the sore toe – 24 sep, 2018
Day 46 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Wanlockhead to Douglas
Distance: 21km
Cumulative distance: 1177km
It was a great night at the highest pub in Scotland, but there was a slightly sour post-script. I was walking up the stairs to my little hut in the pitch black, and crunched my left second toe right into an unseen step. After about two milliseconds I knew it was a bad one, and I refused to look at it when I finally made it up inside and into the warmth of my fancier than normal sleeping quarters. “That’ll be bad in the morning”, I pondered as I drifted off to sleep, and I proved to be correct. Once again I didn’t look at it, but after packing up and setting off for the day it took only two steps to realise this was going to be a painful 24 hours. Or more likely, a painful two weeks. The most frustrating thing about whacking my toe was its avoidability. I’d battled through the blisters, the knees and lower leg injuries but they were all related to the long-distance walking. This was an unfortunate accident that now meant I had to try and elevate the toes on my left foot as I walked, to make sure my heel took most of the weight. Every time any weight went through that second toe, a lightning bolt of pain shot through my foot. I’ll just ignore the bloody thing I decided, and that worked quite well. By the time I ran into Flinn from Wales who was out enjoying a morning run, I’d forgotten about it. Flinn was in town visiting some family, and couldn’t believe he’d ran into an Australian in Wanlockhead of all places. He walked with me all the way down to Leadhills which was the closest village, chatting about all the travel we’d done over the years and where I was off to next. I’ll go visit him for a beer next time I’m in Cardiff. Leadhills had a village store at which I stocked up on a bit of food before sitting out the front and eating a fairly extravagant breakfast of fruit and yoghurt.
I found a winding trail up a hill that led me out of town and took me past another one of those yellow hills. The track went up high and ran parallel to a river far down below which ran for miles along the valley floor, churning through the hills. There were patches of rain but only once did it get to the annoying stage, and soon enough it went away. I couldn’t believe the remoteness of this landscape – I could look around in every direction and not see another soul or even a building, just yellow, treeless hills in every direction. This was delightful walking, and soon made me forget about the throbbing in my left toe. After about five miles the track took me right down to a little burn running by a farmhouse, and this proved to be a bit of an obstacle. I walked up its banks a little to see if it narrowed enough for me to jump over, but it didn’t. I didn’t fancy taking it on with my busted toe, so I turned around and backtracked for a few minutes before deciding I needed to get over it or face a massive detour. There was a section with several underwater rocks and the answer was balancing my way along those to reach the other side. It wasn’t even 5m across but it was running at a decent pace, and right next to the rocks was a little drop off which would have transported me a way downstream if I had slipped over. Fortunately I navigated it in one piece and even escaped without wet feet. All that practice in the Lake District had done me good.
After stopping for lunch I continued along the track which soon turned into a minor road, and then took me to a main road. With that safely navigated, I joined another quiet country lane and found myself slogging through more quiet road miles. That took me through a bit more forestry land and past more bloody wind turbines before I finally stepped off course by a river, and sat down next to a bridge to have a rest and read the newspaper. I had a little bit of time up my sleeve because I’d decided on a shorter day given the last three had been fairly epic. A motorist driving past stopped his car and came to say hello which was nice, and soon after he left I also left and rejoined the road. I was on the lookout for a decent wild campsite and jumped a barbed wire fence to check out a patch of land at the base of a hill. It was a bit uneven and a bit too close to the road so I dismissed it and pressed on. I noticed about a mile down the road there was an inviting green patch on the map so I aimed for that, but it meant dodging traffic down an A road for about a mile. When I finally pulled off into some forestry land, a dirt track took me over a river and into a little spot shielded by the road and adjacent to some forest land. There was nothing suitable in among the trees so I decided to just pitch up on a relatively flat patch of land adjacent to the forestry track, and just hoped no vehicles would come along for the next 12 hours or so. The ground was incredibly rocky so I didn’t get the pegs in too far, but the weather forecast was kind and I figured I would get away with it. I went and collected some water to boil up my dinner, and was snugly tucked away in the tent as the sun went down. It was going to be another chilly night, and the torn sleeping mat didn’t help too much on this rocky ground, but it would have to do. The last thing I did before crawling into my sleeping bag was look at my toe. As I expected it had turned into a deep shade of purple and was much larger than it needed to be. But it had taken me another 20-odd km, and that’s all that really mattered.
