Coming down a short slope to cross a small stream, waves whitening against the narrow Anglesey bay I suddenly thought. My friends have walked here.
Will and Ed with their tall bikes (www.tallbiketourbritain.com). Hannah with her donkey (www.seasidedonkey.co.uk). Rebecca Morris, a thousand miles around the Welsh outline.
Then there's others, walkers, authors, inspirations.  Christian around Britain. John Merrill 'Turn right at Land's End', Shally Hunt and her husband 'The sea on our left',  Spud Taylor-Ponsonby and her dog Tess 'Two feet, four paws'.
I pushed up the hill, leaning forward to take the weight of my rucksack more fully against my shoulders, placing my feet carefully to dig against the slope and I thought of others who had done the same.
All had trodden in these steps, fought the wind or basked in the sun. All had made the effort, step after step for hour after hour in pursuit of their own, personal challenge, borne from the joy of walking or the unexpected obstacles that living brings.  My effort was just the latest of the many who had gone this way before.

I came to the burial mound about thirty minutes later. The mark of those who went before, this time thousands of years ago.   I read the sign, detailing the known rites and customs of those long dead people, details scratched together from patient collectors and chemical analysis, marks scored into stones, bubbling brews poured onto embers.  Frog, toad, eel, limpet, grass.  Incantations muttered, putting the dead to rest in this circle of stones, inside a heap of earth on a headland above the sea, thousands of years ago when the limits of the known world were far smaller than ours.  I walked down a short corridor, into the mound to see the covered circle of stones within.  As I came near the gateway I started to breathe heavily with a sense of a deep movement of power emanating from the inside of the dark space.  It's as if I was caught in the current of a whirlwind of energy but barely attuned to it enough to sense more than the ripples at the edges, like a child playing on the carpet as the adults discuss politics or divorce.  I stood at the metal barring the inside of the space and breathed, trying to feel what was coming from in there.  Like a bird hopping at the corner of my vision that would disappear if I looked directly at it I could only try and feel, holding my senses out like fingers in the current, trying to feel something trailing through them.  Tears fell down my face as I shakily breathed in and out, thinking of the people here, pouring their ritual into the earth, creating their sacred space.
I may know the mechanics of cell division, or why we get rainbows, or where the sun goes when it disappears. I may be able to live without daily foraging for food or talk to my sister in Mexico without seeing her face.  But what do they know that I don't?  What beliefs do they have that I have long forgotten? I truly cannot imagine.
I came out, unsteadily, back into the crashing unrelenting wind and continued on under the bright sky, wondering whether life really is better these days, with animals in cages, food made of emulsifiers and additives and humans scraping and squeezing the last of the earth's resources into their greedy mouths.  Do we live in harmony and die in peace?  Did they?
Later on I came to another sacred space, the church in the sea, St Cwyfans, walled up, protected, saved from the hungry water, crashing against the rocks, eating buildings from the foundations up.  It stood high on an island of grass, protected by a sea wall, a collection of rocks saved by humans, caring for their sacred spaces.

Strangely that day, unusual in all the days I've been walking, was where I found traces of the walkers who'd gone before.  I came to Aberffraw and went to a cafe where Rebecca Morris had told me to stop.  She'd walked in there and made friends with the owner, had tea, cakes, dinner and been invited to stay the night.  I told the owner who I was, and we sat for a while, talking about her experience of Rebecca, the quiet, unobtrusive woman tanned brown as a nut, who was steadily walking the Welsh coastline.  "She sat over there" said Linda the cafe owner, "that's her seat." And so we sat there again in honour of Rebecca, to have our photo taken.  One walker sitting in place of another, remembering her journey months earlier.
I said goodbye and walked away, it wasn't until I was almost at the gate that a man called after me.  It was Richard, the craftsman from the workshop opposite and a friend of the woman I was due to stay with that night.  He invited me into his space and I found myself having a conversation with another cancer sufferer, a coper, in his case, using work and deliberate cheerfulness as his distraction from the fear that cancer can bring. We had a brilliant conversation about all kinds of things, he gave me a book, I met another friend of his, all wonderful. It was almost at the end, as I was preparing to leave that he mentioned he'd met an inspiration of mine.  Christian around Britain, the man who walked the entire British coastline as I was in preparation for my own challenge, finishing just a few weeks after I started.  Not only did he walk 7000+ miles, he slept rough the entire time, trying to get people to talk about the problems of homelessness in ex-servicemen.  Not once did this man crawl into a bed to ease the aches in his bones.  He showed me a picture of Christian standing outside his shop - and then we went and took the same photo with me.
There is no end to this story, it's just me walking away again, continuing on my path around the country.  I haven't thought much since about those who went before, it just seemed to be that day of realisation of the many people in whose footsteps I tread.

