Today's impressive stats - 26 miles (a new personal best), 6 hours 15 mins walking (over 4 mph), 57126 steps, 3401 calories. 4 very painful feet with more blisters than we care to count.
Today we completed one week on the road. It
doesn’t actually seem possible that a week has gone by since we were sent off
from The Eden Project by our friends. But here we are now, over 160 miles from
home.
Anne and I are both still loving this experience. I am sure we will
reflect more once we have completed our challenge, but even now it is something
that has taught us so much about ourselves, as well as discovering that after
almost 28 years of marriage we still get on pretty well!
The last two nights we have been staying
with Richard and Kathryn (Kathryn is an old school friend of Anne’s from the
Isles of Scilly). It has been great to stay with people who have just allowed
us to use their house as a base and feel at home. We are very grateful for
their hospitality, but this morning it was time to load up the truck again and
set off to where we finished last night.
We also met up with our driver for the day.
Alan is a friend of a friend from Chard and did a brilliant job of looking
after us on the road today.
Our driver for the day - Alan
We again started early and walked the last
few miles into Shaftsbury in time to meet with the local MP Robert Walter as
arranged. Neither of us can remember actually visiting Shaftsbury before and we
were very struck by the historic buildings and wonderful views across Dorset
and Wiltshire.
Gold Hill - historic part of Shaftsbury
Knowing how busy all MPs are we are very
grateful to Bob for taking the time to welcome us and send us on our way with a
donation to our fund. We then set off toward Salisbury.
.jpg)
In Shaftsbury with Robert Walters – MP for North Dorset
Today we chalked up a number of milestones.
We entered our 5th county – Wiltshire. Our walk took us along the Chalk Valley.
What a stunning place!
Wiltshire looking glorious
The route today was the kindest so far. It
was very level and we certainly did not encounter anything that would warrant
the name hill in Cornwall, although a few locals tried to describe them as
such. This, added to the fact that we had much more cloud cover today, and
therefore lower temperatures, meant that we were really able to knock off the
miles. We managed to walk 26 miles in all today – another record for the walk.
Anne resting her feet ready for the next leg
We arrived at our goal, just south of
Salisbury in good time and have therefore been able to get to our B’n’B early
and have more time to rest and relax. Anne even went for a swim!
The final milestone we passed today is that
we are now less than 100 miles from Westminster. We have around 97 to go. This
does feel good and we can also start to count down to the finish line.
Popped into a pub for lunch and look what they served my coke in. Whilst I think this is a complete misuse of a Tribute glass it was nice to be reminded of home!
Although both Anne and I have suffered
today with some major blister developments, we would not want to be doing
anything else right now. The pain is and will continue to be worth it once we
complete our goal and raise thousands of pounds for two great and important local
charities. So as always please don’t forget to donate. In the end it’s what
this is all about!
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/doublesteve
