Rat Race Run Britannia - Week 1, day 1 - Lands End to Portreath


Stepping in style

Distance: 54.24km (total so far 54.24km)
Total climb: 1311m (total so far 1311m)
Steps: 69,485 (total so far 69,485)

Also:

Number of cornish pasties eaten: 1
Number of stiles climbed: 329 (approx). Andy climbed one less because she worked out that the gate was already open when I'd already climbed over.

Lands End to Pendeen - the rocky bit


Ready to go!


Go west! (well, hopefully more north east)


Trail without a view


Pendeen

Pendeen to St. Ives - stiles with style


A cornish stile. No prizes for guessing that stone is easier to come by in Cornwall than wood.



It gets more fun. This is a Cornish cattle grid - we're not sure whether they keep Cornish alligators in the pit below the steps!



Even better - steps with a stiles on top. Maximum points.


Arrival in St. Ives - and, more importantly, lunch

St. Ives to Godrevy Towans - the bit with lots of steps


The good news after lunch was that we finished the stiles and cattle grids. The bad news was that they were replaced by steps. At the time we thought there were quite a lot of steps - by the end of day 3, we realised that the number was really quite mild!

Amusement was provided by the Hayle Estuary, where you had to wade a bit!



Godrevy Towans to Padstow - the bit with ups and downs

This should have been a relatively easy last 10km, but then the coast decided we hadn't done enough that  day and started to fight us. the last 3km took considerably over an hour as we went down precipitous steps (and if I say the steps were high, you can imagine what they were like for shorter people!). The plus point was that the views were fairly stunning:



We weren't complaining when the finish line finally came round. Day 1 complete. As was helpfully pointed out that evening, we now had less than a thousand miles to go. By three.

Song of the day: "Long Hot Summer" by the Style (or Stile) Council. The puns are not going to get better! (and if I can work out how to embed on this fairly poor Blogger app, I'll do that next time)


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