A nother day, another training walk out in the rain and mud. This was a bit of a big one though, the longest one I’ve done yet and my feet and knees are complaining a little bit because of it.
I strolled in to Reading to meet my friend Shelli for lunch and deciding that walking along the A4 was becoming a little boring, I thought it’d be “fun” to walk back along the Thames Path to Henley, and then home from there. I had my gaiters with me so it didn’t matter if the path was a little muddy with all the rain, which it most definitely was!
I almost called it quits at Shiplake but I carried on in to Henley and sat in the Angel pub on the bridge for a 30 minute break and a very nice pint of Oxford Gold. Shelli was convinced I’d end up getting the train back from Henley but I was determined to finish the walk as planned, regardless of how painful my feet and knees were becoming.
You can see the route in the map below:
It was a lovely walk – bit bleak in places and wind-swept – but the Thames Path is a really nice place to walk along. Once the LEJOG walk’s out of the way I’d like to walk more of it, it’s only 185 or so miles long so that’ll seem like a stroll in the park after 1100 or so miles!
Lesson learnt from today: don’t try and guess how far a place is going to be; use a map and a bloomin’ map measurer to get the correct distance! Either that or make sure I’ve tracked the route beforehand so that I know exactly what I’m letting myself in for!!
I forgot to add that I managed to cover the 21.5 miles in a very respectable 6 hours and 45 minutes. I’m still walking too fast – my knees are testament to that – but I don’t think I’m seriously going to be able to do anything about that until I’m carrying a full pack and I hit the hills of the UK!
Trial and error my friend, you’ll get in to a pace of your own and it’ll be fine, you consider estimating the weight of the pack that you will be taking and carry a rucksack with you holding a certain amount of that weight on your walks so you start getting used to it sooner rather than later, wouldn’t want you to be collapsing after the first day now would we 🙂