Sorry – This is second go at todays Blog as original went up with no words/photos

Important Info

Planned kilometres: 38 (cummulative 211)

Kilometres walked: 36 (cummulative 215)

% Completed (based on 1800km trip): 11.9%

Weather: Overcast, Drizzle & Mizzle

Pubs visited: The White Hart, Kings Arms

Pints: 4 (cummulative 26)

Kms per pint: 8.3

Blisters: 0 (cummulative 2)

 

Launceston to Okehampton

Today was a long walk as I combined two days of my planned route into one. There are a couple of important reasons for this.

1. Liverpool vs Roma Champions League Game – The place I was going to originally stay was a small village and the pub wouldn’t be televising the game
2. Additional free day – My friends Todd & Stacey are coming to Liverpool later in the trip to celebrate my birthday and will arrive Midday Saturday and leave late Monday. My original plan was to arrive late Saturday and leave early Monday, so I need to free up a couple of days to spend longer in Liverpool.

 

I finally completed my first county and after leaving Launceston, crossed the Tamar River which is the border with Devon. I had a great time in Cornwall and hope that the great hospitality continues in Devon.

My walk today was a combination of the Two Castles Trail (named due to a castle at each end of trail) and road walking. The trails tend to wander all over the place and so I am using roads in areas to short cut and reduce distance I have to walk. The forecast weather today was for rain for the whole day. I was fairly lucky as the what I had was mainly drizzle & mizzle (mist & drizzle).

Late in the day I stopped at the The White Hart in Bridestowe for lunch, It was lucky that I didn’t muck around as I got there at 1:50pm and they stop serving food at 2pm. I had a point with a couple of local plumbers. Steve from Croyton Plumbing & Heating (Steve asked me to put his business name, however I’m not sure how much this will help your business in Devon) and Bob. We had a couple of pints and at 2:56pm (pub closes at 3pm), Steve decided we should have another one for the road and not wanting to be rude, I had a third pint. Having 3 pints certainly wasn’t performance enhancing for the remaining 8kms I had to go into Okehampton. We were discussing beer types and I mentioned the beer pint glasses that I had got in Cornwall as souvenirs and Barry the barman being a smartarse offered a Fosters pint glass for me to take with me.

The weather was on my side today as proper rain only started falling just as I arrived at my hotel in Okehampton, so I missed the worst of the rain. My hotel is a JD Weatherspoons pub and is a listed building, so the majority of the doors are only 6 foot tall and I have hit my head on my hotel room door every time I have left the room.

 

JD Weatherspoon pubs don’t show the football, so I went to The Kings Arms (hidden by the side of a church) where I could watch the Liverpool vs Roma game. Its had the cheapest pints I have found in the UK and a Pint of Lager was 2.50 (in London I was paying 6.00). Sorry Jeff H, no sad and lonely instalment today as Liverpool were magnificent and won first leg 5-2 (pity about 2 late away goals Roma scored) and will have to find a suitable pub to watch second leg next Wednesday