I thought you guys might like to see some photos from the day.
This was the route I walked. As you can see by the photos I looked progressively more shit as the day went on lol.
That part at the beginning between the green point and the first blue point, and the area between the 4th blue point and the 6th were both extremely steep hills. The first one was a bit of a shock to the system and had me thinking I might have bitten off more than I could chew on this one. But this was mainly because there wasn't really much to ease you into it. When I got up onto a bit of flat land I wasn't too bad.
The second hill had quite a lot of rocks scattered about that either needed climbing over or were just generally a nuisance to step across. The long stretch between BP6 and BP7 was basically a cliff side walk with loads of scattered rocks and a tiny bit of a climb in the middle. Once you got past this area though it got a lot more walker friendly.
I took this photo from the first hill. As you can see it was proper wilderness.
We walked through a lot of fields with livestock wandering about. We met this herd of cows. There were also a lot of sheep and rams about.
I took this one again closer to the start, this was us coming down on the Lady Bower reservoir.
We've had a bit of a dry summer this year in the UK. The water levels in the reservoir are not looking too good!
Took this from the top of that second hill I talked about. the Red arrow points to the valley where we started. I think this might have been about a quarter through the walk and I was already knackered lol
Mate took this one. This is me lagging behind somewhere along the route.
More hills, this was near the bottom of the map before the route makes a V shape.
I think this forest was closer to the end of the route. We went through a couple of them along the route. I really liked how the trees looked here though.
This was towards the end of the route when I could finally see the city, and the end point, on the horizon. A real sight for sore eyes. Unfortunately for me I think there was still another hour and half of walking to do lol.
When we finally arrived at the end of the route I felt like my legs had been run over. The last stretch was a real challenge. I'd also gotten good and sun burnt on the route. Which certainly didn't help things. At the end point we got a free pint and a plate of lasagna. After about an hour sat there I ended up walking an additional mile to get to the tram stop. So I guess I ended up doing 21 miles that day in the end. according to my phone I did a total of 50,097 steps but this is just off the phone's accelerometer rather than a smart watch or anything so I dunno how accurate the figure is.
Either way I went home, showered and was in bed for about 7pm. It was a tough challenge but I'll probably do it again next year just to help out the cause.
