Gloucester to St Leonards on Sea

Leaving home

A sort of pilgrimage for Tom and I, this hike saw us taking on 215 miles of undulating terrain in a very wet and windy April in the UK. Having lost Tom’s dad Derek to prostate cancer last year, we wanted to honour him by walking from his front door in Gloucester to the Bo Peep pub in St Leonards on Sea where he grew up, and where we were meeting up with several members of the family. Due to the meet up, we only had a short timescale to complete the walk - 9 days in total.

We did the entire thing on footpaths (when they weren’t completely underwater or inaccessible) and it took us on sections of the Wysis Way, the Cotswold Canals Paths, the Thames Path, and the entirety of the South Down’s Way from Winchester to Eastbourne. The last part was a footpath that ran along the seafront from Eastbourne to St Leonards.

We love hiking as you probably know from our website, social media, or from just chatting to us, and so the idea to do this long distance hike seemed like something both of us would thoroughly enjoy. And we did - when our feet weren’t in agony from walking on days old blisters and our shoulders weren’t aching from the weight of our backpacks - we traversed fields, saw lots of wildlife and stopped at picture-perfect villages for coffee and cake. We set up the tent in the middle of nowhere with roe deer for company and owl’s hooting at night. We really enjoyed getting back to basics (although using the shovel when required was probably my least favourite part!!!) and the rhythm of one foot in front of the other became a sort of mantra to live by for our time in the wilds of England. Eat, sleep, walk, repeat.

The footpath, or a river?

We lost track of what day it was, where in the world we were, or how far we had progressed on the hike. Tom had turned his phone off for the walk to minimise notifications and I was mainly using mine to raise awareness of the hike to raise money for charity, but messaging and life admin was put on the back burner.

We supported and encouraged each other throughout the walk. I think doing it alone would have been a lot harder, and not just because the tent was a faff to put up! We shared the duties of cooking and washing up, we helped each other apply blister plasters and ointments, we sang together and made jokes, which made the whole thing a lot more bearable when the winds were up to 45 mph or the rain was lashing down. Evenings in the tent were spent writing our exploits down, chatting about other walks we might do one day, playing cards and drinking Derek’s favourite tipple of “Ginger Frog” from our hipflask before we fell into a deep exhausted sleep usually around 7.30pm.

Wild camping spot

I can honestly say that this hike was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Physically exhausting and mentally draining, the miles blurred and converged as we continued on our way, but by day 7 my feet had become so painful that I could only complete half the day’s miles and had to call my mum to get her to help us out. My feet were so blistered and swollen that once I took my shoes off I couldn’t get them back on - I could barely walk at all, so a rest day was required. Tom carried on without me and although he completed it, he said that doing a small part of the hike alone was quite difficult mentally. We met up again in Eastbourne and his feet were as bad as mine that night!

I’m pleased to say that I managed to do the last 4 miles of the last day, from Collingwood to St Leonards on Sea, as I really wanted to finish what I had started. We whooped and cheered as the Bo Peep pub came into view and we realised what we had achieved.

- More mileage than 8 marathons in 9 days

- 215 miles by foot (slightly less for me )

- Ascended and descended over 73% of the height of Everest

- 83 hours walking

- Wild camping, campsites and hotels

- Rain, sun, and crazy winds of 45 mph

- Carried all our camping equipment, clothes and food

- Lost 6lbs in weight

- Crossed 3 motorways

- 478,000 steps

- Went through 6 counties (Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, West Sussex and East Sussex)

The route showing the elevation

Looking back now at what we achieved I can see that we set ourselves a mammoth task and that if we’d have had just one more additional day to complete the route we may have been able to relax a bit more. However, we managed to do what we intended to do, a crazy challenge but one that brought us even closer together and showed us that we can do anything we set our minds to!

We raised £550 for Gloucestershire hospitals in memory of Derek which is a total we are really happy with as we only set out to raise £100. The money will go towards supporting other local people whom need NHS care.

Safe to say we had several drinks over the weekend to celebrate our achievement, and we’ve got a few days for our blisters to heal before we take on our next hiking challenges in Scotland.. watch this space.

The finish line, the Bo Peep pub in St Leonards on Sea