Day 9: spiders, mosquitoes and slugs

Day 9:

Day 9: 'I'm for whatever gets you through the night, be it a prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of JD' - Frank Sinatra. After pounding out 29 miles on day 8 and needing to pull off similar mileage again, I decided to rough camp at the start of the Strawberry Line at Axbridge. I set up at night on a small steep slope with a skinny un-managed wood acting as a pedestal for an A road (the sort of verge-type place you'd throw litter on from a car window). There was nowhere flat so I had to bivvy on a slope - a slope infested with black beetles, spiders, mosquitoes and slugs. With companions like these, and the inevitable slide down the Thermarest towards the toe-crushing end of the bivvy bag, I wasn't going to get a quality night's sleep. By the time I realised this it was too late for a sleeping pill so I lay there swatting flies glad it wasn't raining. Oh wait...My kit has been wet so many times it stinks. My boots stink. My pack stinks. The tarp and cordage stink. I stink. Stinking, damp and without sleep I headed along the Strawberry Line at 06:40. Fortunately my walking anatomy was operating better than my mind and the miles took me past Thatcher's cider HQ, Yatton and up to the several places I screwed up navigation adding unnecessary miles and time meaning that today's plotted 28 miles turned into about 31 and took 12 hours 40 minutes. I had become fixated with getting the first section complete in under 10 days. I did it in 9 - I'm happy with that. I think I've narrowly avoided serious blisters and splints. Tomorrow is a rest day. Stats for section one: it was supposed to be 228 odd miles. 4 counties. 11 OS maps. 6 nights camping (4 rough), 2 hotels, 1 B&B. Shortest day: 18 miles (7 and a bit hours?). Longest day: 31 miles, 12 hours 40.








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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