I’ll tell you who I hate.

That kid from the ‘forties who didn’t want to know much about penguins.

Can’t stand her. Ugh.

My guidebook said it was all downhill after the golf course on Lansdown Hill.

At about 2:30 today, I emerged from a wooded lane, saw two golfers and burst out crying. I wasn’t ready. Never has a golf course manifested itself to me with such sudden, violent significance. I was a bit of a mess on that final descent into Bath’s manky suburbs too. I have been on a Journey outside the House.

And hey! Right now I’m sat outside Bath Abbey, so I guess I just officially completed the Cotswold Way. Tomorrow I’ll walk back to Bristol, and then the day after that I’ll do a fourteen hour shift at work.

Ouch! That last bit’s not ideal. Or maybe it is. Because this never really was about avoidance. You all spotted that, yeah? Avoidance points the other way. This can’t ever have been about me escaping my life, because it was always me walking back to it.

And bits of that life are beautiful and bits of it are broken. And some of the broken parts are fixable. And some aren’t. And all of it is where I’ve put myself. Step by step.

So what have I got out of this painfully literal and literally painful re-enactment of that?

Maybe more ownership of it? Maybe less fear?

Happy Birthday, Richard Jones

It’s been such a blast having you along for this. Just wish I’d brought a phone prepared to let me see notifications and join wifi networks, so this could have been more of a conversation than a performance.

Won’t be posting much more after this. Want to make sure I’m entirely in the moment these last two days. Just one more post, I reckon. When I reach Bath.

But I think I’ll do something like this again in ten years time. Only maybe do the Pennine Way then.

TWICE the mileage!
TWICE the Deep Heat Max Strength!
TWICE the crying over Angelica Schuyler!

Any of you fancy joining me in person for that one?

The inhabitants of Old Sodbury are so helpful that one just tried to talk me out of finishing the last leg of the Cotswold Way because he knew a quicker way to Bath.

My brain, out walking: Curiosity! Excitement! Euphoria! Stillness!

My brain, the second my head hits the pillow: Hey, remember that death will eventually and inevitably bring the annihilation of your consciousness and that you’ll never do, learn or say anything to stop that from being true or to make it okay. In fact, you haven’t got anything to say to me at all right now, have you? Not without your ‘alcohol’ and your 'radio 4’. Sweat cold.

My host, in the morning: Sleep well?

My mouth: LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES lies and breakfast specifications.

Dance Moms don’t lie. The peaceful stroll is over and it’s all about the challenge now. It’s all gone a bit Eye of the Tiger.

Yesterday morning’s drama was knee pain, and yesterday evening’s was the failing light. Made too leisurely a start, as I wanted to replenish my supply of blister plasters and my landlady wanted to tell me her theses on trump.

Paid for that at the end. Old Sodbury is like a maze. Thankfully, its inhabitants are the friendliest and most helpful minotaurs.

You know that bit at the end of Lucifer where he decides that the freedom most important to him is the freedom to leave?

I could catch the bus to work each morning. I don’t. I walk the five miles. Because I cannot bear to wait for the bus. I cannot stand it. There’re asking me to just WAIT there? For circumstances to decide when I can leave? No no no. Circumstances are gits.

Waiting is really tricky for me. One especially fraught memory is of the time Chrissy’s car broke down by the side of the motorway. We had to wait for the AA to come to our rescue.

That was Christine’s plan anyway. Went along with it for a bit, then couldn’t take the waiting. Had to leave. My preferred plan was to climb the verge of the motorway, escape into the wilderness forever and enter myth.

“I shall become the Man of the Fields!” I said.

“Richard, your attempts to manage your own anxieties through bizarre ‘jokes’ almost always come at the selfish cost of escalating mine,” Christine may have said. She should have done.

“People will speak of the Man of the Fields” I said. How is she still with me? How does she seem to WANT me home?

The nights and early mornings aside (thanks SO MUCH for that extra hour today, clockbastards) it’s been my least anxious week ever this week. I haven’t waited anywhere. I’ve just left and I’ve left and I’ve left. Across the fields.

The person I was just sharing this track with was out with a horse and two large dogs. They could control one of these. It was a dog. Varied which one.