Three months on...

Wow. Another month has gone by. And what a month. Highs, lows, busy times, quiet times. They've all been there. And then today, as I prepared to write this post, I got a fantastic email.

Ages ago, I filled in a survey for Mapumental, and of course totally forgot about it. But apparently there was a prize draw attached to this one, and my name was drawn to win a £50 donation to the charity of my choice. Guess which one I chose... That makes £1682 for the June Hancock Mesothelioma Fund. Hurrah!

A couple of weeks ago my husband David and I took a weekend out to go back to my hometown for a visit. We had a particularly good day out with my Mum and Gran, driving through the nearby countryside and visiting places I hadn't seen in years. On Sunday we also had a little wander over to Southampton Common where this lovely chap posed for me and showed off his fabulous feet.


I haven't really talked about coots and their place in the relationship with Dad. Perhaps I'll leave that for another time
As often happens, the childhood photos made a brief appearance. While David amused himself by threatening to make pictures of me on a potty in the woods public, I was a little more taken with this one.

Two months on...

The walk feels like such a long time ago. My legs are now pretty much back to normal, the joint pain I was having last month has gone, and the only thing that seems to keep the whole adventure real is the map on the kitchen wall that I still haven't had the heart to take down.

In the last month since I wrote here I have taken part in a flamenco performance, continued singing pop songs in choir and been rather busy at work. In short, life has gone on. In the last month there has also been a Fathers' Day.

I don't think I ever celebrated Fathers' Day when dad was alive. I think he had the same opinion of it as the one he held for Valentine's Day: another hollow opportunity for consumerism. Or at least that's how he presented it - I'm sure he'd actually quite like to have had a shoddily made card from me of course and maybe I should have made one for him. Ah well. The opportunity has gone now.

Anyway, here's a little photo I found which must have been taken when I was maybe 13 or 14. It shows us during a day out to the Lost Gardens of Heligan. This is how I remember time with Dad.

One week on...

I've spent the last week reflecting on the walk, flopping around my house and waiting for my ankles to fix themselves. It's only now just starting to sink in that the last year of training has finished and that I'll now have hours of extra time week - my brain's coming up with some great ideas of how to fill that, but perhaps for now I'll just devote the time to sitting.

I've collected most of the photos that my friends took during the walk into one set on my Flickr, which you can now watch as one mammoth slideshow of the full 27 hours 11 minutes (it doesn't take quite that long to view!) Watch below, or go to the set page. Enjoy!

It's over.

Hello everyone! It's Katy here! I hope my husband has been keeping you entertained in my absence.

So, that walk then. It was quite long, wasn't it? I have to say that it didn't feel as long as it was though.

Sure there were moments when I felt really incredibly down, but every time I did there was someone there to cheer me up and get me going again. Even my incredibly painful ankles (which started hurting just a few hours in) couldn't stop me, and once dawn broke there was no doubt in my mind that I would cross the finishing line. OK, not in the 24 hours I had hoped for but after 27 hours and 11 minutes of non-stop walking.

Once home I survived for a few hours of my celebration party before falling asleep on the sofa and having to be led upstairs to bed at 6.45pm. I had an awesome 14 hours of sleep, but am starting to feel nappish all over again now.

Here are a few photos from the end. I think there are some more floating around out there, so there might be a couple more picture posts to come.

I crossed the finishing line at Woolwich, 27 hours and 11 minutes after setting off.


This is what more than a day on your feet will do to your ankles -
they are so swollen that they have bruised themselves.

I want to say special thanks to all of my lovely walk volunteers: Clairey, Ollie, Mel, Filiz, Jo, Emma, Ed, Ewan, Linzi, Edd, Carla, Michael, Lizzy, Dani, Pippa, Bec, George and Paul. Without you guys cheering me on I know that I could not have completed even half of it.

I also want to say an extra special thank you to my Mum and my fantastic husband David. They both provided wonderful support running up to and during the walk, and for David that's now extended to bringing me cups of tea while I rest my swollen legs.

Thank you, thank you everyone.

TOTY: Number Two

It's the night before the night before. I'm already super-nervous, and once again I'm reflecting on the past year to avoid thinking about Sunday. This highlight is a happy by-product of this Challenge and of writing this blog. I've really enjoyed this part, so thanks for listening.

Number Two: The bit where I got to share my dad with you
Maybe it was a bit self indulgent of me to start posting pictures of Dad on holiday and necklaces he had made me, but as I found myself thinking about him as I walked it seemed natural to write about him afterwards.

