I woke up this morning and assessed my foot – not looking good lol! It looks like bloomin’ trench-foot with the white saturated skin covered in a box of Compeed blister plasters. The walk to the breakfast room was ridiculous, I needed to hold onto the banister for dear life when going downstairs. My shin was really sore on my right leg and something needed doing before we even thought about setting off.

We had our hearty breakfast, which for me made me smile that I promised myself a healthy one every morning – I just wanted some home comfort before we hit the road again. When walking on an injured leg it’s probably irrelevant what type of breakfast you have as long as you have a good sized one. I wonder if extra sausages and bacon repairs blisters?

Before we left I decided to strap up my right shin are using my zinc oxide tape. I watched a YouTube video about taping up a leg with shin splints although I had no idea if this was actually what I had??

We set off from Somerset House Farm en route to Richmond – all I knew was this route was very flat and a lot shorter compared to the other routes. We stormed through part of this route when cycling through it – at least I’d be able to admire the beautiful little villages on my hobbled foot 😀

At mile 3 East Harlsey we started spotting things to do with the Tour de France which was due to take place next week and feature amongst the towns we were passing including this yellow taped bike.

We got cracking and after 5 miles near Welbury my foot was already sore, why the hell was I wearing these stupid old trainers? I should have invested in some proper shoes for this part – a real learning lesson for me.

Heading towards East and South Cowton between 10 – 15 miles our pace was slow and my right ankle was starting to become really sore. Aidy could see I was trying to avoid being pretty miserable so he got out his phone and played some properly funny Mitchell and Webb podcasts through it – it really was the tonic I needed and it really perked me up! At this point I was really popping the paracetamol and ibuprofen.

Around Scorton at mile 18 my right ankle was getting really sore and I was beginning to worry if I wouldn’t make it. Yesterday my leg muscles actually seized up due to not resting after the cycling. This was different – my actual tendons and bones in the shin was getting so sore. I decided that I needed to strap up my right ankle. I stopped by a grand entrance to a farmhouse with a huge driveway and looked around – no one was about – no cars on the driveway – so I jumped onto one of the pillars at the entrance, took off my right shoe and sock and began to strap it up around the ankle. As I finished and put my sock back on a car turned off the main road, turned into the grand entrance and gave me a horrible look – WHAT I’m only sat on top of the pillar of your drive entrance…. ooops. And off we went – ankle feeling better supported.

At mile 20 and after Brampton on Swale I was beginning to feel a bit depressed with the leg. I honed onto that mile 20 was the finish line and when we got there I realised that we had at least 3 miles to go. I kept saying to Aidy “We’re almost there now – when we go over this hill we’ll be able to see Richmond” even though I had no idea what we’d see or what Richmond would look like.

Eventually AT LAST Richmond came into view…. WOOOOWWW…. Richmond is beautiful! It’s like a mini York to me! I was properly impressed with it and by eck they love their hills here.

One Steep Hill straight to Bridgedown House B&B and we arrived for about 6pm.  Jennifer who ran the B&B seemingly on her own with her daughters was lovely! She showed us to our rooms but what was great was that she just left us to it. She could see that I was a mess and I asked if she had some ice which she was very happy to get for us. I then stuck as much ice as I could in a sock and placed this over my ankle & shin hoping that it would do something.

We got changed and got freshened up – I had a shower and stupidly starting thinking that removing the tape was a good idea whereas now I know you should leave tape on. Tearing off the tape which was stuck to my hairy legs was absolutely agonising! I’m shivering now as I type this remembering each ginger hair plucking away from my stupid legs.

After the shower we decided to go to get some food and luckily there was a restaurant just outside our B&B about 200 yards away. Unfortunately for me I couldn’t even move without the help of Aidy and I was moving about one footstep every two seconds. It took a good 10 minutes to get to the restaurant that would take me not even a minute to reach with good feet. Nethertheless we got inside the restaurant which was a refurbished old train station. I had a burger and a couple of beers and then we decided to head back to chill in our room.

Tomorrow is an interesting one – 38 miles to Kirkby Stephen when I’m walking 1 step every 2 seconds. Meh it’ll only take me 3 days to do tomorrow’s little walk 😥