Starting from scratch

In 2018 I went from a chubby non-walker into a slightly less chubby veteran of two caminos.. By the time I had completed the Camino Portuguese I had lost a fair amount of podge.. I had muscles in places where there’d never been muscles and I could even tie my shoe laces without having to hold my breath while I bent down. Sadly those days are long gone, taking any vestige of fitness with them.

I had hoped to walk the Camino Frances this year and had started thinking about getting a few practice walks in when the coronavirus decided to have a punt at world domination and effectively closed the world for travellers like me. I responded in my usual way, I thought bugger it, locked myself in my house and survived by eating pizza and bacon sandwiches for the next 3 months. It was during this grease-soaked period of slobbery that I started to look at walking in the UK. After a good 7 or 8 minutes I had my plan… Hadrian’s Wall.. For those of you that havent heard of it here’s a quick insight…

Hadrian’s Wall trail runs 135 km between Bowness-on-Solway and Wallsend (plus an extra 8 km or so if you want to finish right on the coast at Tynemouth) . It follows the length of the wall which was built around 1900 years ago. Whilst much of the wall has been pilfered to be used in the construction of churches and other such buildings there are still remains dotted along its length.

With a walk in mind I decided to get some training walks in.. I’m still not sure on the details of when and how I can walk HW.. I’m guessing that the uk will relax the lockdown soon but I have no idea If there will be enough accommodation open for me to sleep in a comfy bed each night. There may be some camping involved.. An activity I had sworn never to experience again after the “Collapsing someone else’s tent at 2am while wearing only my underwear” incident.. A story that I won’t go into here. Anyway, it appears that I may have to bite the bullet and buy a tent…

Now that I have a goal (sort of) I’m back doing a few training walks. Starting relatively small and working my way back up to respectable distances.. I’ve done four walks in the last two weeks, (couple of 10-12 km and a couple 17-18 km ish). I’ve kept things local, and, as I live in Lincolnshire I still haven’t encountered a hill yet (Although those of you that have followed my blog will know that no hill can slow me down, (picture a ginger-bearded mountain goat))

Anyway, I decided that I would fire up my blog again and start keeping all you lovely readers up to date with my goings-on.. From now on I’ll be trying to get a few more walks in and starting to arrange my Hadrian’s wall adventure. I’ll keep you posted as I go.

Until then I thought I would treat you all to a few photos from my last couple of walks.. you lucky devils

Don’t forget to hit the like button and follow so you get notification when I post ! And feel free to comment, it’s always nice to get feedback 😊

See you soon!

Andy x

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