Of course, I didn't really think about people paying attention to my whitterings. I was just jotting them down as they came to me.

But then a pair of my Dad's socks were put in a cabinet in one of my favourite museums and suddenly it felt like I was having a chat with more than just myself.


So, as I haven't shared anything for a while, I thought I'd let you see one of my most treasured posessions.

This is my Dad's copy of The Golden Gift Book, a collection of stories that he read when he was a boy and used to read to me when I was little. Some of the stories are utterly fantastic. My favourite was The Cockatoucan - the story of a bird that turned a kingdom upside down every time it laughed.


You can see that Dad enjoyed this story too - he's coloured in the pictures
I think my favourite reversal in the story was when the palace was turned into a butcher's shop, and the king 'who was too wise to fight against fate, had tucked up his royal robes and was busy in the shop weighing out six ounces of the best mutton chops'. There is also a fantastic moment when the king is turned into a villa residence.

Anyway, the part of this book that I really love now is the bookplate in the front.


Dad gave me this book (and its sister, Princess Mary's Gift Book) shortly before he died. I will always treasure it, and I hope that one day I will get to read the stories to someone who is just as captivated as I was.

TOTY: Number Five

In these final few days before the walk, I'm finding myself doing little walking and lots of thinking. Reflecting on the past year there are a number of moments that really stand out for me. I thought that I would share them with you in the form of a Top of the Year Top Five.

Number Five: When 12 miles was a really long way.
Although I had mitigating circumstances (I was suffering from a severe flare-up of RSI in my wrist) a 12 mile walk from my house in Lewisham to a BBQ at my friends' house in Hampstead took a ridiculously long time. When I arrived I was hot, pink and very very sleepy. In fact, it wasn't long after I arrived that I took a nap on their sofa and my husband tried to stick a sausage in my ear (not a euphemism).

Thankfully things have gotten easier since then.

Husband and sausage not pictured
Photo taken by my lovely friend Carla

Behind as usual.

In an attempt to organise myself ready for the walk, I've spent this afternoon turning the big map on my wall into a giant clock.



It's now divided up into sections of 3.1 miles - which is about the average distance I need to do in an hour to get me round the whole thing in 24 hours. It turned out that the route I've plotted is actually 74.56 miles.

From this I can now start letting my lovely volunteers know the approximate time and place that they will be able to find me. If you've volunteered, I'll be in touch in the next day or so to check in with you about this.

All of this should have been done long ago, but I'm pleased that it so far seems to be falling into place fairly simply.

Funny, I thought the walking would be the hardest part.

New lifestyle.

Just a quick update from my lunch break, but not really a walking one as I had a rare weekend break after the physiotherapist told me to take it easy last Wednesday.



Once I'd shaken off the 'Oh! I'm not training!' guilt, I started to really enjoy lazing about in the early summer sunshine. I had a short cycle to my favourite butchers in Greenwich and then David and I had a little barbecue when I got back. We then set to an afternoon in the company of a couple of beers and nattered in the sunshine. For the first half of Sunday I did little more than read a book whilst lying luxuriously on my lawn. Absolute bliss.

Of course we did do a little walking, but in truly lazy weekend style meandering through one of our local parks in the early evening. I'd totally forgotten what one of these weekends could be like.

Tonight I have my follow-up appointment with my physiotherapist. My knee has eased (and the swelling has gone down) but I'm still getting a quite irritating muscle ache. Hopefully there will be some handy suggestions on how to minimise this and hopefully I'll be able to get back into proper training soon (er, just in time to tone it down in time for the real thing).

I'm going to have a hard time giving up this lifestyle though, even if I've only had one weekend of it.

It had to happen at some point...

I managed to get myself a scabby knee just over half way into today's training walk when I slipped on a wet pavement in Dulwich. Ignoring my twinging leg muscles (I managed to fall on a previous injury - this is the leg with the torn PCL) I kept going.

Honestly cannot believe that this is the first actual training injury I've sustained. Nine months! Hopefully this tiny graze will be the one and only.

Thanks and pictures and disappointment giving way to triumph.

Before I get on with the rest of the post, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has volunteered to help me with my walk in May. I'm really truly touched that you'd like to spend a bit of time with me walking the outskirts of London. I'll be in touch in the next week or so and we can start working out where everyone fits together.

Also, those who've made donations to my chosen charity - thank you too! You're making this all worthwhile!