This time three years ago I went to the doctor about a strange feeling in my abdomen.

This time three years ago I started the process that led to major surgery and an ovarian cancer diagnosis.

This time three years ago my life changed.  Suddenly I was vulnerable.  Suddenly I felt mortal.

Three years ago, I'd spent the previous six months on a kayak journey, paddling the length of the Danube before settling for the winter in a small ramshackle house in Bulgaria.  I was in the best physical shape of my life - while unknowingly growing a huge tumour.
It was an incredible shock to come to the UK for a Christmas visit and not go home again; because I had cancer.

I'm far away now from all the fear, from the physical pain of treatment and from the pure uncertainty of illness.  Cancer hovered in front of my face for months, blocking my vision, my thoughts, my feelings about anything else.  My thoughts focused inwards, down into my pelvis, thinking about growths, about jostling of organs, blood supplies, cell division.

I remember going for a walk one day, the sun of May was starting to warm the fields and I could appreciate the beautiful surroundings of my new home, my new beginning post illness.  I came through a small piece of forestry, just a thin track winding through the trees and out into a field of long grass where I lay down under the blue sky.  I rolled up my top to allow the sun across my scar in a gesture of healing and positivity but soon found my hands running across my belly and my thoughts disappearing into the worry within and realised that that was where I'd been for months, the cloud of fear surrounding me, living with my thoughts turned inwards, the sun just bringing me out of it for a short time and showing me another, lighter way of being.

I was very lucky, in a cancer way of speaking.  Just one tumour, encapsulated, three months of illness and a quick recovery.  Not the dragging slow poison of chemotherapy but a quick sharp slash of a wound to recover from.

It feels a long way away now, the way trauma fades in the passage of time.  I'm strong now, physically and mentally.  Not only has my body healed but I know I can push it again, I know I can use it to take me out into the world, to survive in tough condidtions, to walk over mountains in wind and rain.
When it aches and stiffens, when I collapse and groan at the end of a day it's because I've walked miles, with only a rucksack and a map for company.  I can make a tent in a field and not feel vulnerable.  I can walk thousands of miles. 

I'm not sure what I want to say about this.  Am I telling you about the experience to warn you about ovarian cancer or just marking how far I've come.
Maybe I'm just marking how far I've come.  A year of illness, a year of working, a year of walking and here I am, out the other side, myself again.  How neat.

I'm coming to the end of ten days of walking, a return to it after the Christmas break.  I've walked 87 miles in the last ten days, not enough really.  Not as much as I want to be walking.
I've been walking through Anglesey, there have been half days, there has been time spent waiting in barns for the worst of the rain to stop, spent dozing in caravans, spent dripping in pubs thinking about where I could sleep that night.  I'm not sure how I've managed to walk so little though.  Maybe it's because I haven't been very good at early mornings; this time of year there's so little light that I need to get up early in order to get a decent mileage in before dark and most mornings, eszpecially when I'm staying woith someone, I don't get going until ten.
Anglesey is pretty amazing though, gorgeous craggy cliffs and small bays with crashing waves.  It's a new experience compared to the relatively unchanging countryside vistas I'm used to after almost two thousand miles of inland walking.
I've been filmed for ITV news, that was pretty cool.  A really nice morning trying to enumerate my feelings in a calm yet interesting way without repeating myself, touching my hair or saying erm too much.  I felt good about it as I walked into Holyhead that afternoon.  It was different that night as I freaked out a bit when it was shown, the stark reflection of my physicality on screen a little unwelcome.
I'm having my day off in a holiday let, five bedrooms, just as many bathrooms, a sea view and huge tv, just for me.  I can sit here and watch the excerable weather outside, feeling very glad I'm not out there battling it.
I'm glueing my boots today, they're slpit at the sides and I'm not quite ready to buy another pair yet.  I'm also sewing various holes that have appeared in various pieces of clothing, detangling hair whipped into tangles by 40mph winds and rubbing muscle oil into my legs.  Oh and eating cereal and crisps.  It's a pretty normal day off really.
Not sure what else to say, I spend my days crafting beautiful words and insights as I walk with the wind and hillsides but somehow, when I come to rest, I just want to sit and not do anything at all, my brain is resting too I suppose.

