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The end of a marathon
We’ve nearly completed our four-day sponsored walk marathon and our feet are really feeling it.
We’re on the last day of our marathon four-day sponsored walk and I have to admit I am flagging. I think maybe I should have done more training or at least invested in inner soles.
The walk, with my two daughters, has met with a number of unforeseen challenges. The first was when the soles of daughter three’s hiking boots, borrowed from my mum, came off minutes after she got off the tube at London Bridge. She then had to hobble for the first stretch until we encountered a Shoezone and she got some trainers. She also lost her glasses at some point, having invested heavily in the frames, but all in all having been the person who seemed most likely to pull out she led the pack every day and was our map expert.
I left the collection bucket somewhere on a bench near Chaldon. Daughter two developed a sore hip in addition to blisters from the hiking boots. She also had horrendous period pains, but struggled on heroically. I developed lots of blisters too. We got lost several times, at one point almost going back to where we had started from in a desperate attempt to find a cafe as there were very few shops en route and we didn’t want to carry too much.
Nevertheless, there were lots of conversations. Friends joined us along the way, including workingmums.co.uk very own marketing whizz Arline Okin, who did a two-day stint despite a sore ankle. We passed by some beautiful spots, including a reservoir, various parks, lots of animals and interesting sites.
We had the odd hairy moment when the public footpath we took to avoid the fast road with no pavement when we went off course announced that there was a bull in the field and to be very careful. Luckily, there was an electric fence line between us and the bull. A herd of cows charged towards us at one point, but, fortunately, there was a small river between us. We also got stuck in a lovely farm trying to locate the way back to the trail. It was fairly surreal as they were gearing up for a Halloween spectacular and we ended up in the middle of a ghost town. We also visited their Sunflower Festival.
All in all it was a bonding experience and we met some lovely people along the way, including the Airbnb host who drove us to the Co-op and then back to the trail we were taking so that we didn’t have to do three miles extra walking. His wife also gave us some much needed blister plasters.
I think I won’t be doing a sponsored walk for a while and maybe next time it will be in relays – with more members of the family doing one day each. But we’ve raised quite a bit of money for Talk2Nish.com, the mental health peer mentor charity I set up in memory of my daughter. Maybe the next fundraising event will be a bit more sedate – a knitting marathon perhaps?
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