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Since I last posted, I've been out training a few times including a full day session last Sunday which saw me get lost, go on a 2 mile detour and have to cut it short by 4 miles. More on that later.

First though, I'd like to show you a photo which makes me giggle every time I see it.

I took this quick snap of a poster on Old Kent Road when I was out a couple of weeks back. You might need to enlarge it to see what I find so amusing. It reminds me of Kemp Folds.

Anyway, I see a lot of things that amuse me when I'm walking but rarely feel that I can stop to take a picture. Here's another one I saw, out and about on Sunday, somewhere near Petersham Nurseries in Richmond.

I saw that one just a few miles before I took a right turn off the Capital Ring path, got lost and had to phone my husband for directions. Getting into a right state, I managed to eventually get back on the right track, but had wandered for an extra 2 miles and was by this point pretty much soaked to the skin by the fine drizzle that had suddenly turned to rain.

After setting out with the aim of walking the near 22 miles of Capital Ring routes six to nine combined, I gave up at the end of route eight and went home. Pissed off. Cold. Miserable.

Thankfully I've got a lovely bunch of friends who, when they noticed my whiny Twitter/Facebook status update, essentially told me off for thinking that 'only 18 miles' was not good enough. That's me in my place then. I promise I won't do it again. For a bit.

Anyway, undeterred I'll be off out again this weekend to get that 22-miler under my belt. Onwards and upwards.

Big thanks, big walks, and big yawns.

Yesterday I went out on an 18 mile training walk. Not the longest I've done, but the longest in a while, s I thought I'd give you a bit of a blow by blow account of my day.

But first I want to say a massive thank you to my lovely best friend Linzi who made the day so much easier for me. You see Linzi decided to get a new mp3 player and, in exchange for the promise of an awesome evening out in the future, she decided to send me her old one.

He hasn't got a name yet (this one's a he - I can tell) so if anyone has got a good one, let me know.

Anyway, back to the training. Here's how everything happened.

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6.50am The alarm goes off. David has a scrabble tournament and I've decided to get up at the same time and set out early.

8.00am I'm back at the flat after walking with David to the newsagents and bringing back half the Sunday paper. I sit down at the laptop and start moving music files from my external hard drive onto the laptop then onto the lovely new iPod.

08.43am I log onto Twitter and make a comment about getting ready to leave the house for the walk.

11.15am I finally leave the house and walk over the road to the bus stop.

11.24am I get on a bus and pull out the Observer magazine to help the journey go faster.

11.48am I arrive at Grove Park station, travel sick from reading the paper, and start walking towards the start point for Walk Three of the Capital Ring. It takes 10 minutes. I start the first leg towards Crystal Palace with an obvious spring in my step.



1.19pm I can see the Crystal Palace transmitter! I get a bit over excited.

1.38pm I sit down at a bench overlooking Dinosaur Lake in Crystal Palace. I have a snack. It's a Delicatoboll. Suddenly I'm very happy that we went to IKEA on Saturday.

2.19pm I walk past a very posh house. There's an empty Ab Circle Pro box waiting to be picked up with the recycling.

3.09pm Amazing campervan. No badge on the front. Instead it is replaced by a Greene King IPA pump badge.

3.41pm I bring out the big guns and start eating honey to push me through the last few miles. No, seriously.

4.33pm I arrive at Wimbledon Park. The 18 miles are over. I've done it in good time and I'm grinning. I have to wait for a tube.

6.05pm I arrive at Lewisham station. My legs are starting to ache and I decide to get a bus back down the road. I pull out the Observer magazine for the journey.

6.09pm I arrive home, travel sick from reading the paper and aching all over. I start running a bath and make myself some squash.

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Reading that back I realise how uneventful this sort of walking is. I could have included all the times I started thinking about this twinge or that, or all the times I considered opening the honey earlier and then deciding not to, but it's barely interesting as it is. It makes you focus inward, notice every little ache in your body and random thought in your head. It basically makes you a bit boring. Sorry about that.

Back out on the road.

After a few too many turkey sandwiches and tasty beers I was starting to feel the urge to get my trainers back on and get back out there. So that's exactly what I did yesterday.

I wandered out to Woolwich and decided to start from where I'll be starting my grand walk in just a few short months...


See more photos from the walk here

Not a terribly auspicious looking start as the Woolwich foot tunnel is closed until March 2011. Which means that I'm unlikely to be able to complete the circuit (except by ferry) until I'm walking for real. In a way, I rather like it that way.

