By day ten, my feet had stopped getting worse. Just to clarify - they weren't getting any better, but the daily decline of their condition had stopped. We had finally found a little camping shop that sold Compeed - the blister plasters. The holes in the back of my feet were now too big to be covered by just one of these things, so it was a bit of a struggle. But they're brilliant.

If anyone who reads this actually thinks about walking the Pennine Way, then firstly I'm probably not explaining it right, and secondly - take Compeed. You can walk the Pennine Way in a pair of old trainers. You can walk it with a bad back. You can even walk it if your idea of exertion is lighting your cigarette with a match instead of a lighter. But you can't walk it without Compeed. Or at least I wouldn't have been able to.

The realisation that my feet had stopped getting worse brightened the mood all round. For the first time I was convinced that we could and would finish the b****** thing.

Karim blamed me for it. He made me apologise to Polly and everything. Late at night, when we were about to fall asleep in our cramped little tent, he would start to shout "My name's Mike. I've got a great idea! Let's walk the Pennine Way! What's that? Yeah it's a really long path up and down lots of hills! What? No, it's no fun at all! What's that? Yeah, it's really annoying!"

I made a formal and official apology to Karim and Polly for involving him in my madness.

The routine in the mornings went something like this:

Me: What do you fancy doing today?
Karim: Don't know. Take a stroll around town? Maybe stop at a pub for lunch?
Me: Yeah, sounds nice. In he afternoon I think there's some sport on the telly.
Karim: Cool, maybe get a few beers, sit around and then go out at night.
Me:Sounds like a plan.

Karim: Or we could walk 16 miles up and down big b****** hills.
Me: Yeah, that sounds better. Let's do that.

But it was routine by now. We were going to walk every day. We were going to finish. And we hoped to God that at the end of it we would have some kind of feeling of achievement, and not just months of reconstructive foot surgery ahead of us...