Day 8: North and South

We left Hayle on the north coast of Cornwall and walked to Marazion on the south coast. It's about 5 miles coast-to-coast across this thinnest part of Cornwall.

At Marazion we saw St Michael's Mount, tide in, so no chance of hopping across the causeway for a look around.

From a perfect blue sky in the morning on the north coast, by the time we'd reached St Michael's Mount just a couple of hours later the clouds had rolled in and the forecast was looking pretty bad for later on.

We met a lady in Marazion that told us her story about Macmillan helping her when she had a brain tumour 4 years ago. She has just been for a check up with her specialist who said she didn't need another appointment for a year. A great success story. We've heard so many great stories about the charities that we are walking for, and what they mean to so many people.

Please support the excellent work of Macmillan and RMH Bristol by sponsoring our walk here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/walklandsend

When we reached Penzance we made the decision to push onwards to Land's End and combine the two last days into one. We'd always factored in flexibility with the days in case of delays, bad weather, or any other problems, but so far we were on track and on good form so we thought we would be able to make the last 9 miles before the weather closed in on us and before it got dark.

Did we make it? Was it possible? Find out in the next installment of the blog!

Here are a few photos from the Hayle - Penzance walk:

Day 8: Shillingstone to Maiden Newton

We left Shillingstone armed with a packed lunch (thanks to Carol from the Willows tea rooms) knowing that there would be little chance of encountering any shops or pubs or other places for getting food or water up on the Ridgeway.

The Ridgeway, as the name suggests, is mostly high up with spectacular views over Dorset. However there are plenty of times where we had to change from one ridge to another. This involved significant dropping down into a valley in order to climb back up to the next ridge.

We are building towards the kinds of ups and downs we're likely to encounter on the coast path in the next few days, so we see it all as a nice progression. We definitely did this walk in the right direction - heading towards the west - both because of building up to the tougher walks and because the cold easterly winds are behind us.