Day 36 Part 1 - Prison visiting

Roger and Mary at Wellwater B&B gave me a filling and very tasty breakfast before I left Thornbury. It was good to get on the road slightly earlier than usual as I'd always known this would be one of the was most testing days. I had nineteen miles to walk and the southern hills of the Cotswolds to climb.

The cloud soon lifted and I walked an easy few miles in sunshine, across the A38 and over the M5. This was the first time in the whole route that I was heading east as well as north and it felt odd for the sunshine to fall on my right side.

I turned to pass Leyhill prison, where I spent Holy Week in 2000. Julie, and I lead a mission with a dozen other students and it was one of the most significant parts of my training. It would have been great to go inside, to wander through the wings where we had many conversations with prisoners, the theatre where we put on a passion play with the help of the inmates, the chapel where a spontaneous Good Friday service took place, the cell where I slept. But those visits are hard to arrange.

It occured to me that with a third of Leyhill's prisoners serving life sentences, some of those who I met all those years ago might still be inside.

My walking verse for the day was the great injunction fRom Micah 6.8, "...what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."

I bought a light lunch at the Tortworth Estate shop, chatted with assistants and took to the road again.

The noise of the M5 was a more or less constant companion and I wondered if I might be able to slip through the trees and have a coffee at Michaelwood Services. I'd have enjoyed being a pedestrian visitor but sadly, I couldn't find any access.

I'd had a late night with Neil and by the time I paused at the railway bridge I was ready for a nap. But without anywhere to sit down I pushed on towards the hills and the Tyndale Monument.

Past Nibley Green I stopped for a chat with a lady, across her garden wall half way up Stinchcombe Hill. She suggested that I go left and pick up the Cotswold Way footpath. But I'd already worked out what I thought would be an easier route, taking a steep section on the road and then following a footpath through the woods to Dursley. I should have listened to her advice.

I worked out long ago that the natural way of walking uphill, taking slow strides, isn't very efficient. Better to shorten your stride and keep to a regular pace. So I shuffled up the 1:4 gradient, like a cyclist in his lowest gear. It also pays not to look for the summit, which is inevitably succeeded by another as the undulations of the road cheat your expectations. Instead, I don't think about the painfully slow progress I'm making, I simply trudge.

I found the sign pointing into footpath through the woods but within a hundred yards it petered out in a jumble of muddy tracks and clearings. I realised it was very likely that I'd miss the track that I was aiming for, so retraced my steps to the road again.

I passed an 'unofficial' travellers camp, with a large dog sprawled in the sunshine in the middle of the road. I turned at the next downhill road, which now joined the Cotswold Way, into Dursley.

(continued in part two)