For years it has been my dream to walk the length of Hadrian’s Wall until various musculo-skeletal issues made me think it was off the agenda for ever.
However, foot surgery, Pilates lessons and my excellent
osteopath Claire have made me think I could do it.
Nigel is a hero for agreeing to carry most of our crap. But I don’t want to break his back, so we
have been giving a lot of thought to how to minimise the load.
For the first time, we went to an outdoors store and bought
lightweight clothing which would dry easily.
Our toilet bag contains only toothbrushes, toothpaste and
anti-perspirant. Instead of sunglasses,
we have filters that clip onto our specs. We have downloaded our reading books to
our phones.
My only luxury is a tiny watercolour pad and paintbox.
Pascoe, who undertakes v. challenging expeditions felt we
still were not taking it all seriously enough – we should saw the handles off
our toothbrushes to shed a gram or two.
I had a flashback to a long walk in the Lake District when
Pascoe was just a little boy. He was
weeping with tiredness, which was not like him.
To help, I took his rucksack from him.
It was unexpectedly heavy. On
investigation, it appeared that at some point he had put a full-size brick in
there, and had forgotten to take it out again.
Oh how times have changed!
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