Bananas are not the only fruit: Llansteffan to Carmarthen

It rained on and off through the night and I drifted in an out of sleep. After 4 days of walking my feet were in bits and my legs ached, waking me. One of the things about a long distance walk is that every day you start in a little worse shape. Rhian was in better shape than I was but we were both feeling the pain. It was still raining when we got up and we decided to get breakfast in Morrisons rather than faff about with camping stove which was outside the tent, sodden.

'You aren't going to wear 'it' when we have breakfast are you?' Poor Rhian, this was testing her patience.

'No, don't be daft, that would be stupid!' I tried to reassure her.

'Whereas walking wearing a banana outfit is totally sane?'

'Depends on your definition of sanity. Don't worry, I shan't wear it while we are eating'. This seemed to pacify her a little. We put our kit in the car and drove off to Morrisons.

The Breakfast of Walkers, a coffee and two ibuprofen. My legs were killing me and we hadn't walked anywhere. Not the best of signs. The food was excellent and set us up for the day. Outside the rain was beating against the windows and eventually we had to admit that we couldn't wait out the rain and had to get started.

'OK, time to get started. I just need to pop into the loo to change.' Rhian looked horrified.

I nipped into the loo and donned the outfit de jour. I had a happy conversation with a group of Ramblers who were on their way to Bosherston to walk round the lily ponds. Rhian and I were scheduled to walk that bit of the path in the following year. They were somewhat surprised by my outfit. They had Rohan trousers with deep pockets and I had the banana.

Ian decided to have some fun with our uploads. What is noteworthy is that I was there dressed as a banana, standing next to the bananas and no-one took a blind bit of notice.

I was pointing North, in the direction that we were walking towards St Clears. I ended up looking more martial than I wanted. Across the way, you can see Ferryside, on the other side of the estuary. No distance, but we wouldn't be there until the end of the next day's walk. This, alongside the rain, was disheartening.

It was a bleak day and the rain started up again. I was rapidly realising that a banana outfit isn't the best choice for walking wear. It was even worse than the Pink Frock. The hood part kept me dry but the bottom was a little snug and I was having to take short, mincing steps. This wasn't helping Rhian much as she kept stopping to laugh at me. It rained some more. The banana costume was made out of a foamy material and it was soaking up the rain and getting heavy. The top began to wilt and so did I. I was a very sad looking banana.

The rain became steadier, after a little break when Helen nipped into a phone box to change out of her banana outfit. She had attracted numerous toots and whistles and shocked expressions from those driving past, and I walked a safe distance ahead so that they didn’t realise we were together. A wise move.

It was as she packed away the outsize banana that we turned cross country, and the rain began in earnest. I recall zipping up my rain jacket to its fullest extent, hood pulled tight, protecting my glasses to some degree. We stepped out into a sloping field. On our left, several caramel coloured cows and their calves and, in the middle of them, a bloody enormous bull! My heartrate shot up and I nearly turned and ran but Helen was right behind me blocking my path. There was a sign, saying Beware of the bull. No shit, Sherlock. I was not convinced by the single electrified wire that separated us from this fearsome looking beast, who was eyeballing me in a threatening sort of manner. Even Helen, bravery personified, was rattled. This is a very kind comment, but I have a yellow streak a mile wide. I just keep it bottled up so I don’t start running round shouting, ‘Fucking hell, it’s a bull’ as that might make things worse. I also had a vague memory of running a DofE session when they told us that a bull in with cows was safe. This was also when I had to teach one boy that cows and bulls were, in fact, the same species. He did engineering at Cambridge, it just goes to show, but I digress.

These weren't 'the' cows. These were some other cows that we had run away from on another day. We were too bloody scared to take snaps while running away. Running away from cows proved to be a bit of a recurrent theme on this holiday. Again.

We edged down field to the safety of the gate in the far corner, and it was at this point that I realised that my legs, in their lightweight summer walking trousers, were very wet. Several fields of long grass later and my socks were soaked and the damp had seeped down to my toes. Eventually reaching a proper road, we sighted a little church. The church of St Cain, one of 24 daughters of Brychain Brycheiniog, apparently. When I read this bit, I thought she was winding me up. It sounds like something out of a Terry Pratchett novel. She wasn't. St Cain. Who was, in spite of the name, a woman. Early Welsh ecclesiastical history really is bonkers. This was of absolutely no interest to me at that point however. "Yes! Thank you God! Shelter!"

We shuffled damply up to the door then noticed the sign that said Closed for Renovations. Clearly Helen’s sinful past had caught up with us and He was wreaking His revenge. Yes, any minute we were going to be struck by lightning, or boils or something. It was turning into quite a day. The church actually looked as if it was going to fall down any minute and I was getting to the point in the walk when I wouldn’t really have cared. Walking goes through stages. The nice, relaxed bit at the start. This is wonderful and is why we do it, well that, and to brag to other people. The difficult bit in the middle when you wonder why the hell you are doing it and often blame the person you are walking with. Then it all becomes strangely ‘zen’. It hurts, often quite a lot and you are knackered and aching in places you didn’t know you had, but somehow it doesn’t matter and all you need to do is keep going. The transition from difficult to zen depends on how wet you are and how much ‘uppy downy’ you have done. I was very wet at this point and a loooooonnnggg way from zen.

