Yesterday evening we were taken out to dinner at an excellent Chinese restaurant in Lichfield. John Hayfield had already driven himself and his lady Sandra up from Devon to their home on the edge of the Cotswolds. Then he drove to Lichfield, on to our campsite 26 kms north (I know because I just walked it), picked us up, drove back to Lichfield, brought us back to the campsite, then he and Sandra went back to the Cotswolds. Unbelievable! You will be pleased to know that in the middle of all that, we had a splendid time at the restaurant.
This morning Gay drove me back to yesterday’s finishing point near Whittington and deposited me on the towing path of the Coventry Canal, where I headed north. She headed in the direction of Rugely for a desperately needed launderette. The combination of this hot weather and my own antics is producing lots of damp kit. As we are not registered ammonia producers a pile of it was urgently in need of a washing machine. Fortunately Gay found one and all is, as they used to say on the toothpaste adverts, clean and sparkling.
I passed one moored vehicle which was flying two New Zealand flags – the official one with the union jack in the corner, and the one which could possibly replace it, with the silver fern. Some time later, I caught up with a moving boat, which had a New Zealand name. It turned out that the previous owners had been New Zealanders. Of the current crew, the young lady I was speaking to, when she learned of my mission, told me that she was born in Blackpool. In Kendal Avenue. This was small worldsville again. Several of my late first wife’s relatives lived in that street, including her mother and father.
It was strange walking back to the campsite I left at 6.30 this morning, but here I am. Tomorrow I will walk on to Stone, where I lived for a while in the early 60s.
Today’s walk was 26.5 kms, I am now walking up the Trent and Mersey Canal, and kilometres to date are 1,618, which, for the Luddites, is well over 1,000 miles.
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