Day 6 - Thursday Laleham to Teddington Lock (kayaking) to Greenwich (cycling)

Right, I started this blog with all the best intentions; update it every day when we finidh the day's exersions, too easy. Wrong. I would appologise for not giving the updates I promised but I'm not going to. I'm absolutely shattered.

My feet have (burst) blisters on the bottom that are now the size of £5 notes never mind 50p pieces; all my toes have bright red sores from being in constantly damp shoes that are slightly too small and rub; all my fingers have at least one blister, most have two, and they are all swollen with joints that don't work particularly well - they look and feel like a link of Walls Pork sausages . I still can't straighten teh fingers of my right hand due to constantly gripping the paddle.

The weather has ranged from 31/32 C scorching sunshine, that burnt my knees where I'd missed the sun cream, to torrential rain with thunder and lightning storms. I've had to get into wet clothes for the last three mornings.

On Tuesday I got up at 5:45 and was on the water, paddling, at 7:15am. we got back off the water around 10:00 pm (15 hours on the water or eating etc.) and put up our tents. Up again at 5:45 on Wednesday to be greeted by torrential rain and lighting. It's dangerous using metal paddles during lighting storms so we didn't get on the water until 8:30 (after sheltering in the camp site toilet block). We got off the water again at 9:30pm - a 13 hour day.

This morning was another 5:45 wake up, away by 7:50. We reached Teddington Lock at 1pm (see the picture above) and finsihed cycling around 7pm - 11 hours doing 'stuff'. I've had just over six hours sleep for the last three nights while doingn very physical exercise for most of the remaining day. I've just had a cup of coffee as I was falling asleep writing this.

Oh, I capsiszed, very embarrassinbgky, in a lock on Tuesday. And capsized again, almost as embarrasngly getting back into my kayak after going through a lock, yesterday.

My GPS has been damaged by the recent immersions and one of the switches is broken, it was held together for most of today with Liz's hair band and a paracetamol tablet.

The above are some of the reaons I've not been blogging - and I really don't care that I've failed that objective as we've succeeded in the prime objective of walking 12.5 miles from the source of the Thames to Cricklade, then canoed 135 miles (exact distance to be confirmed whenGPS is sorted out) from Cricklade to Teddington lock (over 5 long days) and then cycled 26 miles from teddington to Greenwich. we should finish the challenge tomorrow after cycling a further 53 miles to Warden Point and the North Sea, I'll review teh blog after that. And please don't misunderstand, I'm not complaining about the blisters and lack of sleep, nobody forced me to do this, I'm just explaining why I've been less than consistent with the blog.

Thanks to Vaughan and Andy for coming to see us last night, it was really appreciated - oh, and the beer was good too.

Unfortunately there still seems to be problem with Motion Based, I'll check it out at the weekend.