Day 5: Job done

Well, according to my guidebook the citizens of Bowness on Solway worry that they're being forgotten as a terminus of Hadrian's Wall... And to be fair if you don't have walker's OCD there's not a great deal to recommend this section - for me its 17 miles of unremitting tarmac and farm tracks is important but not essential.

But the day starts with end of Carlisle, and follows the Eden out, and out...  There's little evidence of the wall, the odd section of the vallum and reused stonework in buildings. But it isn't unpleasant, just not the same as the soaring challenges as the days before.



The main challenge was keeping focused to make sure I made the bus back - inconveniently early afternoon or late afternoon... My feet, and their few blisters, felt tired and started cramping - the toes of the right foot being pulled back in sharp contractions isn't conducive for good walking.

The honesty shacks were again welcome oasis' - though I do despair that one has to have CCTV due to the amount of pillaging!

Plod, plod, plod goes the walk, trailing through Port Carlisle and then the finish...



Job done...

I had half an hour to find a tea shop before my bus - and couldn't, even the pub seemed closed. I had the entire bus to myself, a limo in stagecoach colours all the way back to Carlisle.

I didn't buy the t-shirt, mainly because I didn't like the one in the tourist information... but it is on order (from the people who run one of the honesty shacks from the day before - http://www.itrod.co.uk/hadrians-wall.php)

The maps from the GPS will be uploaded soon, especially as endomondo had a fit... I'll add in the kit review and my usual bits and bobs.  But for now I need another long soak in a hot radox bath...

Wisi enim ad lectionem, quia ambulavit in septimanam

TTFN

Paul

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Something a little bit political...

Well the legs still don't want to run, walk and climb is fine, run makes them feel a bit leary ... Probably the two most contentious words in the congenital heart world (UK branch) are "safe and sustainable", a quick trawl of the support websites or facebook will show many a group being set up to save a hospital or a ward. I won't be joining any of them. Not because I don't care, but because I care too much. The origins of Safe and Sustainable go back to the Bristol Hospital Enquiry, and quite simply this is designed to ensure that the surgery that heart kids get is the the most appropriate, done by well trained and supported surgeons who are used to doing the operations and are in a surgical setting which are designed around the needs of the child going through the surgery and their family. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so. I want every heart kid to get the best surgery available to them, I want their parents to be given the best advice, support...
Read more

12% of a plan…

  It’s been a month.     A month since the new heart valve was inserted… the chaffing has died down, I’ve been sensible and built my walking up, restarted my apple fitness plus bits and bobs (boy has it been a long time since I bent like that, or cycled/spun like that) and I’ve been for two runs – a gentle 3k which worked as a prelude to my return to my local parkrun… I finished, my tally went up 1, and I remembered just how tough it is to run the first mile on so soft, dry sand… In hindsight I would’ve been better to walk the first third and conserve my energy (and pool of fitness) to the prom and the grass thirds…   Relive 'Return to Parkrun!' Yes, it does look the first bit is out to sea…  Monday was a random day off work to get out and do something, so with a bit of head scratch and some nifty plotting on the OS Mapping app I wandered along the canal, and then down the Transpennine Trail & “loop line”… Almost pancake flat, I know...
Read more

It’s a kind of magic (the science kind)…

  Well, operation done – I have a funky new valve and a bit of a sore groin.     I was in hospital for 28, sleepless, hot, hours and unconscious for about 4 of them.     While the insertion points for the three catheters I had in me in at the same time heal it’s a case of taking it easy, let my body get over the various manipulations (sore throat, the impact of the still there frozen shoulder) and the simple lack of sleep from stress and some noisy neighbours on the day ward I was on.  There’s really not a lot else to say… I went in, did the usual pre-op checks, had a chat with the interventionist, had a chat with the anaesthetist, signed the all-important consent forms (kids – that’s when you know you’re an adult; parents, that’s when you know your kid is in charge), was wheeled across to a hybrid cath lab… laid down, bit of banter with the team and the next thing I knew I was waking up, sore and not actually knowing whether the funky valve had fitted me…...
Read more