Four weeks in... June (part 1)

Let me tell you how it all went. As a recap, Heather challenged me to continue the 5K every day in May, which I refused, but I did agree to do 35km every week in June.

Week one I didn't do any running. Sal's rules clearly stipulated that walking or running was OK, and actually, I walked about 60km during the week, so I think although it was cheaty, it was also "fair". Excitingly, I did this walking with my Facebook Stalker! I like calling Britta my Facebook stalker, mainly just for the reaction. However, it was something of an adventure to go on holiday with someone you've only met twice for about half an hour each time. But I felt like I know her pretty well, and she definitely likes everything I do. Well, to rephrase that, she **likes** everything I post on Facebook. So what could go wrong?

Well, on that front, nothing, fortunately. Far from going wrong, Britta turned out to actually be a sort of Germanic version of me: by which I mean, ruthlessly efficient. I know, I know, some of you are struggling with how I could still be me if I were ruthlessly efficient. But really! What fun! Anyway, the first thing that did go wrong was that Lufthansa kindly didn't bother putting Britta's pack on the plane, so before I'd actually met her, she was texting me, asking if there was any chance I could speak English to the people in Birmingham airport. Obviously, the answer to this was, no, they're from Birmingham, but I did my best, and in a confused sort of way, it worked. Although when they finally located the bag, they promised it would be delivered the following day, the courier then rang us at 11:30pm that same night to say he was nearly there. We had to give him our current address (as we'd given him Day 2's) and tell him he had a bit further to go.

We were walking along the Llyn Peninsular coast path, and everything else was straight forward. Well, we didn't have a very up-to-date map, and I explained to Britta about Open Access, so we had to kind of make up a path a few times, but you know, nothing catastrophic. And it was really pretty! Lots of flowers and cliffs and sea and cows, and you know, stuff you expect in countryside. And clouds. Stuff you expect in North Wales.

And then came some wildlife, although I use the word "life" tenuously, that we weren't necessarily expecting. Yes, this is some roadkill, which appears for all the world that a grass-snake ate a frog. And then, you know, didn't. My money is on a dog having taken the snake by the tail and shaken it against the road until it died. Although it was very reminiscent of the Helen Bannerman book, Little Black Quibba, where a nasty python ate three frogs that were trying to warn Little Black Quibba of the danger he was in. However, it was all OK as they later were freed when the python was pulled into three pieces during a fight with an elephant. Look, it was good, OK? Let's leave it there.

In order to arrive at our hotel in daylight hours, we planned to get a bus from Rhiw, which all worked, and we also boarded the bus just as the rain started, luckily. Anyway, we stayed in luxury that night, having booked into Tremfan Hall, where we celebrated Britta's birthday with some rather lovely food at their restaurant.

The next day, it was really raining. It looked horrible. We were walking from luxury Tremfan to a B&B of dubious quality in Pwllheli (we had a fair idea of this because we'd checked it out before boarding the bus in Pwllheli). The idea of just staying by the fire at Tremfan, instead of trudging with packs on backs, was very, very tempting. Luckily Plan B came to play - my mate Jim said he'd come out for a walk with us, and we opted to jump in his car and see the north coast, so we drove to Whistling Sands or Porth Oer, (which tragically don't whistle when they are damp, but Jim assures me they do at other times), and walked up to the top of the headland and back. It was very damp, but extra fun, because we didn't have our packs on. And Jim tried to persuade Britta that "Cafe - Open" was Welsh for "Sewage Works", which made us all laugh.

Before we set out from Tremfan, we had fun with "The Book of Fate" which was an impressively large tome, which you can ask questions of. A Yes/No question reveals excellent results. "Shall we go swimming?" returned "This may bring astonishing results", and later, "No, but really, shall we go swimming?" we got "Only an idiot would pursue this course of action". (This is available as an App on i-Tunes).

The Pwllheli B&B was run by normal B&B people, by which I mean they were clinically insane. But you know, in a harmless way. It appeared to be run by at least 3 generations of women. I don't know how that is genetically possible, but it worked for them. Ish. I think perhaps care-in-the-community missed something when they didn't think to just set people up with B&Bs. We set out early for Criccieth, just about failing to get rained on, and found our B&B booked there was slightly more normal, with a talkative, but friendly couple. They gave us some great advice that instead of going to Criccieth Castle, you get the same view, but for free, from the hill just behind it.

We liked our last day's walk, and it was fortunate that it was the last day, because we spent some time on a pebbly beach, and it turned out that we both kinda like rocks. So it could have gotten heavy if we'd started out on that beach. Funnily enough neither of us were particularly looking forward to that day, but it turned out to be really lovely, with a little dip away from the coast, and some lovely scenary (by which I mean trees and woods).

We tried desperately to remember the name of the pub we'd been recommended by Britta's friend Carolyn but failed... although funnily enough, we accidentally picked it anyway, and had a great last evening with some live music from a very mottley crew. Meanwhile, Britain was going mad over the Jubilee, which I followed on Facebook, via "Gin O'Clock"'s updates, which made me giggle quite a lot. I know one thing though - Jubilee weekend or not, I wouldn't have traded places.