When I was in hospital for major surgery, I remember being briefed by my excellent nursing staff about all the tubes and pipes intruding and protruding into/from my body. One of the most important ones in the early days was known as PCA – Patient Controlled Analgesia. Basically, I could click a button whenever I felt the post-surgical pain was too much. As this administered morphine, safeguards were built in – for example, the machine limited me to 2 clicks within 5 minutes and then it wouldn’t accept a request for another 5 minutes. That handheld push button device was never far away from my hands!

I could have done with it today. Yesterday I felt my right knee going downhill but some ‘deep heat’ seemed to do the trick during the walk. However, 1 hour into the walk today, I felt it degrade to the point I was limping badly with still over 10 miles to go. More deep heat and a couple of paracetamols taken. A couple of miles later, I was OK and back to normal pace.

Today’s route was mainly on fairly gentle ground all the way to Carlisle and the sun came out for the second half (welcome back Mr S, not seen you since Newcastle). Basically we came off the ridge that was days 3 and 4, so it was downhill and then flat all the way to Carlisle. Didn’t see very much wall but clear evidence of where it was including the ‘Vallum’ or ditch. Bit more built up than the middle section, so we passed a lot smaller groups of houses. Many of the older ones were built with large redstone blocks – a story for another day. 

Final today tomorrow, 15 miles down to Bowness-on-Solway for a pint of beer! Only 1 though. 

Tune in for some pictures of ‘God’s Country’ over the Firth 🙂