So I set out and walked sections one and two, from Woolwich to Grove Park. With a bit of a detour when I got off track, that was about 12.5 miles. Maybe a bit more. I ache a bit this morning - I haven't been out for a proper training walk for a couple of months now. But I've got the hunger again, and that's what's important.

I'm looking forward to my next walk already. Although it may have to wait until tomorrow, when my hips might have recovered a bit.

So, anyway, Happy New Year everybody! The first half is going to be supremely busy, with training and planning, but I'm so excited. Hurrah for 2011!

Frustration strikes.

More photos are in my Flickr set from the day
Sunday was a lovely sunny day, so David and I decided to venture all the way out to Greenford to take on the next section of the Capital Ring: Walk 9, Greenford to South Kenton. We left without maps as my printer was playing up but had faith in the signage that we've seen so far, confident that we wouldn't lose our way.

We did lose our way a bit, thanks to some confusing signs on the way into Harrow-on-the-Hill, and it wasn't the most exciting walk, but that wasn't what was troubling me.

What was troubling me was the ache in my foot, and the general decline in my fitness in the few short weeks that I've been off the proper training regime. As I reach an important milestone (more about that on Friday) I'm suddenly conscious that I have to start pulling out the stops.

So it looks like I'm going back to the gym, and I'm going back on the road, and I'm going to beat this. There is no way that I am failing.

Champions and miracle healing.

One of Ian Bull's photos. Thanks Ian! See the original size here.

That photo was taken just after lunch on the Green Chain Megawalk last Saturday. You can see me grinning away second on the right and Ian, who did a great job of leading us bunch of walkers, is in his snazzy high-vis jacket at the front. We were all looking quite cheery at that point as we were nicely stocked up on hot tea and sandwiches and had not yet met the real hills of the route...

Anyway, I have some minor foot news! I'm pretty certain that I'm going to be back out training next week. I've been getting a lot less pain in the last couple of days and I'm limping less often. Most importantly, my toe seems to be setting straight! Hurrah! I'd hate to have a wonky toe.

20 mile verdict.

First up I would just like to say that although I logically know that 20 miles is an awfully long way to walk, the comparative ease with which I completed the 18 miler back in July may have meant that I set off with a slightly cocky bounce in my step yesterday.

Like before I chose to use walkit.com to plan my route for me. A big circular route through and around London stretched out in front of me as I left the house just before 8.30 yesterday morning.

Leaving Lewisham, I walked familiar roads up to Southwark Park, then along the Thames' South Bank before crossing the Millenium Bridge to St Paul's, then... Well, then I got a bit lost. My walkit route tried to take me through a locked gate and I became rather flustered as I tried to find a replacement route. Even though I know the area well, it threw me. I got back on track eventually, walking through the edge of Angel before heading onto Regent's Canal.

Regent's Canal is fast becoming my nemesis. A mile or so along the towpath and I started to hurt. Unlike last time it was my left hip rather than my knees and, also unlike last time, it was a sharp stabbing pain rather than a dull ache. My bouncing stride soon slowed to a hobble as I limped along the canal. I was certain that I would have to stop. I made plans on how to get myself home. And then, right when I was at my lowest, I looked up and saw this:



The sight of the towers of Canary Wharf glistening in the distance almost brought that bounce back into my step. I felt a boost from knowing that I was on the home straight, albeit one that was going to last for at least another 6 miles.

At that point I decided that I must carry on. I knew that I had to beat this pain.

And I did. I arrived back home 20 miles and 6 hours 2 minutes after setting off. My hip was so painful that I could barely walk through the door, and had to crawl up the stairs to the cold bath that was waiting for me.

Today, I'm still uncomfortable. Should I have carried on with an injury? Possibly not. Am I proud to have beaten the 20 miler? Definitely. Am I ready for another week of training? Ask me when I come back from my 4 mile walk tomorrow.

First milestone.

I've now walked over 100 training miles since I announced this project. That seems to equate to somewhere around 29 hours of my life which, I guess, is rather a lot in two short months.
EDIT: Actually, it turns out that this was only from when I started specifically training for the marathon in September, so that's just since 17th May! Go me!

Last week my training took a bit of a kicker when my iPod went missing from work. I had been using music as a pace keeper and various podcasts as a way of giving my mind something to concentrate on when walking familiar paths.

But losing the music has opened my eyes to what's around me.

This last week I've taken the training slowly so that I can stop and look at my surroundings. Two of my regular short walks follow well-trodden tourist paths, passing some of the most famous views in London, so I've started off by photographing those. The few pictures below are from my walks from Covent Garden to Limehouse and Covent Garden to Canada Water.

