Wow, that's so cool! What a wonderful thing to be a part of! I wish your two could give Simba lessons on staying away from walking feet....the number of times I've almost tripped on him because he suddenly darts forward to grab "something" h thinks might be tasty.....
Well I've just got back from my last contribution to the walk. Another 10 miles across the moors but in even worse weather than yesterday. I seriously considered asking Chris to postpone today as the weather was forecast to be fairly extreme in the Pennines, but she has a party planned for the finish tomorrow with family, friends, the local papers etc all booked to watch her walk back home. The feeling of responsibility taking a 61yo blind woman on a trek across desolate moors in awful weather with extremely patchy phone signal was weighing heavily on me! Anyway, I decided to leave Tarka and Lochan at home as Lochan hates the rain and I thought if anything were to go wrong I would be better off without them. So off we set in full mountain protective gear (me) and a pair of leaky waterproof trousers and a free high vis showerproof-at-best coat from guide dogs (Chris)! I staggered along with map, compass, massive first aid kit, food, water and bivibags (just in case) and set a reasonably fast pace. Faith the guide dog has 3 speeds - slow, medium and "I've just seen another grouse" so we kept up the grouse pace for as long as possible and completed the 10 miles in 3.5 hours. Faith was getting pretty tired by the end, and kept leading Chris over to benches on the path clearly wanting a sit down but I was having none of it in the awful weather! She also started to walk slightly off the path, guiding Chris a little too far to the left and I think her paws were getting tender after 30 miles on rough ground this week and she was avoiding any flint and gravel and choosing to walk on softer grass on the verges. However, over all Faith has been fantastic, a total star, and they are both safely tucked up warm and dry at home preparing for the last leg of their journey tomorrow. I'm going to walk out the last couple of miles with Tarka and Lochan to meet them coming home, the end of a terrific effort from Chris and Faith.
Brilliant , what an achievement , the conditions sound horrendous too , so very well done and good luck all for tomorrow x
Oh wow! Sounds like a real tough challenge. Poor Faith.....quite funny though I shouldn't say so. Well done
Wow, that sounds hard going! That's a tough pace for anyone on rough ground, let alone a blind person! Well done to everyone x
