Just made it to Hartland. The climbing and descending is crazy, cliff top to sea shore continuously. But I’ve done over 105 miles and around 25,000 feet.
Nights
1. Porlock
2. Lynton
3. Hunters Inn
4. Coombe Martin
5. Woollacombe
6. Braunton
7. Bideford
8. Abbotsham
9. Hartland

Tomorrow hopefully I’m into Cornwall, aiming for just short of Bude.
All is ok except my feet are buggered (well my right one is) but apart from that I’m now enjoying it. Antonia came down for a few days to walk with me and that was a pleasure. I’ll tell you some of the weirder stories next time I blog. Oh yes, the woodland spirits are here!
Dave.

The next day I struggled across the side of Exmoor and eventually made it to Lynmouth. This wasn’t good. My shoulders were bruised from the weight of the rucksack. I felt very negative and decided to break the next day’s planned walk in two.

I struggled to the Hunters Inn and pitched my tarp in a field. I nipped down to the Hunters and ordered a sandwich and a pint for me tea. The landlord looked at me like I was mental and I couldn’t work out why. I sat down and read the map, ate my sarnie and supped my pint. My hand rested on my head and I felt some peeling skin. It had been warm but not that warm. I peeled it off, and looked at it. I’d had my new cap on for half an hour and somehow a small round sticker with 2 in the middle had transferred itself from the new hat to the middle of my high forehead. For 4 hours I’d walked around as number two! To my embarrassment I’d talked to quite a few fellow travellers (mostly German for some reason – don’t mention it) but they’d looked at me as normal. Quite a methodical, process-oriented nation I suppose.

It was Saturday the 9th. Bertha hit in the night. Tarp nearly got washed away, but we were ok in the end.

It seems a long time since last Thursday. The train journey was great and Richard Lupton from Help for Heroes met me at Taunton Station and gave me a lift up to Minehead. Thanks Richard.

The statue is the start and I left Minehead about 3.30 in the afternoon and got my first reality check walking that afternoon and evening to Porlock. My back pack weighed 18 kgs and I had to climb 2300 feet over the 10 mile hike.
I was knackered and made a mess of putting the tarp up so it dipped into my face in the night. I didn’t sleep we’ll.
This North coast of Somerset and Devon is beautiful. I was not enjoying it.

Hello All!

I am writing on behalf of my Dad to apologise for the lack of posts. He has found there is little or no signal to send the updates, combined with very few places to charge his devices. He has stayed on a couple of campsites, but has arrived too late to use the electricity, and otherwise has been pitching up in fields where plug sockets aren’t very common!!

He is doing very well so far. Thanks again for all your support.

Georgie

I opened my post yesterday afternoon and got a Jury Summons for September. If you can say it with a Cockney accent, like Bridgman would, then you’d say – ‘You’re aving a Giraarfe’!

The timing is unfortunate but I’m sure they will defer my service. 

If you take out your top layer of false teeth and dangle them down a bit it makes you look quite deranged (see below unless you’re of a nervous disposition). 

If anyone can think of ways to generate sponsors then please pass on this card – I’ve had 250 printed and these T shirts made up so people come to talk to me and I give them a card. I’m desperate to get to that £2500.

No that one wasn’t the deranged looking photo!

I heard from Help for Heroes yesterday that I’ll be shown round their Plymouth recuperation centre when I pass that way. Hanky out there then. Not heard anything from Sheffield Star. They rang and sounded keen but I guess I’m seen as being from Leeds and maybe it’s not interesting enough. Never mind. 

I’m packing all day today. Got to get it orderly and correct. The Grand Depart tomorrow. 

Talk to you again then – scroll down for derangement if you dare!

Well it’s only two days to go. Back’s much improved and although I haven’t trained I’m as ready as I can be. The garden is looking beautiful, we’ve got trees at the bottom of it and they capture the evening sun. I got a bit emotional yesterday over dinner, looking out of the window and realising that I won’t be here over the next coupla months. I’ll miss my old dear. 

Not a lot to report. Put the tarp up in the back garden yesterday. Packing all my gear and selecting what doesn’t come with me. Catty and fishing rod passed obviously. How will I eat otherwise? 

Anyway I’ll blog again tomorrow my dears. Thanks for tuning in. I’m sure there are lots of adventures on the road ‘There and back again’ to quote Bilbo. I have read Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit many times since I was young. Subconsciously this triggered my compulsion to do this. I’m so glad I retired. The elves are still around but it’s just more difficult to find them. I’ve heard them in the middle of a forest in France some years ago. It was just after midnight without a moon and they sang to me in the darkness. I’m not going mad, they did. They just need to know that you’re a friend that’s all. I walked towards them in the dark and when I got to within a few yards they stopped and there was no sign of them. I was by a lake fishing in the pitch black and they started singing again in a different spot a couple of hours later. I walked towards them again and again they cut out and vanished. I had set up some industrial candles as there was a wild boar who drank at the lake at night and he roared in the dark when he saw I was there, but the candles kept him away. Big bugger unall. However they’d gone out just before the elves sang so I guess they felt safe that they wouldn’t reveal themselves. I might not have seen them anyway. Eighty percent of the Universe is dark matter and we’ve no clue what it looks like. I used to see some of it in my weekly bath when I was a kid I’m sure.

