The Facts

We had planned to wild camp most of the route, although we new that this may not be possible in places, so we will use official camping sites. we needed to average 14 miles a day to complete this challenge in 14 days. Some days were going to be longer, anything up to 22 miles so that we can either finish Early or have a rest day mid walk. This has been a lifetime wish of mine, ever since i read " A walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson. We had no idea if we could complete this as so many factors come into play, my fitness being one but the weather can also play a big part in dashing our hopes of finishing. All i know is that I believe this will be my only chance to attempt this (not getting any younger), also it would not be fair on my lovely wife Michelle to expect her to put up with me gallivanting out for weeks on end in the countryside, while she is stuck at home. Sadly due to a Fall i had and a suspected Cracked rib, we had to end our attempt at Richmond. we do plan to finish it off though.

Saturday 11 May 2013

Day 9

Day 9

Reef to Richmond

I woke from a very restless night, I was in a lot of pain. I explained to James that I think I may have cracked my rib and not sure if I will be able to finish the walk, He was understanding and said that if I could not finish it, he would continue. I was now feeling bad, I did not want to leave James on his own to finish it, I know he is more than capable of finishing it but after the last couple of days, it made me realise that if something happened to him like the events that happened to me and no one was there to help him, well i could not live with that. So I told him I will try to continue.

We set of quite early 7:30 am and visited the store to get some food for the journey, and easy 10 miles was on the map and we agreed that if we can we will do more mileage to make up time. 

The walk was over undulating ground so should not have been much of a problem normally, but every step caused a pain to my chest, I was slow and had to keep stopping. The stiles and any incline gave my ribs loads of agony and I just felt that the pain was getting worse the more I walked. It took over 7 Hours to walk 10 miles, I knew this was not fair on James but felt I could not abandon now.I think he realised I was not going to leave him to carry on by himself and he new how much pain I was in, so he agreed to halt the walk with me on the promise that we come back and finish it off together in the near future. 


Wainwright Falls














We got to Richmond and found a cafe, we sat down and agreed to call it a day. We were both a bit disappointed that we never got to finish the walk but as James said "safety comes first". We booked our train tickets home from Darlington for the the next day, we pooled the money we had left over and decided we would pay for a B&B for the night. We went into the local town and bought some clean items to freshen up a bit, i bought a pair of Sandals as my boots had to be disposed off (they stank something terrible). 

It was a great adventure, a lot harder than I expected, not so much the climbs but the descents, they really took their toll on my knees. I think my pack was a bit on the heavy side 16Kg and my fitness could have been better (could lose a few pounds), but I really enjoyed the experience. I love being outdoors  and I feel so much better mentally for doing it. When we do decide to finish it off, I might try to convince James to go lighter and maybe stay in YH or B&b's so we don't have to carry all the camping equipment.

The GPS gave us a total of 119 miles Walked From St bees to Richmond

Video of Day 9


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