Day 6 - Shortlanesend to St Columb Major

20 April
Distance: 16 miles

Had I put any thought into the matter, when we got back from Truro yesterday afternoon, I would have taken advantage of the campsite facilities. I could have washed my trousers that I covered with soot from the Bushbuddy on day 1 and then used the spin drier and tumble drier to make sure that I wasn't left with wet clothes for today.

What I actually did was to lounge around in my sleeping bag. It was half past eight before I thought that it would be a good idea to at least go and throw all of the wet stuff into the tumble drier.

So, today I started out again in dirty trousers and a smelly top, but at least I had dry socks and a dry towel. I'm sure the other things can wait until our first B&B in a couple of days time.

All was quiet as we walked through Shortlanesend this morning - hardly surprising at 7.30 on a Sunday and it remained quiet as we wandered down to Idless and into the Forestry Commission owned Idless Woods. It was to be our only real off-road walk all day, and jolly pleasant it was too, particularly when the sun won over the high cloud and started weakly shining down on us, at least at intervals.

More roads saw us cross the A30, following its verge for 100 yards. My goodness, all of those cars seemed in a rush, no doubt covering in five minutes the same distance as we had covered so far today.

With fine views of the rolling countryside, then over Newquay and latterly over Indian Queens our route took us through St Newlyn East and White Cross (in between which we spotted an albino pheasant) to the outskirts of St Columb Major where our campsite lay. We must have kept a good pace going as we arrived at 2pm having made short work of the 16 miles.

The very welcome word we heard as we checked into the campsite was 'bathroom'. £1 bought us enough hot water to fill the bath and although it was a small tub, we managed to squeeze in (Husband got the taps, naturally). There we soaked for an absurdly long time until our fingers and toes resembled prunes.

We've a lot of road noise here and we seem to be right under the flight path of Newquay airport, but all of that noise has been repeatedly drowned out over the last few hours by some impressively heavy rain showers. I'm glad we weren't walking when they hit.

The bad news of today is that my two-shoe strategy is falling apart (literally). My Salomon's (in which I've backpacked before without incident) have started hurting my left little toe a lot. The Roclites are not causing any bits of my feet to drop off, but it looks like they're going the same way as my Terroc's did. With only just over 100 miles on them the inside of the heel is starting to hole. With the prospect of finding myself by the end of next week with no comfortable shoes, I'm starting to fret.