BAREFOOT BRITAIN_ Episode 18

I am in Belfast, three hours late due to winds and all this other shenanigans, but mum and dad should be somewhere in this little ferry terminal. We're on the move from Ards today, Sue McNuff with me, she's getting a bit antsy because she normally runs at seven o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the afternoon. Welcome to my world, bit of glass. When I did this run in New Zealand, I used to train for it and I would run for an hour from my flat and then pick mum up on the lock by the River Thames, we call it Suesday Tuesday, and mum would run with me for an hour and then I'd send her home like a naughty puppy. I went for a wee so mum got really jealous, now she's gone for a wee as well, nothing like a bit of mother-daughter bonding. How was that? So where we're ending is actually there, it's a mile away, but my mum is Sue McNuff, she decided that running 14 miles today wasn't good enough and we have to run 15 miles and people ask me where I get it from, honestly. And that is the end of today's run, I think that was about three quarters of a mile too long for me to be honest, but Sue McNuff, champion of the day, she was storming away from me at the end. So far everything is going fine with the foot and last night I was panicking because I could feel my foot throbbing and I thought oh no it's getting infected again and I'm definitely just hypersensitive to any kind of little nick and cut and I've got two cuts on my other foot as well from yesterday which are the tiniest cuts and I've had hundreds of cuts before this point but I think I'm a bit emotionally scarred from the foot infection. But today we're going to head out and try and run another 15 miles, I think mum's going to try and run as much of it as she can with me as well, she's fine. So Sue McNuff has now officially gone through all the stages of an adventure, she just wants to get the miles cracked out today which is exactly how I'm feeling. So what do you think about me doing this Barefoot Britain madness? Well hugely proud of course, no great surprises, just the next chapter of life but as always fully supported. Lots of people say to me that their mum would go bananas, how do you cope with the with the worry? I don't know, a lot of worrying you do is worrying about what might happen not what's actually happening. 45 miles total, look at that, I can't believe she's done 45 miles with me. Come out of retirement. I'm in Strangford which is in Northern Ireland and we've hit a bit of a gap in the old schedule for Barry so we haven't got people to pass him along because I'm not being hosted much this week so I've just decided to run for the next four days without him and he is going to get himself shipped all the way down to Dublin. He's still ready for anything, look at him. It is evening time now in Strangford and I made the decision this morning to take a full day off. This is a really really pretty little place, smells of seaweed and it's really quiet and I feel like I should be quiet and it's just a nice little place to kind of reset from being pretty badly injured to having my parents come out which was amazing to get it back on my feet doing some with my mum and now I feel like time to reset back on the road by myself and just greet whatever happens from here on in head on.