Forecast today: rain. All day. All the locals look up and say "looks
a perfect day for walking." Okay. If you say so. The second we venture
outside, spots of rain start. The wind is blowing hard. A perfect day for walking.
We wet our boots in the Irish sea as instructed, and then set of up the cliff
path. My brother Chris (who only came to drive the bus) is walking the first
day with us.
The walk starts (and finishes) with a two or three
mile hike along the cliffs, a truly exhilarating walk in the stiff breeze. The
seagulls never flapped a wing. It's great to be able to spend a little time
on the coast line: walking directly away from it would be more direct, but surely
you would have little memory of the coast, which I think ought to be an important
impression on a coast to coast walk.
The rain just got steadily worse. But everyone was in great spirits. Marty and Alexis set a cracking pace and soon disappeared. Chris and Adam followed, then Claudia and I. Last was Wayne, who was birding all the way.
As the
rain worsened, we turned inland. Not so interesting--we're not in the lakes
until tomorrow, so this is really just a cross-country connection between the
headlands and the lakes. As we left the last village, this
sign-on-the-back-of-a-real-one was amusing/daunting.
Not a long walk today, but we're all tired, and glad to get out of the rain.
We've left the van in a pub car park. I've been looking forward to sharing a
few beers with Wayne after each day's walk, but I pray that they are not all
going to be like this one. Its 1970's chrome, cut glass and exposed light bulbs
were tasteless enough when they were new. And clean. But now the dusty, worn
fittings warned us that the service and the beer were likely to disappoint.
(It is my long experience that these three things are closely connected.) Their
delusions of grandeur extended to being visibly uncomfortable about serving
walkers, and wet walkers at that.