I heard you were rather worried about her and her lack of sense of direction ? Well you were bl00dy right lol!
The title of the blog gives it away a little but ill park that for a minute.
For the first hour of the walk, we were fine. For the first hour of the walk there were signposts ! For the first hour of the walk our legs didn't ache ! For the first hour of the walk it was a doddle !
Cue utter carnage !!
New trainers + huge cowpat = unhappy Tracy.
The morning only included approx 4 occasions of getting lost, but in fairness we were simply walking through farmers fields for about 6 miles !
Tracy even found time to munch on her many snacks, ones she brought with her and ones she blatantly stole !!
I think your dear wife was expecting beautiful coastline, long sandy beaches and breathtaking scenery. What she did in fact receive was a lot of green fields, jagged rugged tracks and a very warm welcome from a plethora of animals !!!
But unfortunately, whether it was the perfume you bought for her mate or not, for some reason she simply attracted BULLS !! Boris' distant relatives simply couldn't get enough.
Every field we had to walk through attracted attention - I've never seen anyone run so fast through a field !
We reached Llansteffan, roughly halfway and 10 miles in, in relative good time (somehow!) but unfortunately that's where it all went pear shaped !!
We completely lost the plot and found ourselves off track and clambering through forestry, swamp-like terrain and even people's back gardens in search of the WCP signs !! The more we hunted for a way out, the more lost we got!
With time ticking away, we decided to bisect a few farmer fields - OMG - if I thought Boris was a threat - his relatives seriously scared the cr@p out of us !
These fellas (pictured above), came charging after us and whilst trying not to laugh too much at Mrs H's distress, I too started to run a little quicker !
She wasted a perfectly good can of redbull (apt!) in the act of fleeing !
Approx 6.5 hours into the walk we realised we were still 2.5 hours away from Carmarthen ! We had walked roughly 20 miles (in circles!!) and were still 7 miles from the end point !
For the first time in the 32 days of the walk, I had to 'wave the white flag'! We wouldn't have got to our destination until late and with us already having clocked up the required mileage, reluctantly we had to hail down a cab !!
5 minutes later we had reached Carmarthen ;)
One hell of a journey today! Combining Tracey's directional sense with my
'already established' severely poor map reading skills - we were always doomed !
Oh and mate, she isn't very good at quizzes is she ;)
Tonight, I'm aching more and my feet so feel like they've been on an adventure! I'm guessing Tracy will have a few blisters etc but don't let her moan mate !!
Mrs H-D has joined me tonight too and after a nice meal out etc, she too is now contemplating what disasters can occur tomorrow :)
JHD. It might be me, and I'm not a bovine expert but it seems all you have done thus far, except do a fabulous job of raising awareness for the fight against MND, and a great job of that you have done, is get followed around the Welsh Costal path by a bunch of old cows? Oh and Boris the Bull, who is evidently jealous and sounds like an extra from the film snatch, surely you could have stayed in Bridgend to do that? :-) great job mate, I'm proud of you, hope you all had a great evening xx
ReplyDeleteOk Mr H-D my version of events now....
ReplyDeleteOn the phone the night before when I was telling you Gareth was worried about me walking 19 miles and us getting lost.....your response was....oh it's mainly flat and it'll be fine don't worry!
Mmmmmm I don't friggin think so!!
So, yes new trainers were not a good idea and your early suggestion that I should just walk through the cow pats straight away instead of avoiding them was a good one, they cannot be avoided! Straight into a nice, fresh, large one! Lovely.
First 10 miles we had a good walk......got lost a fair bit but your nose got us back on track. It was fairly amusing that so many cows were taking so much interest in us and it was manageable to walk quickly away from them (although I still preferred to run).
Corn kindly donated by a farmer.....even if he didn't know it, thx.
We walked through a bit of the coast with all the rubbish and dead crabs that had been washed up with the tide, wonder what we would have done if it had been in?!
Can I just tell everyone how peed off you were that we didn't find the pub until after we had restarted our walk and that you were unamused to have missed your daily pint?!
Then the real fun begins.....
The idea was 'lets avoid that few yards of overgrown bush that is only a foot wide and signposted as the path and rejoin it in a sec......'
The reality was.......lets avoid that path for 6 feet and get lost and walk around in circles for 6 miles, get charged at by a herd of cows/bulls, hack our way through the forest that can only be protecting Snow Whites castle as its so overgrown....and start to seriously lose the plot!
Someone needs to go paint those coastal walk signs luminous pink to make them stand out!
If that taxi hadn't passed by.....we were in the middle of nowhere....(I definitely think an angel felt sorry for us somewhere) I think we'd still be there, camped out Bear Grylls style!
Aside from all that....it was a hilarious adventure our dear friend and I feel privileged to have shared some of your incredible journey with you. Gareth loved hearing all about it and you know he would have given anything to be able to have joined you.
I appreciate even more how difficult this challenge has been for you, I truly have no idea how you've done it.
With only a few days left, we want to say again how incredibly proud Gareth and I are to call you our friend and thank you for the incredible amount of awareness you have managed to bring about MND through this challenge.
Your personal commitment, friendship, perseverance, humour are both unrivalled and amazing and Gareth will never forget what you have done in his name.
Well done and keep walking! We will see you very soon.
PS - Next time you embark on a mad, mad challenge I'm buying you a compass!
Tracy & Gareth