Day Four - Up For The Challenge!

Day Four - Up For the Challenge!

I decided last night that I felt I had taken in enough calories to attempt the whole days walk for 20.5 miles. That would be the longest distance I have ever walked in one day in my life.

It started out raining horizontally in 50mph winds, but I was happy to just be doing it again. We soon entered some mature woods which were beautiful and had the added bonus of keeping us wind free and dry.

We walked up a 60m climb and I hardly had to breath hard so I was really pleased with my performance there. Russ thought it was more like 120m, the wuss, but I knew that we had to cross four contour lines on the map at 15m per contour so 60m!

We had another challenging climb of 74m to the top of Moelydd and boy it was windy there. It was also covered with ancient mine shafts.

The biggest challenge came when we climbed Llanymynech Hill at Blodwell Rocks. 120m steeply through woodland then exited out of the top onto a golf course of all things!

We then had to walk all the way down again into Llanymynech, where we got a little lost due to bad signage, and had lunch in a cafe. That was the half way Mark.

The next section was dead flat walking along the Montgomery Canal. It rained and blew hard so we couldn't appreciate it much. We then followed the meandering River Severn where we met Simon. Had a cup of tea at the White House, recommended, then headed off to Buttington, our end point.

My task tomorrow is to support the support team i.e. Simon. His strain played him up today but I'm really impressed that he walked about thirteen miles. We will do the usual and carry Russ's load, setup camp then walk out along the ODP to meet up with him. I'm not looking forward to it because it means several hours of travelling on a few buses, I'm going to need to dose up on travel sickness tablets.

So we are now sat in the Green Dragon pub at Buttington. A lovely pub with a restaurant serving very good food. The staff are great and the locals chatty and friendly.

We have time and energy enough for three blog posts this evening. Don't forget to look below this post for the others.

Richard.

Location:Buttington