That £77.99 we spent to stay in the Travelodge was probably the best £77.99 we’ve ever spent. We both slept so well and we didn’t have to subsequently drive for over an hour to the trailhead. In fact we decided not to drive to the end and catch a train to the start like we usually do, instead we drove the three minutes back to Adlington train station and started walking straight away. The train from Edale wouldn’t have gotten us in until 8.10am, we got a two hour head start this way which meant we should escape the pissing rain forecast for the afternoon.

It started off quite lovely to be fair, still following the North Cheshire Way which gave us PTSD yesterday after sending us through impenetrable, stinging jungle and fields full of horseflies. We were both still itching like mad. I’m tempted to take a scouring pad to my skin later. My usual trick is to hack holes into my flesh but I’m trying to stop doing that since a doctor in Honduras wanted to give me an injection in my arse to treat the ensuing staph infection. I am a delight. A pus-seeping delight but a delight nonetheless.

The trail spat us out onto the Macclesfield Canal and I do so love a canal walk. Flat, well kept, one might say dull as fuck but I’ll take it over the alternative when the alternative is being tits deep in brambles whilst cows look at you funny. We’d already had one cowocalypse incident this morning, edging through slush and misery around a field full of cows with young. You don’t get cows on a canal, mate, and if you do they’re usually behind a fence. Yeah, give me a towpath any day.

The section after the canal was even nicer. We took a right turn and walked up into the National Trust owned Lyme Park. We knew this would be a great little walk albeit a bit more undulating than we’d become accustomed to on this Five Day Fill In. I don’t even care, it was very enjoyable despite the protests from my calf muscles. We popped to the loos on our way through but thankfully the cafe wasn’t open yet. We have zero willpower. We’d have spunked our head start on cream teas whilst smiling creepily at people’s dogs.

We passed a herd of deer on our jaunt through Lyme Park. They gave zero fucks about the presence of various sweating, panting bipeds, only looking up to eye us suspiciously before going back to shovelling grass into their chops. Utterly magical. The whole stretch through the park was a joy to be fair.

Even after we strolled out of the park and crossed the road we were treated to a lovely albeit very sweaty woodland excursion. It wasn’t as hot as it was yesterday, that was like doing laps in an oven, but you know when the air is just extracting every single molecule of water from your very soul? That was today.

On we walked, through a golf course and eventually into the hamlet of Strines. The climb out though, fuck my life, that was the biggest hill we’d tackled since we left Prestatyn I think? Very much the assault on the legs. The eyehole fodder was, of course, our reward and a perfectly valid excuse to stop, so we stopped indeed to drink that in and to try to remember how to breathe like a sane and functioning human being rather than a steam train on crack.

And then we walked back down the other fucking side whilst trying not to cry. I swear we used to be fitter than this. We’d done longer distances over more unforgiving terrain with much more weight on our backs and didn’t feel like our entire lower bodies had been beaten with sticks. We stopped in Hayfield to shovel some food into our chops and briefly considered abandoning it there, but then we’d just have to come back and finish the last seven miles some other time. No. Just a few more hours of pain and we’d be there.

Oh and what pain it was. It’s not the trails fault, today had been an utter delight from start to finish from a purely technical point of view, but we were really struggling. Tarrant is fixed though so there’s that, she was having none of the issues she was having on the big hike or last month when we attempted this. All of our current issues clearly stemmed from our penchant for booze and cake.

We crept up onto the moors at the pace even the tortoise would have sneered at. Slow and steady wins the race? Yeah but you still have to actually be moving, mate. The hill up to Kinder Scout was relentless. Cheerful people casually bounced past us in both directions. Every step was unceremoniously torn from my broken body as I uttered things such as, “Afternoon!” and, “Nice day for it!” to passers by who were barely breaking a fucking sweat, the bastards.

We fucked off any notion of attempting to bag Kinder Low trigpoint on account of the fact the ascent was pretty much vertical and I’m terrified of heights. Last time I tried something like that was Lulworth Ranges. I ended up just freezing and basically lying down. Tarrant had to come and fetch my bag so I could crawl up on my hands and knees. So no, we’d go around this time. The obsolete concrete pillars would still be there when we eventually attempted the Pennine Way.

Speaking of which, that more or less finished us off with an epic downhill known as Jacob’s Ladder and when someone takes the time to name a slope and put it on a signpost you know shit is about to get way more real than your knees had planned for. I was more or less walking like I’d shat myself at this point and no doubt I would be for many days. It was just a painful plod now into Edale.

We didn’t even finish with any manner of fanfare. We just waved various photographic devices in the vague direction of The Nag’s Head, generally considered to be the start of the Pennine Way ergo the end of the Five Day Fill In, then hobbled as fast as we could to the train station to catch the once-hourly train that would take us back to our car. Jesus fuck, we need to get fitter then this if we’ve got any chance of even getting through the first day of the Pennine Way any time in the next couple of years. We’ve got time though. I probably just need to lay off the pastries.

STATS
Day: 95
Day on LEJOG: 54
Distance walked today: 19.4 miles
Total walked so far: 1207.72 miles
“The Top Half” total walked so far: 93.55 miles
Weather: Overcast but very muggy. Threatened rain all day but didn’t deliver until late.

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Adlington, Cheshire to Edale, Derbyshire, England

Useful shit to know…

• There are toilets at Lyme Park by the cafe but the estate doesn’t officially open until 8.30am so loos might be closed until then.
• The cafe opens at 10am.
• If you drive into Lyme Park it costs £15 each unless you’re a National Trust member. Walking in through the back and out the front is free.
• There are also free toilets at Hayfield bus station.
• There’s a picnic area here too.
• Neither Adlington nor Edale train stations have toilets.
• You need to change at Stockport to get between the two. Stockport has everything you need.