Lesson one

Lesson one of long-distance walking - always check your sums when planning

your route. As I had an appointment in Beaconsfield today I decided to walk

there up the Thames from Staines. This is a distance of about 40km (25

miles) - a long way, but easy to do if I took my time.

 

Unfortunately, I managed to fail to spot that the time I had to do the walk

wouldn't allow me to take it easy at all. In fact, it would require me to

hold a pace which would cover the distance in 4.5 hours. Oops.

 

By a combination of not stopping and running occasionally I managed to be

"only" about two hours late for my appointment , and I'm still kicking

myself for not spotting this last night. This is the sort of error I can't

afford to make on the End to End.

 

The scenery was nice, though, and took me past Runnymede, home of the Magna

Carta. It's good to see that King John could have made use of pay and

display parking, the paddling pool, and tea and scones at the Magna Carta

Tearooms after a hard day of negotiations with the barons.

Done