Myself

This is us on our longest training walk yet. Today we aimed for 20 miles.

A good set off, fairly brisk averaging our pace of 3.5 miles per hour, sun shining, a little breeze, sports drink, energy sweets, jelly beans and randoms, feet covered in vaseline, hats and tea shirts on to advertise our cause, phones set to track our walk and little tracker gadgets in place to also track our walk to be double sure.

We stopped on the by pass for our photo, 3 miles done, feeling good. The first lap of our route with bathroom stops planned at Sainsburys and asda, more drink purchased and all was good. First lap completed in around 3 hours. A stop at asda, refuelled and off we went round again.

We looked at the long stretch of road at the by pass, its a mile I'm informed! 17 minutes and we should be at the end of it or so I thought! On the way over the by pass I discovered I'd lost my little tracker, its fell off. Oh no, progress cannot be measured. My Friend said to track my tracker, if you go on the app and find tracker it locates it for you. So we did and it showed it was still at asda! I rang asda and they would have a look. It wasn't there they informed me by phone.

Oh well, its gone but we kept checking the tracker and it was still in asda. We continued our walk but the 15 minutes over the by pass was now 25 minutes putting us well back of our schedule!

We continued our circle, bathroom stop at sainsburys and on the home stretch up stanwix bank where we both discovered we had blisters! But we soldiered on and by now our phones were running flat and we needed the app to be able to locate my tracker so from now emergency texts and calls only!

We arrived at asda, my phone was still alive only just with 13% life in it. Would it be enough to text the children and locate a tracker? We got excited because the app showed where we were and where my device was. We visited the bathroom to check, retraced our steps in store but no tracker. It had to be outside in the carpark not that we walked in the car park but it may have been kicked along. We were like aneka rice in the carpark, i had the phone and was telling my friend which way to go left or right. This was so funny but not the funniest yet!

We couldn't find it and just as the app said we were close my phone died! As it would. So all data lost now from my phone app to tell us how far we walked, how long it took and our speed - all gone. My friend said it was ok cos she had her app so we would know. How wrong, her phone died too!

Now for the funniest bit of today! We arrived back at my friends, a quick phone charge and then her friend would come and help us look in car park, we thought he may have a better idea than us of how to locate this thing! Turned out he never! He too was like my friend and I! It's telling us its this way, no its not its over there, now its telling us to go back that way, we are stood on top of it, all the while the three of us are zig zagging around the carpark in a little line looking on the floor at anything light coloured!

At 10.30 the light and the little device had beaten us, we gave up and came home.

We never fail to have an adventure and the good side is, we had a laugh, we achieved our goal of 20 miles and probably more the times we walked around the car park and we only had 3 blisters between us.

Well done the carlisle ladies, even if I do say so myself.