18 miles of bliss

For those of you who've been following my blogposts, you'll know that I've been training a couple of wonderful women to walk the Moonwalk (a night time walk of 26.3 miles raising money for Cancer Research - http://www.walkthewalk.org/Home). We've been working since October building up the miles and on Saturday had reached the 18 mile walk so at 9.30, seven of us gathered at Ware station in Hertfordshire to start.

The rest of the group above, is made up of some of the East End Girls who are joining me to do one of the Pink Ribbon Walks of 20 miles on June 27th.

As usual, I booked the good weather and we were rewarded with amazing sunshine and blue skies as the day developed. The photo on the left was taken at the start of the day when it was still a little hazy and life on the canal was waking up.

People would emerge from their canal boats with mugs of tea and the smell of woodsmoke was wonderful.

As the walk was along the canal, inclines were not an issue but with 18 miles ahead it was never going to be easy.
Still everyone get into their stride from the beginning.

There was so much to look at and to wax lyrical about - the daffodils and other spring flowers along the way; leaves unfolding from their buds; geese and swans gracefully flying overhead and ducks in the reeds.

We managed to find a canal side cafe about two hours in giving us a change to refuel, to visit the loo (very important when your drinking loads of water) and also providing the opportunity to stretch out. This is so important especially on such a long walk, it doesn't have to take ages but five minutes of easing out those muscles gently does make all the difference especially the following day.

As we walked on, this was the sight we saw - just looking at it slows the pace down.

Further along, there was more colour injected into the walk with more canal boats and wonderful canoes and everyone was enjoying the weather.

By this time, we don't about 8 miles so we were on the look out for a good lunch stop and as usual we'd very clear ideas of what we wanted.

Having studied the map in advance I knew we were going to end up in an area devoid of pubs or cafes at the time when we'd want lunch so everyone had been warned to bring a lunch with them. Thankfully there were lots of picnic stops which we were only too happy to take advantage of....

and there were loos and somewhere to fill up water bottles too. What more could we ask for?

If you're the person planning the walk, all these things are really important to take into consideration as the absence of any one element can cause major problems.

Now we had 7 1/2 miles still to go.

Renewed and fed, the enthusiasm was high again, another important reason to have regular breaks, snacks and some stretching. Our next goal was to get past the M25 or in this case under it...and it soon loomed ahead.

Not long after we were into a more industrialised environment, no surprise there really, but also an area of longer straight routes taking us alongside some huge reservoirs and bringing us into near battle with cyclists who assume that they have priority, they don't actually, and who wouldn't know the phrase "excuse me" if it was to knock them into the canal......anyhow, enough of that.

At 16 miles and counting, fatigue was apparent - the last few miles always the worst, but it's amazing what a five minute stop can do.

I was being motivated by the chance to see the Wales v Ireland rugby and was delighted to see familiar landmarks as we approached Tottenham Hale, the experienced EEG were remembering that you don't do 18 miles for pleasure but for training or a challenge and our Moonwalk Ladies? Impressed by what they'd achieved and looking forward to a hot bath!!