Seeing as I how the donations for the 3 Peaks Challenge total £1200 to date (thanks to everyone who has sponsored me) I guess I should say a little bit about how the training is going.

In a word, "crap". It started last Monday with a moonlight jaunt before dinner. I opted to wear my boots, to try and bed them in a little bit, together with my normal socks (I was only going out for an hour. How bad can it be?)

Cutting a long story short, I ended up with really bad blisters and hobbled around for the rest of last week. Still, buoyed by my reasonable pace, I decided to take the car out and trace my route to see how much distance I'd burned up in the hour I'd been gone. A lowly 3.3 miles. More practise was needed.

Luckily my blisters had (more or less) healed in time for the weekend just gone when we were down at Centre Parcs in Penrith for the mother-in-law's birthday. (It was a significant one, but I won't reveal the age. Suffice to say it was more than 59 and less than 61). What better place to get some walking miles under our belts than in the Lake District? The brother-in-laws therefore set out on a mini expedition, led by Hugh (cus he's a scout master and knows about this sort of thing). Our route wasn't quite as the map shows above although we set off from Sandwick and followed Ullswater and (through gritted teeth) eventually reached the top of Place Fell. We all had our advantages and disadvantages. Hugh had the advantage of being fit and an experienced hill walker but had the disadvantage of having to carry all the gear. John (who is doing the 3 peaks with me) had the advantage of having the walking poles but the disadvantage of having as much experience of hill walking as me, was suffering from a chest infection and previously undergone 2 operations on his dodgy knee. I didn't really have any advantages, just negatives, which increased as the day wore on. Having started the walk with little experience and as a smoker with a dodgy ankle, I finished some 5 or so hours later with more blisters, wounded pride, blind panic, bruised ego ... oh, and no fags after I drop kicked them off the top of the summit on the pretense that if I was EVER going to make even one of the three peaks, I was going to need as much help as possible (Please note that the country code was adhered to as Hugh went to recover my booted box of Richmond Superkings).

I've been pretty forlorn ever since, unsure I would even make it up one peak, let alone three. Yesterday I hobbled and ached. Today I hobbled and ached some more but walked to the shops at lunchtime, albeit only a 1.5 mile round trip) to get my healthy fruit and yoghurt for lunch, I've had salmon and lentils for dinner and am going to enrol at the gym tomorrow in an attempt to get fit and give myself half a chance.

Just for the record, I was 15 stone 7 when I weighed myself this morning. I have somehow put on 6 pounds since I left for Centre Parcs on Friday. It must be my time of the month.