Saturday 11th March

Easter Saturday with a 15 ish mile walk planned and 2 days off afterwards to recover.

In preparation for this long walk I had wrapped micropore around both little toes to make them too fat to stand on, and therefore to stick out to the side where they should be. I also had my new trainers on with the wide fitting at the front to give my toes room to stretch. I then put blister plasters round the sides of the balls of my feet, and a normal plaster around the heel of each foot as I knew the new trainers would rub. Then I put on my two pairs of 1000 miles socks, popped some nurofen and figured that might cover all bases.

If only!

I walked with Diane again, but around Ashford this time. I set off from my house and walked just under 2 miles to Diane's, where she was waiting for me. We then headed out towards Tesco and walked away from the store down in to the country lanes. We headed through Kingsnorth, and past Ashford Town football club, I never knew where it was but my neighbours are getting married there in September so I'm glad I found it. Then we turned right and walked a couple of miles across to Shadoxhurst. We stopped at the pub for bottles of water and the toilet and then we did a 6 mile loop on the far side of Shadoxhurst. The sun was out but it wasn't too hot. Perfect walking weather in fact. We passed a lot of big farmhouses and got barked at by so many dogs I lost count. Also, about halfway round we were walking along some pretty remote lanes when a little biplane flew towards us, and directly above our head proceeded to do a loop the loop, it was pretty amazing to watch so we had to stand still for a minute else trip over.

We headed back towards Shadoxhurst and were going to pop back in to the pub for more water. The underside of my right foot was really sore and I knew I had a blister but I didn't want to look because, as I've explained before, if I see it, it hurts more. However, just before we got to the pub I felt a ripping sensation across my toe. I was slightly alarmed and hoped it was nothing more serious than the micrpore tape coming half off but I knew I would have to take my socks off to sort it out :-( Then we found out the pub was closed. Aaarrgh! I sat at the edge of the road and sorted my feet out, I'm not sure what I did to my little toe, apart from take another layer of skin off, but it felt like it was on fire. I really didn't want to give up either as I was only three miles from home. I got back up and limped like a mad thing for about 10 minutes until my natural painkillers kicked in. I'd run out of water by now and couldn't swallow the spare nurofen. After another mile the intense burning had lessened and it was just a thumping ache. I toyed with giving up as I didn't want to do so much damage to my foot that it wouldn't recover. But I'd planned the route and Diane didn't know how to get home. I decided to walk another mile to the point where I could leave Diane and get a lift. But when we got to that point, I asked myself if I could live with giving up 1 mile from the end of what turned out to be a 17 mile walk. And it was sheer bloody mindedness that got me up that final hill and back through my front door. Then Diane carried on and did her final two miles back to her house.

But the end result was 17.03 miles door to door, walked in just under 5 hours. We stopped a couple of times and the last couple of miles were done quite slowly but I think that was a good time. I did 30918 steps. Blimey!

Fitness wise, I didn't really ache that much. My left leg ached a bit but that was from taking the strain of my limping for the last three miles. It's just my feet I'm worried about. They are a mess. I missed all the short walks in the week last week to allow my feet to recover, but they didn't and they are getting worse. I think I'm going to have to skip a long walk and just hope my fitness maintains itself, because I managed to limp three miles this time, I certainly wouldn't have been able to limp another 14!!