Day 4 Long day today on the Cotswolds

Tuesday 14 May

Cleeve Hill to Birdlip (24.5 kms)

The schedule is 24.5 kms to Birdlip. It's currently 4.30 a.m. (Still unadjusted to UK time). The forecast is for more of the same: rain & wind. Ughhhh!

Today should be particularly interesting as My Friend has found that he has missed Map 11 when he scanned the maps from my Cotswolds book onto his i-phone ....

..........

Bloody awful day. It started in sunshine and we had some lovely walking initially as we left Cleeve Hill, but it was dry only until about 11 a.m.

Then it was a sod of a day. The wind was arctic. I've never been so cold - through 4 layers! The rain barely stopped. EVERYTHING wet. Also my calves are so sore. We made two critical wrong turns also so probably closer to 30 kms walking today. 

Ironically, one of the map-reading errors was on Leckhampton Hill which we descended down the wrong side and probably lost an hour of time plus extra walking (!!!) but in fact the walk itself (albeit we were in the wrong spot) was probably some of the nicest walking we did all day!

I was totally unamused when, with the darkness setting in, we turned right instead of left (which would have taken us shortly to our accommodation for the night) and the i-pad being used for the maps (having already proven useless when it is wet - which is nearly always! - because the drips and drops render it unreadable and almost impossible to change screens) ran out of charge!! Argh! No-one will convince me that hardcopy, paper maps are not the way to go ...

We didn’t get in until about 6.30 p.m. We are staying at the Royal George Hotel at Birdlip. Our room had only one of the 2 heaters working so impossible to get everything dry - and everything is wet - everything!

The only highlight was meeting up with our friends from York - Trevor and Barbara after 35 years! Sadly, we were in such poor spirits when we arrived what with being exhausted, soaking wet plus MF’s blisters AND we were so much later than we had planned, that it was a real effort to summons up a positive demeanour even though we had been so looking forward to seeing them.

We hope to walk with them tomorrow to Painswick. Shorter walk but will have to see how I feel in the morning.

And it doesn't look like My Friend will be walking any further. His blisters are pretty bad.