Steps, oh so many steps
It’s alway nice when you get a lift and a helping hand first thing in the morning, and today it was especially nice to see some of the Pembroke and Pembroke Dock Lions who helped us out by picking us up at Newgale and taking us to St. Davids so we could start the Side to Side Challenge properly.
Oriel the Club President kindly presented a cheque to 3 Million Steps to help us reach our fundraising target of 1 Million Pennies
So off we set, striding out thinking that the day had had such a great start nothing could go wrong and the 8 miles that we’d got planned would fly by. Well the first 5 miles did as we kept to quiet country roads, not many hills and even fewer cars. All was good as we headed down in to a lovely little village called Solva. Little did we know what lay ahead.
The night before as I was doing the washing up at the campsite sinks, I was chatting to a chap and telling him about the journey that Zara had been on, what we’d done and achieved during JOGLE and how we were looking forward to this adventure. He said that he’d walked to Solva the day before and the 5 1/2 miles via the coast path were really hard with lots of big steps up and down. Now before I go on the way I plot the routes is to find paths and quite roads and keep off as much as possible main routes. Sometimes it’s inevitable that there will be hills and looking at an OS maps is no guarantee that the path will even be there. I’d planned to walk some of the coast path from Solva but I’d cut a big corner off shortening the distance to 3 miles, how hard could it possibly be?
To be fair the views were stunning and Zara did have a little stumble again. She’s blaming it on looking at the scenery!
The chap wasn’t wrong! The path is OK, better than some of the SWCP and the Pennine way but the steps! Some were nearly a metre high, which is sort of OK if you’re climbing up, but coming down my knees were really starting to feel it and Zara was struggling. I started counting the steps off, “12 more steps to go, 11 more steps to go, 10 more steps to go…” just to keep a smile on her face, it was brutal!
So the lesson learnt….listen to someone who has walked the path, change the route and take some ibuprofen for your bad knees!
Todays miles – 8.3
Ians Beer of the Day
A dark amber beer, fruity with a nice nose, however it is heavy and you can certainly taste that it’s 4.6%
