Monday 10 September 2012

Monday 10 September 2012 - a weekend of big walks

Two big walks have kept me outdoors during all daylight hours this weekend - a 26-mile challenge walk on Saturday across the Staffordshire Moorlands, followed by the Edale Skyline with Roy, Jill and Janet on Sunday. This is a classic 18-mile route from Hope, with stupendous views all around of green sweeping valleys and the distant march of hills. Drunk on the sunshiny breeze that moulds the skin; feeling long and lithe after so many hours' walking; feeling at one with the countryside and, for a change, with one's body...

Catherine spent Saturday evening serving 190 fish-and-chip meals at a wedding somewhere glamorous near Ludlow; then all Sunday doing burgers, hot dogs and mountains of chips at a family fun event + dog show in St Helens. "People kept buying sausages just to give their dogs. £2 a sausage - OK by us. One man, who was drunk, insisted he was 6' 5" tall and wanted to buy his height in hot dogs. He kept coming back trying to give us money but we wouldn't or couldn't serve him."