Day 6 Dursley to Old Sodbury

Weather:   Sunny early followed by stormy showers

Distance covered today: 28.0km ( 17.4 mi)

Last night’s B&B: 7 Prospect Place (£34)

% Complete:   87.1%

GPS satellite track of today’s route: Day6 (click!)

This was always going to be a marathon and so it turned out! In total ignorance of the fact that today was John’s birthday, I had managed to design the longest day of our trip, and this happened to coincide with the only bad weather we have experienced so far. Not that it was all that bad, but we did get caught in a couple of showers along the way and it was fascinating watching the storms as they built and blew around us.  The clouds would arrive, seemingly out of nowhere, whipped along by a sudden rising wind. We had seconds to don rain-gear before the storm erupted, complete with hail and driving rain. Yet minutes later we were once again wandering along in bright spring sunshine.

The result of all this stopping and starting, and the fact that the Cotswold Way was doing its usual thing of climbing to the very top of every available hill only to descend to the bottom immediately afterwards, meant that we only arrived at our accommodation for the night, the Dog Inn in Old Sodbury, at 7pm.  There was barely time for a quick bath before getting down to the serious business of celebrating John’s birthday!  Meanwhile, as we approached our destination after hours and hours of walking, the banter inevitably started to take advantage of its colourful name. “Where the hell is the dog?” and “Will we ever get to sodding Sodbury??”

Poor Yasmin! I’m afraid that the urge to celebrate overcame both John and I in no uncertain terms. I remember discussing customer service and food quality (the Dog Inn wasn’t exactly distinguishing itself in these terms) with John in increasingly heated terms, over and over again. John believes that one should help an organisation by making one’s displeasure explicit so they can learn from their mistakes. I tend to follow Veronica’s very English lead of not making a scene, because it’s not going to make any difference anyway, and one doesn’t want to make a fuss, does one?

We went around this argument, colouring increasingly forceful opinion with ever longer anecdotal evidence until things started to blur. Well, at least they started to blur for me!  I do remember that the conversation drifted towards the more personal towards the end, with me in my cups, bemoaning the fact that I have reached the philosophical state where I truly believe that all my experience is now of no value to anyone. John too must have been very far gone, because under normal circumstances, he would have leapt at the opportunity to agree, but I seem to recall that he was trying to persuade me that this wasn’t true!!  After that, who knows what happened. I find myself in bed this morning with a heavy head and an unfinished blog! Ouch!

At least today’s walk is half the length of yesterday. I should have recovered by the end!

John at his breakfast birthday party this morning

No groping in Dursley!!

Only in England!!!!

More gorgeous Cotswold countryside

Yet another celebration of the battle of Waterloo

Two new friends for Veronica

“After the storm”