Actually only as far as Edzell.
The agonising state of my navigators feet needed to be addressed. Walking was now extremely painful, even wearing sandals. She agreed that I should try to carry out repairs in the interests of her not having to finish the Challenge by walking on her hands.
Health Warning: If you’re squeamish, look away now.
Sitting on the grass with a large bottle of something strong (and that was just me!!) I carefully removed the dressings. It wasn’t a pretty sight – blisters in various states, bruising, blackened nails etc. Not good.
Roger Hoyle turned up to assist and he kindly applied some second skin, a seemingly magical treatment for blisters. All was well for a short time, but it wasn’t long before the discomfort was just excruciating.
Time for surgery.
I sterilised a very sharp knife and managed to drain the unburst blisters. I know that’s not accepted practice, but it was clear that it was the pressure from these blisters that was causing a lot of the pain.
The relief was almost instantaneous. I dried the open wounds and cleaned them with alcohol wash. I then applied antiseptic cream and dressed all the blisters with a special lint. By the time I’d finished there wasn’t much of her feet that was visible. Still, it worked!
We had intended to breakfast at The Retreat but the delays in carrying out foot repairs meant we were too late for the ‘Challenge Special Deal’. No matter, we’d just go for the All Day Breakfast – it was only an extra 50p or so. The waitress came back with the bad news that they had run out of bacon and sausages – although she later said the problem was that the chef didn’t want to cook. I was disappointed, The Retreat does well from the Challenge and I expected better.
A very expensive cheese sandwich later (£5 for a couple of pieces of buttered thin-sliced bread with some very ordinary cheese) we left to make our way to cross the bridge over the River North Esk at Dalhastnie. The foot repairs were holding out, and provided we didn’t push it too hard we should be okay.
The River North Esk from Dalhastnie
We had a 10 minute break at the bridge and were surprised to be joined by Nik. She didn’t hang around, and as she was moving faster than us we didn’t want to hold her back.
By now the sun was beating down – what a change from just a few days earlier. I was running out of suncream and had to be careful to stay covered up.
We took a few more breaks on the way to Edzell – it was impossible to move quickly even if we had wanted to, the combination of still tender feet and very strong sunshine saw to that.
Walking gently into Edzell, I shot off to do a recce – it was around 6.30pm and we needed feeding, a miserable apology for a cheese sandwich was all we’d eaten that day.
Was the Tuck Inn still open? Thankfully it was, and we joined other Challengers for a decent meal of fish and chips and lots of tea. Some of us had an extra portion of chips. Someone ELSE finished Louise’s chips as well!
A good night’s sleep followed, we needed it.
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