Day 22 – 20 miles to Born (Sun 20th)

Still following the same river and the same road. My earlier comments about the terrain getting easier were sorely tested today.

Not quite the “straight up the side of the valley” of earlier. Instead we have limestone outcrops lining the top of the valley sides. So they take you up there and then you walk along the bottom of the cliffs, around the rocks. Except “along” means up and down. Steps everywhere. Thousands of them! Steps are really hard work with a pack. You can’t get into a stride – one minute trying not to jolt your knees going downhill, the next minute gasping for breathe and sweating trying to lift a 40lb pack up the next 12″ step.

Nice to see a couple of these outcrops, but an emerging theme of this hike is that if they have them, then they are going to take you to visit every one of them. Must have done it on 5 different valley sides today.

And it rained. Spoke to the hotel owner last night. I said about the weather forecast. He told me the major forecasts are rubbish, and showed me a local one. The local one said sun all day. The national one said thunderstorms from 2.00pm, then light rain from 6.00pm. Guess who was right! Got soaked in the thunderstorms, but everything survived – plastic bags for everything. Double bags for important things (toilet roll, phone), drybags for really important things (sleeping bag, fleece jacket).

So today was really just about making my miles to get to resupply.

A couple of other photos.

This is the river I needed to cross to get to the campsite last night.

This is a flower