There have been a lot of kind and friendly people crammed into this last week.

Just this minute, as I'm typing this sentence, the people at the table across from me in this cafe in Amlwch Port have offered me a place to stay when I reach Llanfachraeth, two days ahead.

The cafe owner has dropped a couple of pounds into my tin and probably won't charge me for the tea.

This morning the bus driver taking me from Penraeth back to my starting place at the Pilot Boat paid for my ticket and gave me twenty pounds, with the strict stipulation that ten pounds was for me and ten for charity.  "People matter" he said.  "You're doing a great thing and you need to take care of yourself".

Last night I was hosted by Kate, Simon and their two bright, interested children.  They provided a bath, good food, drawings, chat about potatoes and other things and got me nicely drunk.

When I arrived at the Pilot Boat, my place to stop walking for the day and meet Kate I had a couple of pints.  The women behind the bar wouldn't let me pay for the drinks, one of them telling me about her epic feats - Anglesey in four days! Great Wall of China!  Kickboxing!  Dryathalon!  She was doing a lot of fundraising for her charity but still, when I gave her my card, handed me fifty pounds for my tin.

The ladies in the bar knew I was coming because Steph Scott had taken my bag ahead for me.  She'd contacted me at half seven that morning "Can I come and walk with you today?" "Sure, Ship Inn at tenish" "Great, do you need anything?"  Steph lives in Shrewsbury and when I passed through there on the river Severn, all the way back in March she came out and walked with me for a few hours, carrying her 9 month old daughter on her back.  This time she brought the rest of her family, they'd come to Caernarfon for a New Year break and to walk with me again.  Five year old Ben and husband Pete all accompanied me for a lovely few hours tramping up and down the headlands of Moelfre, catching up on all that had passed for us both, it felt like minutes had passed when we arrived at their car.  They took my rucksack ahead for the days remaining miles and promised to come out and meet me again in the Spring.

I'd received Steph's text while I was still in bed at Sharman and Gareth's house. Sharman is the manager of the Ship Inn at Red Wharf Bay where I'd blown in on New Year's Day, windshocked and dripping wet.  It was stormy outside and I'd asked if I could camp in the pub garden, it looked to be curled round against the wind.  It wasn't really, and when I'd gone out there later to look for a place to camp I'd decided against the garden in favour of a dry doorway behind the yacht club further down the promenade, the only truly sheltered place I'd found that day.  When I got back inside the pub the manager came over, slipping a fiver into the tin and offered me a bed at her place.  One of the most needed and most unexpected beds I've had in this journey.

People have been friendly on Anglesey, recognising me, saying hello.  It's a nice place and, when the rain isn't coming sheeting like silver fish scales, it's a very beautiful place.
I expected a quite isolated and tough journey around the island, with only one bed offer in advance I thought I'd be camping lots, hardly seeing or speaking to anyone.  I've received a lot in just these four days, it's kind of wonderful really.

I can't plan for any of these things to happen to me; I can only walk and because I am walking these things will come.

Tonight I'll camp. I'm already in the tent, in a quiet field under a glowing moon and tomorrow I'm going to arrive at a cousin of Steph's who owns the most northerly point in Wales.  Will I be able to set foot on it?  I do hope so.....