Geoff Jones

Today Caroline convinced me to do the Oxfam walk with her today. After starting off at 8.30 we decided to go for the 21mile version rather than the full on one of 26miles. I didnt mind as still recovering from The Pennine Way.

We did the 39,922 steps in a respectable 5.9 hrs (3.6mph) plus 36mins of tea and cake breaks (best cakes and food by far at Horseheath!) giving an overall speed of 3.2mph. We where overtaken by three people – Oh the shame of it 🙁

Afterwards we had complimentary massages by The Hills Road Clinic and a trainee foot masseur.

The walk was well organised except I notice the Co-Op are no longer sponsoring free water etc also the numbers seemed somewhat less than previous years. All in all an excellent day complete with a great stir fry cooked by Caroline 🙂

Chris andI wandered into the The Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm at 5.50pm, parched and hungry after a final day of over 29miles across The Cheviots in blazing sunshine for most of the day.

All the pictures of the trip can be found on this site here. Hopefully, I will annotate them all, currently they are in date and time order starting from Edale on 27th April.

The final barebone statistics of the trip are:-

Day 1 (27 April) – Edale to Crowden 37,606 steps in just under 8 hours.
Day 2 (28 April – Crowden to Torside 29,029 steps in just over 6 hours.
Day 3 (29 April) – Torside to Colden 35,763 steps in 6.5 hours.
Day 4 (30 April) – Colden to Cowling 28,385 steps in just under 6 hours.
Day 5 (1 May) – Cowling to Malham 31,186 steps in 7 hours 20 mins.
Day 6 (2 May) – Malham to Horton ) 33,293 steps in 6 hours
Day 7 (3 May) – Horton to Hawes 24,679 steps in 5 hours
Day 8 (4 May) – Hawes to Keld 25,793 steps in 5 hours
Day 9 (5 May) – Keld to Middleton 35.514 steps in 8hrs 30 mins
Day 10 (6 May) – Middleton to Dufton 42,703 steps in 9 hours
Day 11 (7 May) – Dufton to Alston 38,602 steps in 9 hours
Day 12 (8 May) – Alston to Greenhead 37,457 steps in about 7 hours 30 mins
Day 13 (9 May) – Greenhead to Bellingham 42,943 steps in 9 hours
Day 14 (10 May) – Bellingham to Bryness 29,340 steps in under 6 hours
Day 15 (11 May) – Bryness to Kirk Yetholm 58,120 steps in 11 hours 20mins

Making a total of 530,414 steps in 15 days or about 264 miles at a speed of 2.4mph including stops (3.1mph excluding breaks)