Paint drying, anyone?

Day 8: it’s just as well we are on a mission, because today’s walk along the Grand Union Canal was dull, dull, dull - and the monotony of identical steps made us ache all over. The weather? Dull - even a rain shower would have made a welcome change.

Paul made a valiant attempt to provide excitement by announcing that he had lost one of the socks which he had tied to his rucksack to dry…but then he found it.

The Grand Union is tranquil, right into the city, I’ll say that for it - even the ducks were asleep. And the trees are pretty - the first thousand of them, anyway. We saw four moving boats all day, three of them in the last half-mile before we escaped.

We greeted the streets of Birmingham with relief - seeing a bus was an event. We felt like country boys hitting the big city…certainly we saw no-one else with boots and walking poles. I was tempted to suggest “Everything’s up to date in Kansas City” for our Track of the Day, but Sarah - on the money as usual - came up with a better one: Bruce Springsteen’s Erie Canal, which perfectly captures the drudgery of fifteen miles of towpath.