“You know, doing the Coast to Coast in 13 days is pretty bad ass,” I said to Cathy and Sue as we strode into Richmond yesterday afternoon. You quickly learn on this path that first questions you ask when you meet up with people (a whole other post I’ll write when I have a keyboard, about the community that develops among C2C walkers) are where have you come from today, where are you going tonight, and how many days are you taking to complete the route. Some people do it in stages, some do parts of it, the fastest ever was 39 hours, and many do it in 13 or 15 or 18 days. Our 13 day trip is on the fast side of the non-extreme.
Well I don’t feel so “bad ass” right now. Today was a long exhausting trudge through muddy fields and along back roads, ending with a thunderstorm, a dash across a very busy highway, and a half lost scramble up a steep hill through a patch of nettles that left my bare knees screaming. They’re still on fire, none of us can walk straight and we all stumbled back from dinner and into bed.
In fact, we’re so clearly hurting a local couple coming down the road said, “You’re doing the Coast to Coast aren’t you? We can tell by the way you’re walking.” And we’re walking again tomorrow? Bad ass? More like busted ass.
Some more photos, so you can see how worth it this is.
Grace Mattern 
Wow..what an adventure. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful photos.