Last weekend some friends and I got together for some serious walking along the Cotswold Way. It was a reunion of university friends who first met in 1975 and who have kept in touch ever since. That makes us quite old now, which means that I think we can rightly be proud that a) we have stuck together all this time, and b) we managed a 22 kilometre walk without dying or even needing medical assistance.
Dave had organised the whole thing. I drove down to Ilmington on the Friday and spent the evening with Dave and his partner Liz. That was when Dave broke it to me that his black labrador Ella would be sleeping in our shared hotel room the following night!
We drove to the rendezvous at the Seven Springs pub where the A436 and A435 intersect south of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Already there were Michèle and her husband Rob (the only one not of the original ’75ers), Dick and his wife Sue, and Kate. Rob handed out some Herbalife protein bars with dodgy ‘use by’ dates, and we set off. All of us, that is except Michèle who has chronic back pain. She had volunteered to ferry all our luggage to the destination hotel in Painswick.
The weather was dry and cool, but unlike the previous day Continue reading →
