Nick and Juli Walk the Thames Footpath for Macmillan.: A few final numbers

By Juli

Hurrah! We did it! Never in any doubt.

So what did we do?

Overall we walked 131.9 miles of The Thames Footpath, from Oxford Osney Bridge to The Thames Barrier, so a little bit further than we originally calculated.

Then there were all the incidental miles - to the B&B from the river, to find somewhere to have supper, to find a loo in the O2 arena, to get to the station or from the station to our starting point for the day - that brough the total up to 145 miles, although sometimes it felt further.

We set ourselves the target of raising £1500 for Macmillan and thanks to all of you we have done that handsomely. Currently we have raised 115% of our target, which is the total of £1733. Brilliant. But with all of the gift aid the grand total is £2083. Fantastic!

We stayed in 5 B&Bs or hotels and would recommend them all even though they were all very different. We were based at my Mum's for 5 nights and appreciated having supper cooked for us every night and being able to make our sandwiches every day.

It was sunny for 9 days out of 10, and heaved down with rain for 1 day, the last one as you will see from the photos. I was wearing 5 layers and was still soaked to the skin.

In terms of hours walked, we did 70.1 in total which if we had just walked would have been very nearly 3 days.

Funnily enough, the some of the longest days walking were some of the shortest in miles but were also the days when we had company and were chatting as well as walking and looking. Thank you for your company. We really enjoyed all the conversations we had.

We expended 10756 Kcals over the 131 miles. Sounds great, but we didn't add up how much we took on through the great English breakfast, hot chips and turkey & pate sandwiches, not to mention cream teas and pints of bitter!

We went under or over 69 road and rail bridges, including three motorways. (M4, M25 and M3). We nearly took a ferry in Shepperton, but because it was the bank holiday, they didn't start until 10am, when we wanted to cross at 9am so we had to do the alternative route via Walton Bridge.

We went past 37 locks and saw boats in nearly all of them.

We had to take 2 diversions because of the flooding and saw countless sandbags, as well as several boats on the footpath or otherwise casualties of the flood water. It could have been much worse. We really felt for all of those who had suffered as a result of this year's flooding.

On average the number of wee stops in a day was about 6. (For both of us - unusual for those of you who know the legendary strength of Nick's bladder!) Coffee and tea stops, about 3 a day.