A taste of things to come? – walking @ piers.rocks

Today was a much more challenging day route-wise than yesterday, as I was mostly in the countryside. I had predicted a 22 mile walk, which with good access should have taken between 6 and 7 hours. As it was I covered 24 miles, taking nearly 9 hours.

Instead of laying out my own route, this was my first experience of following a slowways route. Slowways is a new initiave, launched this year to connect every settlement in Great Britain with walking routes. I used it for the overall planning of my walk, from settlement to settlement, aiming for a roughly straight line. For example yesterday covering Enfield-Potters Bar-Hatfield(-Flamstead). However, I’ve mostly used the actual routes Slowways gives as guidance, and optimised them myself – primarily to reduce the overall distance (and I’m generally happy walking on roads so long as they’re not too busy).

But today I followed Winlei one, between Leighton Buzzard and Winslow in Buckinghamshire. It wasn’t a great success – follow the link and see my review for more details.

I got here eventually though, and am now safely ensconsed in the quaint Bell Hotel, Winslow. Their specaility is pies, so given I didn’t manage to find one last night, I’m expecting great things tonight.

Things I have learnt today:

Do not wear shorts when trying out new footpaths for the first time in summer. Stinging nettles are legion.
Listening to music when walking not only runs your headphone batteries down faster than audiobooks but also means you can’t hear a car screaming towards you with its horn blaring.
England has better 4G coverage than Wales. In fact, so far it seems to have 100% coverage.
Haribo are the densest and tastiest form of carbohydrate.
I’m not looking forward to the thunderstorms forecast tomorrow.

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