Tuesday June 13th, East Ilsley to Wallingford, 23.35kms

Woohoo we crossed the half waypoint today, and now have done 80kms.

After our self service buffet breakfast, a quick fight with a coffee machine (not intuitive) and much cutting and sticking of plasters we set off. Liz wearing her sneakers, that Ian brought over last night, rather than her walking boots. We are contemplating throwing the boots into the Thames, they'll make a bigggg splash.

So warm at 8:30! I am feeling super smug that I have my summer puffy jacket with me and a long sleeved hoody😂😂 think there is going to be a pile of stuff that I haven't used. 

East Ilsley is a very pretty village. Liz found a footpath that took us out of the village without us risking our lives on the busy and very narrow road. We headed gently back up to the trail and then walked in the sunshine. There has been a LOT of sunshine.

As we neared Goring, we descended from the ridge and enjoyed a shady walk along a tree-lined lane past some super pretty and large houses, plus fields of wild flowers.

At Goring we stopped by the river for a coffee and a snickers for our very late 2nd breakfast, 12:00. We then got some filled baguettes from a cafe and headed for the river and tow path. For the first time we met and chatted with some others completing the Ridgeway, there were 5 in their group and because one of the couples lived locally they were managing it with a lot of shuffling of 2 cars and going home at night. They were hot too.

We stopped at a pub for pints of cold lemonade and peanuts, we found a shady bench and enjoyed our gourmet sandwiches.

Some of the remaining walk to Wallingford was close to the river and the noisy main railway line and some of the path meandered through fields. We stopped at North Stoke, to sit on a shady bench in the churchyard while Liz sketched. I will photograph her sketches so you can see them. 

When it came to leaving the Ridgeway and heading to Wallingford we had choices about which side of the river to walk along. As both choices involved dicing with death crossing the very, very, very busy A road we went for the left bank as it looked marginally shorter. The three blister situation although much more comfortable than yesterday was making it's presence felt as were achy calf muscles due to wearing totally flat sneakers.

Eventually we ran, yes ran across the road, with no style and in a lollopy manner, no cars crashed into us and neither of us fell over, we're calling it a win. We crossed the river on the road bridge where it slowly started to dawn on us that we were 20 metres above the path we wanted. We have principles and not retracing our route at any time is one of them. Debbi had 10 metres of guy line in her bag, with a breaking strength of 100kgs, so there was a brief discussion of abseiling down. This idea was discounted for so many logical and sensible reasons and a few others which included all our stuff getting wet when we landed in the river, the shock to those swimming below us and whether we would actually be able to climb out of the river, Debbi was also concerned about getting her rope back. Death also is not an option this week.

In the end we walked to the far side of the bridge and discovered a tarmacked path that took us down to the river, crisis averted. A pretty meander took us into Wallingford where we found the pub and our room. The shower defeated Debbi but with some brute force Liz got it working in a dribbly way. So far East Ilsley is winning the shower competition. 

We did the necessary and headed to an Italian restaurant for food, it was delicious. I have pizza left for tomorrow. Our room is in the eaves so we may be dead in the morning from overheating. The temperature has dropped from 31 to 29, which some people may call progress, we call it pathetic.

There is no breakfast here due to a family funeral, which we knew about so our morning plan is Costa or Greggs or indeed both for breakfast and to buy lunch supplies, then the chemist as soon as it opens to buy 6000 more super sticky blister plasters (last proper shops for a couple of days) and then start walking.

We hope you enjoy the last photo there are 2 more like that! 

And guess what? Tomorrow its going to be even hotter, we really can't wait...