Ashbourne

E verything seems to be conspiring against me at the moment. I guess my luck has finally run out and from here on in it’s going to be a struggle to get anything sorted or completed on this walk of mine?

After the day from hell yesterday the evening did quite a lot to raise my spirits; good food, good beer, good conversation – what more could you ask for?

Even though I knew I wasn’t walking today I still didn’t want to get to bed too late so I went up to my room around 10:30pm and sat on my bed to start writing up the day’s events. About an hour in I was completely shattered and hadn’t really covered that much of the day. God knows what I was doing to make it take so long to write up. I gave up though, shut the netbook down and tried to get to sleep.

It took ages and just as I was approaching that wonderful state of sleep someone upstairs decided that it’d really good to put the TV on really loudly and stomp around, you know, it being 1am and all!?

To try and block out the noise I put my iPod on and again tried to get some sleep, failing miserably. I think it was about 3am by the time all the noise from upstairs finished and I eventually got some sleep…before waking up at 6am! I was completely shattered.

Unlike my other days off I actually made the effort to get downstairs for breakfast this morning. I knew I wasn’t going to be up to much and highly doubted I’d be out of the room for lunch time so a good breakfast would hopefully do the trick. It wasn’t a bad breakfast at all and it certainly filled me up.

I spent the first part of the morning completing yesterday’s write up and posting it and then I chilled out for a bit. I think it was around midday by the time I finally left the room and headed out in to the rain to look round Ashbourne and to get some supplies in for the coming days.

Ashbourne, from what I could see on my little – and it was little – stroll round, seemed like a nice enough place. It had some old buildings – some very old dating back to around 1640 – a couple of nice churches and, if you’re in to that kind of thing, about a million antique shops. I’m not so I didn’t bother looking to see if they were actually any good.

I popped in to Sainsburys to get my supplies in and also popped in to the outdoor shop to get a new map case, ready for when the one I’ve been using to finally give up the ghost. The stitching on the Velcro is beginning to come apart so it won’t be long before I won’t be able to close it properly to protect my maps from the rain.

All that done I made my way back to my room to start the task of route planning and accommodation finding.

I spent quite some considerable time this afternoon sorting all that out but the long and short of it is I now have my route planned for the next three days, including accommodation, so that by the end of it I’ll be back on my original track, albeit a day  behind schedule, but it also means I have three easier days to make sure I try and not burn myself out again. We’ll see if that happens or not over the coming days.

I had a Skype chat with the girls this evening which was great. Elisa hadn’t wanted to talk on the phone last night so it was wonderful to see her playing up to the camera, she’s so funny! I love those video calls.

All that done, I spent the evening having a drink and dinner with my cousin Ian and his wife Frances. It was a great time and, to be honest, I probably drank more than I should have done before a day’s walking but what the hell, I think I deserve it don’t you?

I really appreciate them driving out to see me and for picking up the tab at the end of the night! Thanks guys.

I’d better get this posted and get myself off to sleep. It may be a slightly shorter day tomorrow but I want to make sure I do it well and not struggle through.

Photos

I f you want to find out more about this day you can see the photos I took.