I've now completed 19 days and about 118 miles of my project to hike the full length of The Thames Path - in both directions. It's 184 miles one way - so 368 miles both ways. Each day that I hike I'm going 'there and back', so I've covered about 236 miles so far. Each hiking day I start at the point where I finished the previous time. I hike out for half a day then hike back to my starting point. It's proving to be a productive, challenging, enjoyable and at times frustrating experience. All of the good things come from the hiking, the photography and the progressive achievement of building a coherent body of work. What will success look like to me? I'm still not sure, but it feels like things are going well. And the frustrations so far ... there's one definite one, it's the struggles at times hiking on some lengthy sections of the path which are so thick with sticky, glutinous, slippery mud that it takes all the pleasure out of the exercise. I have to watch every step to ensure that I know where I'm placing each foot to be certain not to slip and fall. Somehow, so far, I've not fallen in the mud! And the other frustration is that now that I'm in the latter stages of the hike, I'm also much further away from home, which means that each of my hiking days is much further to travel before I can start the hike - and, of course, much further to travel to get home afterwards.
At my current rate of progress I have about another 11 hiking days to go to cover the remaining 66 (132) miles. So, I hope to be finished by about July this year.
