I'm spun out today; feelings blurred, body aching.  It's been a solid week of daily drinking, mince pie stuffing and cold lamb leftovers.  My muscles hurt; am I slowly relaxing after a week without walking or building up a layer of achohol toxins in my body.  Who knows, I just know that I'm going ahead to carry on.  Tomorrow.
I seem to have stopped being able to write this journey down, it's all becoing a blur.  One day I look up to the sky and there's a full moon, the next time I look the moon has all but disappeared, just a thin bright sliver decorating the horizon.  Time, days, miles are passing and they're indiscriminate from each other.  I can only let them pass, not trying to hold onto each one, there are too many now, ten months of memorable days have bulged and breached my memory banks.  It's all the same.  It's all amazing but it's also all the same.

I'm heading for Anglesey, that wonderous flat island.  Flat and frost free.  It should be a breeze; the wind being the only problem.  I'll press ahead, just 1300 miles to go, it feels like nothing, I'm sure I won't feel like that in time.  There's still months ahead.  Months more walking and my boots leak.  I'm searching for superglue in Bangor.
Superglue and sardines. and sugar. What I'll need for Anglesey.

It's a windy day outside and I have taken a sneaky half day after walking over Cader Idris yesterday.  I really didn't want to, stay here in someone's house eating bowls of chocolately cereal, drinking tea and watching cookery programmes.  I really don't want to be here, honestly I don't.  I want to be out there in the gale force winds, trussed up in my waterproof trousers and rucksack, fighting to see out of my tear spattered glasses, wiping the liquid that drips from my nose, shoulders hurting from my rucksack, pain striking into my heels every time my feet hit the ground.  Yeah, I really should be out there.
But Dianna, my host, said those magic words last night.  "You're welcome to stay as long as you want, just make yourself comfortable"  I'd come down off Cader Idris, an 11 hour walk through high winds and hail, battering myself up the mountain and down again.  I came down off the mountain at three pm, could have camped but there was the invitation to stay in Barmouth, just five miles on road.  I could do it.  So I walked in the pitch dark, down the steep steep hill and across the railway bridge.  The bridge seemed endless in the darkness, just the small circle of my torchlight highlighting the planks under my feet, the wind whistled through the wires separating me from the trainline.  My feet were stones by this point, just thudding down to the ground, over and over.  I shone the torch down to the water and felt dizzy as soon as I saw it, the sea rushing inland, stirred by the wind.
I arrived, windshocked, in the Mermaid chippy.  Dianna had phoned ahead, I could have whatever I wanted while I waited for her to finish her spinning class.  The lady behind the counter couldn't hear me, I talk quietly when I'm tired but I managed to repeat myself a few times and make my request understood.  Large chips, peas, gravy, mayonnaise, cup of tea and a can of coke.  I ate, slowly, and felt restored.
When I woke up this morning, rain battering against the windows, all I could think of was staying here for the day.  I can't really stop, I only had a day off a couple of days ago, it's not time.  But my feet hurt, my back aches, all the usual stuff but the weather outside is horrible and that gave the excuse I needed to be slow, to have a shower, eat cereal.
Now it's half 11, I've rubbed muscle oil into my legs, written a blog, I've even plucked my eyebrows.  There is nothing else I can do here.  I must leave.
I'll enjoy it once I get out there, the wind whirling my senses out to the horizons, the sight of the hills calling out to the sky.  It's just so hard to start sometimes.

I feel pretty good you know.  What's changed?  Well, I had three weeks off at the end of October, that allowed my feet to relax and repair.  I definitely feel like I have more energy than before I stopped, I'm not aching in my bones, there isn't the complete lack of bounce that I felt as I made my way down to Cardiff.

The clocks have gone back, it gets dark by 5pm.  It's also too cold to sit around outside my sleeping bag, I need to be wrapped up warm, no arms out for reading, getting freezing.  I'm not always in reception and I need to save my phone battery.  When I stop walking I'm usually pretty tired anyway.  Know what all that means? If I'm camping, I'm tucked up in bed by 6pm, going to sleep.  My alarm goes off 6.30 to make the most of the daylight so I'm getting about 12 hours sleep a night.  It feels fantastic.  No joke.  I love it.

Plus I'm not walking over the mountains any more.  The Cambrian Way was really bloody hard, if it saw a mountain coming up, it went over it.  The route I'm taking now, the Coast to Coast, at least goes around some of them.  It's been easier so far and less exhausting.
I feel alright, I have power in my body, in my legs.  I am revelling in what my body is capable of; getting up day after day and walking on for mile after mile after mile.  Not because I trained or because I'm experienced but because I forced it onwards with my strength of will and because it's tough enough to take it.

I can do this, it feels, not easy exactly but absolutely possible.  It's cold but I can deal with that.  The pain in my feet is manageable at present, I can make it about 12 or 13 miles a day.  Sometimes, before the break, coming down the Cambrian Way, 5 or 6 miles would be the most I could do before I collapsed, sleepy and aching.

I'm kind of enjoying myself, soggy tent and painful feet, cold couscous and mackerel fillets, a bundle of clothes that I scrumple up to use as a pillow.  Waking up with a cold nose, poking outside my sleeping bag to see if it's light yet.  Trudging up a country lane, resting my pack against a fence post to check my map, my new hat with a bobble on it.  Copper bracken glowing in the sunlight, muddy farmyards, puddles in lanes.  It's all alright you know.