Day 6: 1 gram weighs more than 1 gram if you carry it far enough.

Day 6:

Day 6. Slept well in the woods. Rain stopped at 4 or 5 yesterday, and it was dry all night until the shower that woke me up at 05:00 - the only significant shower of the day. The tarp and bivvy bag held up well. It is a luxury to be able to lay on wet ground and remain warm and dry. The walk: it was only 18 miles to Tiverton via Black Dog, Puddington, Pennymoor and the steepest most giant hill of the campaign: Huntland. What a bitch. Most of the rest of today was flat. I like flat. Hills, I do not like. Hills give me blisters and shin splints. Hopefully there aren't many more. Overall things are going as planned. I wanted to make Tiverton in 6 days. I've done 142 miles so far. There's about 86 miles left until Severn Bridge, a lot of that is flat ground (my speciality). I should manage that in 4 days. I've been walking for 6 days now. For me that's a record. My longest previous walk was West Highland Way (4 days). I've learned that there are many different interpretations of wet and dry. It takes 2 minutes to get soaked and 12 hours to get dry. Terrain I previously considered impassable I'd now say is a challenge. I still hate hills but I've learned to deal with them. 1 gram weighs more than 1 gram if you carry it far enough. It is possible to carry and use in one hand an umbrella, a map, compass and a dictaphone. It has not yet been possible to hold an umbrella and use walking poles. Pockets can hold more items than should be physically possible. And it is possible to do almost everything one does sitting down or standing still while walking. I picked up my first poste restante package from Tiverton post office as arranged (they were expecting me). I also sent back my digital pocket radio plus charger, Go Pro plus batteries and charger and the redundant maps. Too heavy.

DAY 7

A note about the blog

I must be the only LEJOGer without a smart phone. This means I don't have the ability to update this blog when I'm on the trail. My support team back home kindly offered to update the blog for me, so this will be communicated by text message and written up on my behalf. It will therefore be brief and without photos. I will expand on this when I get back from my journal entries, dictaphone recordings and photo journal. The detailed account will be published as a book which will be available on Amazon.

Charity

Thank you to everyone who has made a donation to Helping Hands for the Blind, a respectable local charity. You can make a donation here. Using Gift Aid, the charity is able to claim an additional percentage of each donation from the government as part of the Gift Aid scheme.  

While I am not tracking how much has been raised, the charity themselves may wish to do that; leaving a note with your donation such as "LEJOG" will help them do that. To be frank, it's more important that they receive donations than it is for me to take credit; they're actually doing something important whereas I am going on what could be described as a holiday.

My books

Lastly and leastly, I am an independent author. Writing is a pleasure even if reading it isn't! I will write an account of my LEJOG journey in the form of a book which hopefully will encourage other people to give LEJOG a try (and probably discourage many more). If you want a copy, the first batch will be given free of charge. Ask and you shall receive...

My other books are available on Amazon:


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