Today did not start well. I woke too early, and when I was packing my bag, I thought I smelt meths. I was right. My meths bottle (for cooking I haven’t yet started drinking it) was leaking into my backpack. Everything out- rinsed, drying out of window apart from blue exercise band (for my shoulder) which started to disintegrate and spread blue stains around the bathroom. Aaagh! Room still reeking of meths. I managed to remove the dissolving blue band, washed away the blue staining and fled to breakfast.
After breakfast, I ambled down the street to the pasty shop, only to find it closed. So I’m afraid there will be no pasty review today. Back to the room still reeking of meths, but not quite as badly. Eventually I was ready to leave.
The first part of the walk was along The Hobby, a wooded flat path. It was cool, and so lovely to walk along after the rigours of the last few days. The plants had changed, and I saw another orchid but it was past it’s prime so no photo. Common spotted, this time I think.
All good things come to an end and before long the path was out of the woods and was again narrow and looking as if no-one had walked along it for some time. I met a man walking the whole path who was quite chatty, and speedy and wild-camping. Back we went into the woods but this time the path headed down almost to sea level before rising back up again. There was another down and up, right onto the beach, more steps, more scratchy overgrown, and also muddy path…
Despite all my grumbling it was a beautiful day, and the path gradually widened and flattened and I walked into Westward Ho!
Westward Ho! Is a holiday resort little town with chalets and beach huts. It was busy on a sunny half term afternoon but I pressed on. I still had another couple of miles to go and needed to get to my campsite before the Organic food shop on site shut at 5. Time for more headland shunning. I marched briskly through Northam and reached my campsite just before 5.
“I’m expecting another walker” said the campsite owner. Sure enough, one appeared about 10 minutes later. I was fairly sure I had seen him ahead of me on the path earlier, and it turned out that he had been in the pub in Clovelly last night as well.
I asked him if he was walking the path. He muttered something about starting at Land’s End and then admitted he was heading for John O’Groats! He didn’t usually tell people as it seemed so far away and so unlikely.
I told him I knew exactly how he felt! (I tell people I’m walking to Bristol.) We had a good evening firstly discussing routes, possible alternatives, time scales etc and then headed to the pub for a meal only to find they didn’t serve food. “ You can get a takeaway at the Chinese down the road and eat it in here” said the barmaid, so we did.
I somehow don’t think I’ll see Lloyd again as he walks further than I do, and wasn’t planning a rest day in Barnstaple.
Rose's LEJOG 
The red cliffs are interesting!
And all sounds much more interesting than staring at my work screen all day!
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Definitely more interesting, as well as more physically demanding, although staring at the screen is tiring in a different way!
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