1 day to go
So today was more stressful than it ought to have been. The trains from Newark were not running so my friends Jeremy and Laurence kindly ran me to Nottingham where I just caught the train to London. A taxi got me to Paddington with 2 minutes to spare and I just made my connection. By this time I had had no time to get food and had lost my ticket. Thankfully no-one wanted to see my ticket at either end or on the train. But the much heralded refreshments trolley never came so I had no food until 5.30 when I got to my Penzance hotel!
Meanwhile the five hours from Paddington to Penzance left time for reflection. Especially as I have not been on a train for four years, it made a strange transition from normal life to the different life I will be leading for the next eleven weeks.
Time to reflect on all sorts of questions:
Will I get - blisters, rained on, another heatwave, lost, bitten by midges, injured, Covid..............?
Will all the 65+ homes, hotels, B+Bs and airbnbs remember that I am coming?
Will the numerous ferries I have to take actually be functioning when I reach them!?
Will I manage a sensible diet, avoiding too many cooked breakfasts, and keeping beer and wine intake to a sensible level? (not this evening.....)
Will I have bitten off more than I can chew? I am relatively confident, given the weekly rest days, that I can keep going for the eleven weeks. But are some of the individual days too far and too hilly? The day running up to Minehead is a worry, as is one day in the lakes (though that is straight after a rest day) and one in the highlands. It is to be hoped that by the time I get to the last two, I will be rather fitter than I am now, but Minehead is only two weeks in. We shall see.
Will I feel enthusiastic every morning? When I am on a normal walking holiday, or even on one of my 'training days' recently, I always start with a spring in my step, looking forward to where I am going and what I might see. I recently read a book by a friend of a friend who had done Land's End to John O'Groats (though a very different route from me), and he stated that every single day he had this feeling of optimistic excitement as he set off. Will I be as positive, or will I get jaded?
How will the trip affect my attitude to life and work? Will it be some kind of watershed? Although I no longer teach, and have a portfolio of work, I have continued to work full-time so far. I will be 67 by the time I return home. Will I be thinking what retirement might mean to me? I already plan to give up conducting my choral society at Christmas. It is against all my instincts to slow down, but this trip may alter my perspective.
The longest I have stepped out of normal life before was five weeks (the last of my five Sevenoaks Summer-schools, in 2008), and that was with a large and busy team of stimulating people. This trip is over twice that length and for much of it , including an uninterrupted 25 days in Scotland, I will be on my own. so it will be a life experience like no other.
After 5 hours of cogitating such things I arrived on time in Penzance, found my hotel, had 'breakfast' and then went for dinner at another hotel with Brad and Adele Poulson who are here to see me off tomorrow.
A strange and tiring day - but the real thing starts tomorrow!
Daily Data
Days left until John O’Groats | 76 |
Route miles walked | 0 |
Estimated miles until John O’Groats | 1050 |
Miles walked including evenings and rest days | 3 |
Counties walked through | 1 |
Number of walking companions so far | 0 |
Number of stiles crossed | 0 |
Current sponsorship total | £11,400 |
Cast of characters | Jeremy Pemberton, Laurence Cunnington, Adele Poulson, Brad Poulson |
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