At this stage, the tissue in my pocket was very very damp. It was raining so heavily that my vision was completely obscured by the rain on my glasses, rain was running off my sleeves making my hands so wet that there was no point in trying to dry my glasses. Rain was running in torrents off my hood. We took shelter under a tree in the churchyard and looked at our guide book, also now sodden. For me, this was a low point, because as we stood there, soaked, and pondering how much longer this would go on for, we began to get cold. Chilled. To the bone. Our only choice was to keep moving. So we did. Towards zen. Which took a fucking long time.

Having said we were soaked, I should qualify that as my top half, under my cheap, pack-away-in-bag rain jacket remained pretty dry, and although it was raining as in the story of the Ark we carried on, munching yogurt raisins and doing our best to cheer each other up. Mrs Noah was sucking on her teeth at this point and asking him when he was going to finish lining up the fecking animals and get the family on board.

That’s the thing: when the going gets tough, we can sense each other’s struggle and usually do our best to support one another. Don’t get me wrong here; I am not indulging myself in sentiment. There have been numerous occasions when I could quite happily have given her a well-timed shove over the edge and smiled happily, (I have always felt that this was the case) brushing my hands together in satisfaction as she disappeared into the sea. But it’s usually when we are strolling along without too much trouble when this occurs, not when we are scrambling breathlessly up an almost vertical rise and I have to pause while watching her backside continue to blot out the light up ahead. (She’s better at the uppies than I am) (I see a lot of the top of her head as she semi sprints down steep inclines. I don’t quite know how she does it, I’m always scared I will fall).

The walk took us along country lanes for a short while. Tarmac is better than grass when it is raining, though it is quite hard on your soles, and the view was lost behind close hedges. Passing through a farm yard (I always feel like an illegal, embarrassed - and extraordinarily damp, in this case - intruder, and have the urge to run across the yard bent double, trying to keep out of sight, like an elderly sniper, or a female Corporal Jones, with Captain Mainwaring behind me) we soon entered Green Castle Woods, which gave us a little shelter. Apparently spectacular in good weather, today it was just wet. Glimpses of the River Towy below us gave us some sense of where we were going and hope that Johnstown was getting closer. Even in the rain it was lovely. There is something very calming at walking under trees and the air was fresh and smelt of wet earth. I didn't take a photograph as it was pissing down, so you will all just have to use your imagination. Think Lord of the Rings and hobbits and you are most of the way there. Factor in sore feet and you are home and sodden.

By mid- afternoon we were nearing the end of the walk. We had parked my car in the car park of the local school and sports centre in Johnstown, and then driven in Helen's car to our starting point in Llansteffan. When we had taken our bags and walking poles out of her boot, we had discovered that half of one of Helen's poles had fallen off. Lost! Annoying, but at least we had 3.5 poles between us, and we knew that today's walk was not too hilly, and so it had proved. The countryside in this area is gentle and rolling and pretty, when the weather is clement enough to be able to see it properly.

We trudged the last few miles on the flat, alongside the road. And still it rained, though easing off somewhat from the raging torrents of earlier. Our spirits rose as we approached my car. Fortunately I had several bin bags hanging around in the boot, because we were soaked and needed to sit on these to avoid soaking the car seats as well. In persistent rain we flung our bags and poles into the boot and I was about to leap into the driver's seat and find something absorbent enough to clean my glasses when my eye was caught by something under the back wheel. Peering under the car I saw something that looked like the bottom half of a walking pole! Yes! Helen now had a full pair of poles again! Result!

Even when things look pretty dire, there is usually something, at the end to cheer us up. It certainly wasn't a pot of gold, because there certainly wasn't a bloody rainbow, but we were in the dry and warm of the car, and Helen would no longer have to walk like someone with an ataxic gait. Good news all round! Can I just say, FABULOUS use of the word ataxic. your vocabulary never fails to impress me! My gait was quite bad as I was aching all over and had blisters on my blisters.

Attempting to dry out the sodden banana in the back of the car. Drying things when it is wet and miserable is a real pain when camping.

On returning to the tent and checking in online, we were delighted by Ian's reportage of Banana Woman and toasted him roundly with some Cava quaffed out of Helen's plastic tableware, while also attempting to dry out our boots with my travel hairdryer. A perfect end to the day.

Jesus, but I look awful in this. And deranged. the reason I'm turning my head is because I don't want to smell the boots. These were my new boots, Salomons for those interested in such things. They were supposed to be breathable but I don't think breathability works when you are walking in a deluge.

Photograph also gives you a sneaky view of the Rug of Contemplation.