(I've put the rest of my pictures from these walks in my Ward Walks London folder over at Flickr.)

I've started noticing smaller, less noticed things too. I think I'll take the time to stop and photograph them in future and add them to my building picture of London.

I guess I'm lucky to live in a city so many people travel across the world to see. I should remember that every time I'm tempted to tut as I pass a group of slow moving tourists. But I'm not promising that I will.

Something was missed...

So, apparently it was Fathers' day yesterday. I don't think I ever really celebrated it when I was growing up (sorry Dad, you missed out on years of crappy homemade presents!) and, of course, I don't really observe it now. But I thought that I'd make a little Dad post for today to acknowledge it.
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I reckon every kid goes through a stage where they're fascinated by ancient Egypt. Whether it's the gruesome mummification process or the awesome architecture that provokes interest, I reckon it always surfaces at some point.

My fascination seemed to go on longer than most. I was given books about Egypt, and taken on trips to museums to see exhibits about Egypt. I practiced writing my name in hieroglyphs and I remember asking my Dad to make me an ankh several times. My own crafts were predominately Egypt flavoured, including a board game based on the afterlife and a foam headed stick puppet of Tutankhamun. As you can see I was fairly solidly obsessed for a good number of years, even thinking that I might like to be an Egyptologist at the point I went to secondary school. This faded pretty quickly after my interests rather dramatically widened.

Some years after the main appeal had subsided, Dad and I visited Egypt together. It was the year 2000 and I was an awkward 17 year old who was not dealing well with the heat. But the trip was still incredible. I keep meaning to dig out old photos from the time where Dad is dressed like an archeologist from the 1920s. Not a costume, just the way he liked to dress on holiday.

After the Egypt holiday, although I can't quite remember when, Dad gave me a little blue plastic jewellery box, with the pixelated image of an Egyptian woman stuck to the front (I know Mum must have helped with that bit, he had no idea how to work a computer). On opening the case I found this:



It was the ankh I had asked for all those years previously! Carved out of a piece of mahogany and wrapped with silver wire, it's beautifully simple.

This didn't come out of the box very often for some time after I was given it, but I've been wearing this necklace quite a lot recently. It reminds me of Dad's enormous creativity, and the shear surprise I felt on opening the box. I like to imagine him working away on it in the garage, chuckling to himself over how long it had taken to get around to making it. I hope he knew just how much I adored both the sentiment and the necklace itself.

Over half way around the Capital.

David and I used Sunday as an opportunity to walk the next two legs of the Capital Ring: Richmond Bridge to Osterley Lock and Osterley Lock to Greenford.

Both stretches wind alongside rivers and the canal and have very few roadside stretches. Rather picturesque, really. We picked a lovely day for it and the sun shone down on us the whole way. Getting to Greenford, the end of Walk Eight, means that we've gone more than half way round the ring.


You can see my other photos from the day as part of my Capital Ring collection on Flickr.

Of course, now that I've announced next year's challenge, these walks have a slightly more serious intent. I'm now looking for obstacles, park closing times and bad surfaces. I'm weighing up how long I reckon it'll take to walk it and whether it would be OK to walk it at night. And I'm not even heading out for the walk until I've managed to fit the mileage into my training schedule.

It's still enjoyable, but it reminds me just how much there is to organise.

Footsteps.

My Mum came to visit me a couple of weekends back, and brought me some photos I thought I would share with you.



These are pictures of Dad in Morocco in 2005. You can click to see them bigger, if you like.

In that first one, Dad's walking in the Atlas mountains in his faithful walking shoes. Dad really enjoyed the holiday, and came back brimming with stories like an explorer back from some undiscovered land.

Mum and I went back to Morocco in the April after Dad died, to Taroudant and Essaouira. At the time I was a little cynical about the trip. Sure, I thought, it'll be lovely to have a holiday, but secretly I was worried about feeling as though I was on some sort of pilgrimage. By the time I got there, I forgot all of that and just enjoyed myself. It was a lovely holiday and it was wonderful to see the places that Dad fell in love with. Walking through the Atlas in Dad's walking shoes was a real highlight for me, and I couldn't bear to brush the Moroccan dust of them for some time after we returned.

I've put a few other pictures from my parents' Morocco holiday (including one of Mum - hope you don't mind!) in my Flickr. There's also a set of my really bad camera phone photos from our later visit.