It was only our second attempt at the Across Wales Walk. but already there were people to catch up with since the first time. I slept well on the village hall floor, it helps if you are the one who snores and keeps the others awake.
We set off on the short coach trip to the start at Anchor. It felt a little cold on the start line and I was nervous. As we knew we had not done enough training we started slow with a lot of walking.
The whole route across Wales covers some great landscapes, one of the most enjoyable things is seeing the changes from rural Shropshire to hills and forest to mountain. There were some great running sections, on one of the best we ran down the hill to Llandinam with Marcus. I was still felling good on the next road sections towards Hafren Forest. After consuming some very nice home-made malt loaf at Checkpoint 3 we set off along the Wye River Trail. Emerging from the forest we headed straight up the slope to Plynlimon.
This is where the difficulties began. The wind had picked up and as I reached the ridge I was starting to fell sick and starting to get cold. I put on an extra layer and we headed down towards Nant-y-moch. When we reached the reservoir I was very cold and put on all my spare kit. It was a slow shuffle to the fouth checkpoimt along the road which follows the southern edge of the reservoir. Along the road we decided I should call it a day.
After some soup and tea it was a relief to climb into the back of the mini bus and fall asleep. I tried and failed to persuade Simon that he should carry on as he was still full of beans.
You can say the first half of the course was beautiful, which it was, that the atmosphere was very friendly which it was, and it is a great event to be part of but I was still p'd off. Well next year maybe.