30 km (347.42 km) – Sunday 17th July.

The guide books says this day may be the worst on the whole Pennine Way – how bad could it be? Shorter than yesterday AND the sun was shining. About 6km into our walk Joanne slipped and fell, landing heavily in her arm…it was pretty obvious that something was seriously wrong (even I could spot that from the strange lump on Joanne’s elbow). Luckily we were near a road and it was therefore relatively easy to make arrangements to get Joanne to hospital. Graham called the .lovely patron from Lowbyer to ask for a reliable taxi but Jim insisted on taking them to Carlisle. I didn’t want to continue but after waving off Joanne and Graham there seems no point in us either going to Carlisle or going home so continue we did. The day was gruelling, our overall speed was just 2.5km/h due mainly to deep bogs, long grass and generally difficult conditions. We had a few incidents which required climbing over barbed wire and over locked gates; we thought it very odd that one cow in a field we were crossing was particularly aggressive – every time we came anywhere her she came toward us as opposed to the usual retreating. We climbed over a barbed wire fence and walked down the other side and then noticed a new born calf which of course explained the mothers aggression. The day dragged in but that may in part have been for me down to the fact that I was concerned about Joanne. Tonight I had extremely sore feet but I know tomorrow they will be better, whereas Joanne is now awaiting an operation to fix her broken humerus (I’ve just realised why it’s called the funny bone…and it wasn’t funny at all today ). Wishing Joanne all the best but I don’t think this is the appropriate forum to give a blow by blow account of Joanne’s progress (please contact Graham for more details )