The canal – 3 sep, 2018
Day 28 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Four Crosses to Ellesmere
Distance: 24km
Cumulative distance: 710km
I’ve been incredibly lucky with the weather on this trip, considering I am trying to walk across the United Kingdom. It’s hardly the Nullarbor or the Sahara Desert but for the most part I’ve avoided rain while walking, certainly anything ridiculously heavy, and there hasn’t been any cold weather to speak of although I realise that will start to change pretty quickly. Only once did I struggle pitching my tent, and that was way back at Tintagel about a week in when an untimely and windy rain storm swept on by at the end of the day. Even then the inside of my tent stayed dry. More often then not, it seems to rain overnight so while I’m inside staying dry, my tent is getting absolutely drenched. Even a five-minute shower during an otherwise dry night can leave the tent sopping wet when it comes to packing up. This morning that went to another level. I woke up to persistent drizzle and my typical plan of waiting for it to subside before I nipped out and packed my tent down didn’t seem to be working. I packed up everything I could from the inside, then bit the bullet and jumped out. The rain was harder than I had anticipated, and within minutes, every single square inch of my tent was sopping wet, inside and out. Usually the solution to this is to air out your tent layers in your hostel room, but when you’re skipping from campsite to campsite you don’t get this opportunity. Nor does it dry itself off when it’s all jammed up inside the tent bag meaning even if you’ve been walking through sunshine all day, by the time you reach in to pitch up for the night everything is still sodden from the morning.
And so I began today with a soaking wet (and heavier) tent strapped to the side of my backpack as usual, and a dreary grey sky hovering above. I soon discovered I needn’t have walked so far off the Offa’s Dyke to pitch up last night. As it happened I picked up the trail again this morning after hitting the country roads again, and found a pub adjacent to the Offa’s Dyke Path which offered camping out the back. I pushed past not really caring too much (I’d long since resigned myself to the fact that most days resulted in bonus miles) and ended up following a super busy road utterly bereft of any pedestrian access towards Pant. I set up in the usual way, walking into oncoming traffic and jumping onto the verge whenever it approached me (quite often). I managed to avoid getting soaked which was a minor miracle, given the Monday morning trucks that were steaming past and the puddles they were charging through. Having said that, my feet were wet right through within about half an hour of leaving the campsite. I passed through Llanmynech, named for a nearby hill, and eventually wandered into Pant where my plans for a late brekky were seemingly scuppered by the lack of a cafe. However, all was not lost. I went into a little shop and grabbed a few supplies including these little pikelet looking things which I planned to wolf down for some morning sustenance. The dear old lady on the register asked how I planned to toast them, and I told her I was just going to eat them raw like that (I thought they were mini pancakes when I’d picked them up but they were actually crumpets on closer inspection).
‘Go and knock on my door and my husband will toast them for you,’ she said only half joking and before I could politely laugh off the suggestion she continued with ‘Actually we have a toaster out the back.’
Then she was off for a few minutes, and returned with four toasted little crumpets dripping with butter and wrapped up in a napkin. Incredible! I thanked her profusely, then went back outside, jumped across the road and sat down on a bench devouring one of the best brekkies I’d had so far on this walk. Such kindness.
I took off again and followed some quiet residential streets down to the canal, landing on the Shropshire Way in the process. My knee was still very stiff, but this canal walking seemed an ideal solution – I could continue to walk without needing to worry about hills or navigation. The weather was perhaps marginally better by mid morning, so I set out keeping the canal beside me without a care in the world as my knee slowly but surely started to loosen up, until I was confronted by a massive construction site with an aggressive looking sign saying ‘TOWPATH CLOSED’. Quite rudely, I thought, I was not presented with instructions pointing me to the most convenient detour. Hmmm, this was a slight problem. There was clearly construction work taking place a few hundred metres beyond the fence blocking my path, but I wasn’t about to backtrack as per my long-distance walking policy. So I came up with a half compromise. I would jump up onto the bridge over the towpath, which coincided with the construction sign, and then take minor roads going in the same direction as the canal until I was past the bulldozers so I could then lower myself back onto the towpath. Jumping up onto the bridge wasn’t quite as easy as it probably sounded given the state of my knee. It meant jumping up onto a steep ledge, and then scaling a jagged stone wall about a metre high. At full fitness, neither obstacle would provide a problem, even with my fat backpack. But this was a whole different story, and I was at it for a good 10 minutes before finally struggling over the stone wall and landing on the road. I tell ya, my knee surgeon will be licking his lips when he goes over the results of my next MRI scan.
About two or three kilometres further along I rejoined the canal and the construction episode quickly disintegrated into a distant memory. I made good time after this, charging through Maesbury and spotting a handful of long, colourful canal boats. Just near Queen’s Head I stopped at a conveniently placed bench for lunch, and decided to try and use the blustery conditions to my advantage. I unpacked my tent, unzipped my inner and rigged it up over the balcony of a nearby canal office. Once I was convinced the whole thing wasn’t going to blow away, I let it flap away in the breeze while I tucked into a few nutella wraps. I think it was marginally dryer by the time I packed up and left.
I made for Lower Frankton where the towpath stopped and took me up to another bridge, but I made a complete hash of reading the map and ended up strolling off for about a mile in the wrong direction. It was one of those cases where after about five minutes walking I knew I wasn’t where I thought I was on the map. Eventually I worked out where I was, and how I’d made the mistake, and decided to keep going towards Tetchill where I could turn myself back on course, albeit at the cost of a few extra kilometres, and link back up with the canal. I found the canal, but there was absolutely no way down to the tow path running about two metres below my vantage point. I followed roads for a bit longer and finally found a little gap in the fence between me and the canal which I could squeeze through, and then carefully lower myself down through blackberry bushes until I was at the water level. There were more and more boats over the next couple of miles as I headed towards Ellesmere. One came past me doing about the same pace I was, but heading in the opposite direction. The American chap out in front was wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jersey so I asked him if they were going to win the Super Bowl again this season. He wasn’t exactly full of confidence. I made it into town and on first impressions it was absolutely delightful. I found a pub and had a half pint, mainly so I could use their power socket to charge my phone. The campsite I had picked out was still another 5-6km away which meant I wouldn’t get there until at least 6.30pm.
I eventually hauled myself up and hit the road again, but my knee had stiffened right back up again and I realised this last stretch was going to be a struggle. I must’ve looked a curious sight hobbling down the high street reading over my giant OS map. Across the street four teenagers looked over in my direction and had a right laugh to themselves. I crossed the road and slowly sauntered over in their direction, trying to make eye contact with the kid on the end. He was absolutely frozen still and looking straight ahead as I strolled by, as were his three pals beside him. Ahh well, I was only going to say gday. A few paces further down the road I saw a sign saying:
Welcome to Ellesmere
Land’s End 335.7 miles
John O’Groats 533.6 miles.
It’s the only time on this whole walk I’ve seen a sign like that. I suspect those measurements are as the crow flies, or perhaps via the motorways. Anyway it convinced me that I’d made some progress, and that I still had a fair way to go before John O’Groats! More immediately though I needed to haul myself over to this campsite, but after another half a kilometre I found myself slumped on a bench outside another pub. Bugger it I thought, there’s no way I’m making that campsite and if I do, I’ll be sleeping in a wet tent anyway. I went inside and the bar tender said it would only be 35 quid for a room. That’s that sorted then – I cooked up some baked beans in my room, dried everything out and spent most of the night reading the newspaper with my knee up.
