- Start: Penbury Manor, Tring
- Finish: Astor Court Hotel, Fitzrovia
- Walking Distance: 10.75km
- Total Time: 6 hours
- Drugs taken: Ibuprofen 6 tablets, Paracetamol 2 tablets
Our final day has arrived. After a rather ‘meh’ corporate hotel breakfast,
we set off on our final adventure – the Ivinghoe Beacon!
We left in good spirits from the hotel and soon passed the Grand Union Canal, which is 217km long and connects London with Birmingham.
Then, things start to go wrong. Firstly, it started to rain, (for the first time in this whole trip!) and secondly, my toes which seemed a bit better yesterday began to hurt almost unbearably.
However, we had not come all this way to give up now, so extracting the waterproofs from the bags we limped on up the trail. A signpost soon indicated that we hadn’t go far to go!
We climbed up through Aldbury Nowers nature reserve, home to some fascinating butterflies and flowers.
We walked up Pitstone Hill with wonderful views over the Chilterns.
Limped up Steps Hill with its impressive hollow, Incombe Hole.
Until finally we could see Beacon Hill in the distance.
As we approached it became clear that Beacon Hill was something of a tourist hotspot, by far the busiest place we have been on this trip! Everyone was very nice though and we got lots of ‘well done’s’.
We had done it!
Today’s adventure didn’t stop there, however. Because my toes were so sore, we had made slow progress and were now in danger of missing our lunch at the Rose and Crown in Ivinghoe Village. So, after I had changed into my sandals, so that I could walk at all, we decided to take a short cut down to the village. It quickly became clear that this was a bad plan. The path we chose was very steep and unstable and almost impossible to negotiate in sandals with a heavy bag on.
Eventually, I had to abandon the bag and poor Craig then had to walk back up to fetch it. The next section of our walk demonstrated the weaknesses in our map reading skills, as the two footpaths we intended to follow, didn’t actually meet. However, a certain amount of minor trespassing soon sorted that out and we eventually made it to the pub a whole 8 minutes before the kitchen closed!
We had a nice well deserved lunch of fish and chips and a chicken burger and then because I really couldn’t walk, we got a taxi to Tring Station and a train to Euston.
This evening we are staying in the Astor Court Hotel in Fitzrovia and as the final part of our adventure and celebration of our achievement, we went to see Bernie Dieter’s Berlin Underground at the Underbelly Festival in Cavendish Square.
The show was absolutely fantastic, funny, risque and some of the most amazing dancers and acrobats I’ve ever seen, well worth a visit! The festival has taken over the whole square and includes bars and street food vans as well as the ‘spiegeltent’ venue.
We had a really tasty burrito to round off a very different evening from the previous ones!
Home tomorrow and a chance to reflect on the adventures of the last week.
Well done. I shall miss these emails. It’s been great fun following your adventure. David says he’s glad to see Katie getting her leg over. I bet you had some laughs. Hope to see you when we all arrive back in Micheldever. We are at York at the moment. One more stop before we get home.