Day 3: Stage 2: Chilworth to Bletchworth: 30 kms, full sun, 23°

It Was The Deviation’s Fault!

We were up at a decent 7 am this morning and I was ready for my first traditional English breakfast complete with grilled tomato and beans! There was enough protein to boost me all the way to our lunch break some 22 kms into the stage where we have now stopped at a traditional pub for a nice lunch in the garden. I’m starting this blog at lunch. 

If you can believe it I was already hungry again! Annemarie too! I managed to consume a ham and cheese sandwich, some tasty potatoes and we also continued our support for the local breweries. Generally on these walks I’ll double my calorie intake. 

Now quite a few hours later, 6 o’clock, and I’m just getting started on the blog. The reason for this was a significant deviation late in the day, but more about that later.

The walk today was head and shoulders better yesterday’s stage. It had everything; steep climbs,  beautiful vistas, a quaint church and lots of friendly people along the way. 

We started off with a long climb out of the valley back to the path, but it was cool with a fresh breeze coming off the ocean quite some miles away. They use miles here not kilometres, and when we are asked how far we’ve walked we might reply, “oh, 10 to 15 km so far” and then there’s that pause. You can see the brain cells working as they try to figure out just how many miles we’ve walked. 

We found this little, almost perfect church at the top of the first climb. It was a real find. Of course I was even more delighted to find the weathervane! Add one more vane to my photo collection!

Then the views started to slide by one after another as we continued east.

It’s now 21:00. We’ve finish our dinner, paid bribes to have a ham and cheese bun made up for our breakfast (staying cool in our window) and now we’ve crawled into bed to write various things. They don’t provide breakfast at this pub so some begging and bribing was required so that we would have something to kick off the day before we hit the trail. There’s basically nothing in this village. We do have tea and coffee in our modest room though. I usually carry some good tea in my pack for emergencies, and this time is no different. I’ve added to that supply the last few days with Twinnings Tea kindly placed on our rooms. High class pubs here!

Meanwhile back at the walk,  earlier today we were walking along really enjoying the woodland paths. Love these when I walk with the bird sounds and other critters keeping things interesting. I counted 7 pheasants this morning!

One of the historic things found along the NDW remains from 1940 a time when Britain was desperately holding on fearing invasion by Nazi Germany. We saw at least 10 pill boxes high up on the hill sides we were traversing and some signage said there were many more in the area 

And what is this you might ask? I’ve read that with global warming that the wine industry is flourishing in England. It was so hot last year that there was no champagne harvest or production in France and things aren’t looking much better this year. Italy is typically harvesting their grape crop almost a month earlier than is typical. I’m hoping that when I reach Italy there will still be grapes on the vines to enjoy! It’s felt it in a few years there will be fine vintages coming out of England. 

As I was saying in yesterdays post, I sort of guesstimated the stage distances from measurements taken on Google Earth. I’d estimated that today’s stage would be 26 km, and in fact it probably would’ve been except that nature worked against us and we were forced to take a 4 km deviation to climb to the top of Box Hill! It was a steep, warm climb with our packs. While the following recap of our walk suggests less than 30 kms, it’s lying because my phone battery was so low that I had to turn off my app so that I could navigate. More about that tomorrow! 

Now it’s 22:30 and I’ve dozed off a few times while writing this tonight😂 Hopefully what I’ve written makes sense. I forgot to add music to the video. Well that’s kind of boring. I’ll do better tomorrow. A 25 km stage and we are sleeping overtop a bakery. I think doing this has been on Annemarie’s bucket list a long time! Annemarie has already fallen deep asleep. Still a bit under the influence of jet lag, she did very well on only the second stage. It wasn’t my fault though, right? 

Time get a few hours sleep. Already excited for the tomorrow! New vistas every day!