John O'Groats to Lands End - Day 44 Evening

I could not get up out of bed this morning. The sea view came with a gusting Atlantic wind and sporadic rain. I could hear the rain battering down on the tent as I lay there. This time I wasn't trying to wait it out I was just knackered. Maybe I had stayed up too late reading the night before. Yeah, the campsite had a book borrowing service so I found a copy of an old favourite, The Thirty Nine Steps, and read a chunk of that. Story about a Scottish chap who is fed up
with London and ends up running around the countryside.

I eventually got going just before eleven. And I found myself walking in some of the worst rain I have met so far. The wind from the west I have been fighting with on and off since leaving Bristol was driving the rain so hard it stung my face and blinded me so I was having difficulty seeing the oncoming traffic. Yikes.

I stopped for traditional Sunday Lunch at the West Country Inn, the last pub in Devon as you leave for Cornwall. Roast lamb with everything followed by a beautifully presented but ultimately uninspiring cheesecake.

After lunch the rain never really got going again and I plugged away till about four thirty when I stopped for a pot of tea and a battery charge at a pub in Kilkhampton.

So I'm in Cornwall now and by the way the A39 is called the Atlantic Highway. I love that, I really do, the Atlantic Highway.

As the evening warmed up I got out of my waterproofs and managed to get some jogging done. At about eight I spotted a campsite and decided to call it a day.

I'm lying in my tent camped in the Cornish Coasts Campsite just beyond Bude and 11 miles short of Camelford eating breakfast-in-a-can for supper.

GoogleMaps has just told me that it is 77 miles to Lands End. I can't imagine what could stop me being finished by Wednesday (today Sunday 19 July). Anyway, I feel disinclined to count chickens. My right foot feels well dodgy - I haven't mentioned it because I've had so much other good stuff to whinge about but I have a recurring pain in my big toe joint and along the upper arch which comes on sometimes seemingly randomly and sometimes while doing hard running. Anyway, I'll be able to give it a good long rest in a few days.

Hope to see some of you real soon. I'll probably head over to London for a couple of days when I'm done and then back to Motherwell by way of York.