At our evening meal we all reflected on what we had achieved in the past 12 years and 4 months. I’m not sure how many people took part but it must have been at least 100 (excluding the 200 on the Coast Path opening day). In the end just six of us walked the whole of the way round Wales.
According to my calculations, and as no one else bothered to keep a record mine is the official one, we walked on 119 days over a distance of 1042 miles and climbed the equivalent of four Everests. At an average speed of 2mph it equates to 21 days and 17 hours of continuous walking. As a group, and that included the 13 of us that walked into Chester, plus David W, who through no fault of his own was unable to complete the last few sessions, we walked a total of 13,088 miles. To put it into perspective that was the distance in a straight line from our hotel to Singapore then Sydney then Auckland and a final trip to Rotarua.
Over the last couple of years of the journey I was asked on many occasions, “Where are we going next?”. In the end my stock answer was, “Wherever YOU want to organise and lead”. To date there have been no offers. I did have ideas of doing something else but in the end the thought of a long term project put me off. We will do something else, there is no point in existence if you don’t have a plan, but just at the moment I don’t know what it will be – maybe train related?
Finally, at the end of our meal and reminisces Dorothy and I gave everyone a memento of their journey. It was a glass coaster designed and printed by Caldicot Printing. That is the end of this blog except to thank you for reading it.
