’t just hang around for an extra day as we have booked about thirty bed and breakfasts in advance. So today we are going to be naughty and take the bus over to Street in the hope that an extra day off will get us back on track.
Paul is a bit foot sore as well but he could probably make it without the break. So there we go… Now you can get out that card list or alternatively you can pray for healing and for wisdom to know when we can keep on and when we’re doing proper damage.

In all seriousness we’re pretty disappointed to have to do things like this already but we swore that if we had to resort to pain killers to get us through every day we’d change plans. Maybe we’ll come back at the end and do this day properly.

In other news: the indications are that Paul has done very well in his degree. So it’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, apart from the foot issue we’re enjoying ourselves greatly.