the sore knees- 2 sep, 2018
Day 27 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Mellington Hall to Four Crosses
Distance: 35km
Cumulative distance: 686km
I slept quite well last night which was good, considering my left knee was starting to resemble a balloon again. Despite the sore knees, I’d resolved to put in a good shift today – most of the hills were now behind me so it was just a matter of covering the ground. At about 8.30am I was up and away headed towards a place called Kingswood. It was flat too but I had a new obstacle now – the stile. Now as most of you won’t know, stiles are one of my favourite things for some strange reason – I like the fact that they allow you to cross farms and fences without too much trouble, and they’re such a clever design for the walker who is encumbered with a chunky backpack. But when your knee doesn’t possess its usual range of movement, the trusty old stile becomes a pretty tricky little assignment. Most of them have a couple of wooden planks for you to stand on, then the idea is you swing your legs over the top and down the other side. I would slowly get my right leg up to the second plank then try and swing the left one over, but often it wouldn’t bend enough to manage the obstacle so I’d need to grab my leg and kind of haul it over that way. Then it was a case of balancing on my dodgy knee as my other leg came over, then dropping back down to the ground which was also proving tricky. I could either land on my left knee and take all of my weight in a jolt, or land on my right which meant balancing on my bad leg and trying to lower myself down. Neither was ideal and these things were taking me a good 30 seconds each to get over. A fitter version of me would tackle these things in five seconds flat. Ahh well, it’s all part of the challenge isn’t it.
Apart from the stiles, I was making pretty good time once the knee was warmed up and a bit less stiff. At one stage the path randomly took me right through the backyard of a house, and underneath a little car port which connected the front to the back. It was kind of cool, but there was a big black dog on the other side sauntering towards me, clearly not impressed that I was on its owner’s land, and worst of all it wasn’t making a single sound. I gave it a very wide berth – I love canines as much as the next person but guard dogs that don’t feel the need to bark are to be avoided at all cost I can assure you. I made good time to Kingswood, passing a turn off which would’ve taken me down to Montgomery. I didn’t walk the extra mile or so into town, although I could see the castle from my vantage point and it looked pretty cool. There wasn’t much doing at Kingswood, but I was hungry already so decided to sit down in a field for an early lunch. Just as I was wolfing down a Nutella wrap I felt a sting on my left arm. I looked down and there was a glowing red ant who had decided his sole purpose in life was to burrow into my forearm. It was probably as long as a meat ant and twice as wide, and it didn’t even have any feet touching my arm, such was the aggression with which he was gorging upon me. I flicked the little prick off and felt a fairly unpleasant stinging pain coursing through my arm.
After lunch I pushed on towards the big hill of the day. Fortunately it wasn’t as steep as any of yesterday’s gauntlet, but it was long and still made me work pretty hard. I entered a nice wood and passed a stack of ground birds (pheasants perhaps?). Right at the top of the hill was Beacon Ring, an ancient fort a bit above 400m now surrounded by a pine plantation. The views were stunning again, but I didn’t hang about up there too long. There was another downhill to come and I wanted to get it sorted. My knees hadn’t felt too bad heading up but this was a different story. I was descending down the side of a farm, and it quickly became torturous. The problem was it was super steep, and there was no alternative other than to zig zag down it and create my own switchbacks to try and soften the constant blows. That felt like it went on forever and slowed me right down. When I did get to the bottom I turned around – I reckon I’d come down 200-odd metres. Fortunately there was a little town at the base called Buttington, and a pub there serving scones and tea so I had another spell about two thirds of the way through the day.
I started up again and would you believe it, crossed the River Severn. That is, the same river that was about a mile wide where I strolled over the Bristol Channel and into Chepstow all that time ago. It was barely three metres wide now, I could have taken a run up and tried leaping over it if I really wanted. There were still many miles ahead, but they were super flat and easy going – firstly along the Montgomery Canal and then beside the Severn along farmland.
I was in a delightful valley now and the views around me were superb. I could see the hill I’d traversed earlier, and there were plenty of cows around so I was pretty happy. The campsite was about three km off trail and I was pretty spent by the time I arrived having down about 35km on my dodgy knee. The next stretch of the Offa’s Dyke is hilly again, but I’ve decided I might make a few modifications and aim for some more canal walking to give my knee a chance to come good.
