I may have neglected to mention this.  We completed our journey!  Not yesterday, not last week, but almost four months ago.  I hope you weren’t on the edge of your seat the entire time awaiting news of our victory (or untimely demise).  But I suspect you were, and for that I apologize.

We had friends and family waiting for us at the finish line in Robin Hood’s Bay.  Laura even walked the last stretch down from Whitby.  Four months take their toll on my memory, but I vaguely recall great beer, yet another birthday cake for me (I was spoiled rotten on this trip), being presented with a picture book of the entire Wainwright Walk by my fellow hikers, and an absolutely breathtaking rainbow over the bay.  But most importantly, I remember all 12 of us enjoying each other’s company at this, our last supper, after having put countless miles on our odometers together in the preceding 16 days.

Ever since high school when my friend, Lindsay, performed in the local college’s rendition of Godspell, I’ve been in love with its songs.  Our community theatre in OBX performed the musical just a few months before this C2C trek.  So of course the hauntingly beautiful song about putting a pebble in my shoe and calling it Dare was on infinite replay in my head every day on the trail, especially during the grueling stretches.  I am one complex atheist, I assure you.

One by one, some of us with toes wet from the North Sea, we let go of our stowaway pebbles acquired from the Irish Sea at St. Bees.  After about 200 miles as my copilot, I pulled Dare out of a pocket in my camera bag — I’m no masochist — and skipped her off the surface with a big smile on my face.  “Meet your new road!”