I’m going to sleep in the forests down by the sea. This time I’ll sing with them. I wonder if they know any Richard Hawley tunes? I’ll still miss our old lass though.

Dave.

Antonia flew back from her graduation ceremony to Alicante and we drove back to the UK, taking a week to do it. The first night we stayed high in the Pyrenees in a tiny village where the air was crystal clear and vultures cruised on thermals, searching for the dead. Don’t worry birdies, you’ll find them – but will you beat the wolves? Driving up through Andorra we swapped 37c for 37f and played in snow on the top. then a night in Toulouse and a few days in a tent on a campsite north of Limoges. The advantage being that the site – Le Bouiex – had a private carp lake. We caught around 150 carp over 4 days – fantastic sport in a beautiful location.

We picked up Georgie’s stuff from her apartment in Paris on the way home and now we’re here. I buggered my back up somehow. It hurts and went into spasm so I had difficulty walking in Le Bouiex. Surely fate wouldn’t be so unkind after my anticipation over the last year? Surely the God I don’t believe in wouldn’t reveal his wicked sense of humour and stop me getting to first base just to prove the stupidity of my atheism. ‘Cop that Smith and genuflect your way back to mobility!’ Naa – that kind of August fool prank would come from the other side – ‘He’s already in me’.

I haven’t walked in a fortnight since Spain. I’m relaxed about that. Save my back for Thursday. The debate in the household at the moment is whether I should take a tent or the tarp that I really want to take. The consensus view favours tent; purely on the basis of insects and animals being able to waltz into the tarp whilst I’m asleep.

Tarp or Tent? Fiiiiight!!!

 Tarp Wins.

THANKS TO THE LADS FROM KWIKFIT IN CHAPEL ALLERTON – Spontaneous donation to H4H 

After Adam and the family went home I did a couple of walks but the most testing was the Sierra Bernia again. I decided to do the Eastern summit this time as I’d read that it was doable solo. I walked round the base of the northern face up to a cave that goes straight through the mountain ridge. 

I went off track from here, not going through the cave, although I’ve been through it a few times before, but heading east across mostly scree and up mountain goat paths. I needed three attempts to climb up to the ridge and nearly cacked myself when I swung my leg over the top and saw a sheer drop on the other side. The ridge was only about six inches wide at that point. Traversing along back west towards the Eastern Summit was great, but it was well up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and the rock was just radiating heat. I’d taken half a litre of water and I’d hydrated myself at a spring below the cave but the sweat was pouring out of me. I managed to get within twenty metres of the summit and couldn’t get further. I was up a sheer rock funnel which was only four metres high but on my own without a rope, and not having seen a soul all morning, I decided to save that last few metres for another year.

Coming back down I couldn’t make it down to the north side where my car was parked. The heat was too intense and the sun was directly overhead so there was no shade. I had to climb down the south side into a forest where at least there was shade. I was a bit dizzy with the heat and my water was running out quick – I’m an idiot for not taking more – so I thought I’d better drop down to Altea and get watered and fed ( I hadn’t had any breakfast either). Walking along a track under the trees I remembered there was a picnic place about three miles away, without having to climb up. I was gasping for water but needed to save what I’d got. I found some blackberries and although they were dry I got a bit of energy from them. I found an apple tree and chewed the juice out of the ripe ones.

Finally reaching the picnic area I ran to the taps in the covered section and turned them on – nothing. Bone dry. I went into the toilets and there was no water there either. I was about four miles from the car but I’d have to climb up round the western side of the Sierra, which wasn’t as high as the summit but it was getting hotter all the time. It was about noon by now and I’d set off at 7am. I decided to give it a go. There were a few old mountain farmhouses but they were deserted. I set off up the hill again and covered a mile up a zig zag route but I was in danger now of overheating and dehydrating. I turned a corner on the footpath and there was a door in the hillside with a bolt and a sign saying please close the door and that no dogs were allowed Inside. It was signed as a Font. I pulled open the door and in the darkness heard a drip. There was a light on my phone and I could make out an ancient trough with water dripping off the moss into it. I drank like a donkey. I poured it over my head but it was freezing and gave me a shock – straight from the bowels of the mountain. Sweetest tasting water I ever tasted. Yay!

I made it back to the car a couple of hours later, no sweat. Well actually, quite a lot of sweat but I had my bottle topped up and I’d drunk enough water to fill a bath. What a great trip, seven hours in real heat but lots of lessons learned.

The first couple of weeks after I retired at the end of May I surprised myself by doing some decent mileage walks with a hefty rucksack on me back. The first time with the pack was a bit of a disaster, however, as I slipped on a log crossing a stream and the weight of the rucksack pushed me face down into the mud at the bottom. Soaked as an otter ( a stinky one).

I got better at walking and did the three Yorkshire Peaks over two days, sleeping under my tarp at the top of Whernside. Bloody freezing and the climb up Ingleborough nearly killed me; but I did it and that’s what counts. I took it steady doing shorter walks and then we went on holiday to France and Spain for nearly six weeks. This cut my training right down but it was a brilliant holiday.

Of the walking I did in Spain the most spectacular was a ridge walk along the western summit of Sierra Bernia, seen here in all its glory. 

Adam Carter was with me and we felt like kings of the universe going up the north face and traversing along to the summit. Great day!!