Anna Heywood & Luke Skinner are partners in life, and in their business, Drover Holidays. You can know just about everything you need to know about this couple when you know that they cycled from London, England to Cape Town, South Africa over a two-year period.

Clearly, they’re hardcore.

So, when they get calls from people who want to book a walking trip on Offa’s Dyke Path, they try to caution the prospective client that’s it’s rather strenuous.  But Luke told us that often the callers from the U.S. and/or Canada assume that it’s only a path in little old Wales, and they come from a place with real mountains, so how hard can it be?

He tells them that yes, he realizes the highest point on the trail is only about 720 meters but that the hills are very steep, with lots of arduous ascents and long downhills and that he can only say that all this up and down is rather ‘unremitting‘.

When a guy who has cycled a million miles on sand says something is unremitting…I’m thinking you should listen.

And that is the word I would use to describe today, though I would add unrelenting, unbelievable, unforgiving, unexpected, un$%&*ing-real and throw in daunting and hard and really, really tough.

We have officially been beaten by the Path.

By 6:00 pm, it was clear that we had another hour/almost two hours before we’d get to our pick up point. It was getting darker by the minute,  and the rain and the wind that had been pelting us off and on all day, was having another run at us.

We called Drover Holidays, got the number for the taxi that was supposed to be picking us up and sat down on a stile to wait for a rescue.

And so. We quit with only 4 or 5 kilometres left to go; probably the easiest walking of the entire day, but we would have been stumbling in the dark by the end.

However. We have now officially covered more than half of the Path and in spite of hills that should have made me cry going up, and moan going down.. I didn’t. I’m getting stronger by the mile.

And Kevin, with his newly purchased knee supports was going down slick muddy descents like nobody’s business.

I guess what I want to say is, that in spite of feeling like we got beaten by the path, in another way, we sort of won.  Because after a day spent going up – and down – the steepest hills of my life, and then repeating it hour after hour, I’m pretty sure I can do anything.

Bring it on!