Coast to Coast
The day for us to leave for Holyhead arrived at last and we set off on our 400 mile walk to Great Yarmouth, wondering what the next five weeks had in store for us all.
The journey began somewhat tremolously as the maps we chose to use were less than ideal and we constantly found ourselves lost amongst the winding, seemingly endless “roads” of North Wales. As the days passed by our navigational skills improved slightly as did our physicial ability to endure the fifteen miles of monotony each day. We grappled our way through the mountains, more than a little relieved to reach Chester, our first port of call on the English border. Road signs we could read and the simple existence of such helped greatly as we moved quickly through Cheshire with relative ease, only to find ourselves in the beautiful, but rather hilly Peak District. The word ‘breathtaking’ is certainly an appropriate description for Derbyshire, not only was the scenery stunning but the constant undulation of the roads led to our breath being literally taken away. Wonderful, but shattering. We did make it through the Peaks however and instantly fell in love with the perfectly flat, forest roads of Nottinghamshire which caused us no problems whatsoever. After Nottinghamshire we headed through Lincolnshire, by now we were all fighting fit and used to our daily walking. In Lincoln the main problem we encountered was boredom, flat farm lands with nothing but yellow fields and long, flat, winding, apparently perpetual path ways called “droves”. The summer had also kicked in by this point, some days reaching nearly 30 degrees. Not great weather for walking through open “droves” without an ounce of shade. Not a tree in sight. Not a one. Somehow we finally left Lincolnshire behind us and crossed the border into our mecca county, Norfolk. A beautiful county with a varying landscape, the Broads were a welcome sight after the desert landsape of our previous county. So on August 22nd we made it to Great Yarmouth, relieved, proud and exhausted. At last count we managed around 45 blisters between the four of us and a plethora of pains and injuries which suddenly all faded into insignificance when we threw ourselves into the blue sea off Yarmouth beach.
So five weeks of the great outdoors, of rain and shine, blisters and pains, ups and downs. Now all we have left to do is collect up the money and hopefully donate a lovely amount to the much deserving Mercury Phoenix Trust.
Along our way we met some fantastic people who made our journey much more bearable, visit our thanks page to find out about those who helped us make it. >>>