Day 29: rest day and Millom to Broughton in Furness

Print 🖨 PDF 📄

I decided to do a quick two hour walk from Millom to the top of the estuary as tomorrow would be a long day. I don’t very often drive Priscilla, but this morning I found myself driving down to Millom following Heather and Aly in the car. I looked across to my left and noticed the passenger seat was empty. This caught me by surprise and brought on a whole host of emotions about Angela. I was imagining her sitting in the drivers seat, smiling and laughing and happy driving all the way round this crazy journey of mine. I would be in the passenger seat chatting away to her, joking and navigating.

Just at this moment in time I feel like I’m sitting on her knee while driving and she is embracing me. I experienced a really strong sense of happiness. However, I also really miss our physical contact. The hugs, holding hands and the love. I miss her so much. Then I got caught up in a funeral courage there must have been eight limos. Listening to Stevie Wonder singing ‘if you really love me’ cheered me up and lifted my mood a little.

Before we left this morning I did the final essential preparation of Priscilla, emptied the toilet, storing all the cables, packing all my washing kindly laundered by Aly, and packing my birthday presents, doing the washing up and general jobs before we set off. Mark had a quick drive of Priscilla round the block. He said it was easy to drive. Then we had a quick cuppa and polished off the remains of Colin cupcakes and Florentines before we set off.

It’s interesting driving where I’ve walked from and the distance I have covered. It seemed to take ages to get to Millom yet that was only a day and a half walk. Blimey it feels very impressive. It’s gives me a sense of what I’ve already achieved so far.

Note to self don’t follow Heather closely when she’s driving because she’s a late breaker and I nearly went into the back of her today. I had to slam my brakes on hard and everything shot forward in Priscilla including Poppy. I had to wait until I could stop to investigate what was now loose on Priscilla’s floor and was undergoing Poppy’s very close examination!!

The floor of Priscilla was covered in my clothing falling out of the bag that was on the backseat and poppy was rustling around because there was also the dog chew in there and she was determined to see if there was anything else to eat.

It was very windy on the way over to Millom in some places and Priscilla was being buffeted around. I must remember to let future drivers know about this as you need to just drive a bit slower in case gust of wind pushes you to one side.

I walked along the estuary with the hills of the Lake District in the distance. I met a guy called Dave in a little campervan with a bed in it. Obviously it was home converted. He was counting geese on the estuary. Apparently there were about 1000 pink footed geese and about 500 Barnacle geese, but they don’t know where the origins of those are from. It turns out that he heard me on the BBC out of doors program on catch up a couple of weeks ago and he asked me if I should have a dog with me? Dave and I had to wait for a train to pass at the level crossing.

The England coastal path finished at that point and then I’m back on the road again.

I walked through a series of quite muddy fields and my boots and my trousers are covered in mud too. I had to keep looking at the map every few minutes to check I was in the right direction because there’s no sign posts at all.

I had just opened the gate of a farmers yard when rather large dog came running up to me barking quite aggressively. It was obviously doing its job in protecting its territory. Here was I coming along in a high viz jacket walking through their yard. Then he stopped and started that low growling which can be quite scary. I just kept say good boy and fortunately for me it left me alone. However, he carried on observing me as I walked off the premises and back onto the road.

However that brings its own dangers. There’s not much room to get out of the way of traffic!

At last I got to my destination for today. The Square cafe in Broughton. Furness. Heather and Aly had been in the cafe ages and had a tuna baguette waiting for me. Claire and Kelly were lovely and didn’t charge us. ❤️❤️Also many thanks to the fishmonger who gave me some free salmon. ❤️❤️

We then dropped Priscilla off at Asda in Barrow before heading back to Alys. Heathers car had a very depressed sat nav, a bit like Marvin from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! That made us laugh.

All that was left to do was to interview Aly on her experience of being my support team.