I had my first nervous breakdown on around day nine I think... It was cold, it was windy, it was raining, and my feet were rotting into my trainers. We had been walking for maybe four hours, on a stage where there's no civilisation at all between the start point and the end point. We had spent an hour rolling over these gentle, bracken covered hills on top of a larger hill. Every negative walking thing was there - the false summits, where you walk to the top ...

Karim started reading this the other day. His criticism was that there was 'not enough about me in it'. Fair point. I suggested that he could always write his own account of our journey, but he decided, quite rightly, that he couldn't be arsed. So here's a little bit about Karim, for all his should-be-adoring fans....Karim is my friend. He's quite tall, has a name that is pronounced 'Cream', and a fiancée called Polly. We grew up in t...

One morning, I got out of my sleeping bag. I was running late as usual. Karim had already come back from having a shower.Rather than pack up the tent like I was supposed to, I ran around in smaller and smaller circles until I got dizzy and fell over.That's all I have to say about that.

You get to interact with a lot of animals whilst walking the Pennine Way. No.. I don't mean it like that... Not in a... No, that's just unpleasant.What I mean is, there are a lot of animals kicking about. From solitary sheep defying gravity by clinging to mountainsides in high winds, working out whatever lush greens that their mates just didn't dare eat, to fields clearly marked 'beware of the bull', and ramblers inside running for their lives...

On Day Three my feet wouldn't go into my boots. The back of the skin had come off my heels, and despite my plasters, bandages and two pairs of socks I couldn't get my feet to go in without being in ridiculous pain.So I put my trainers on. My old, battered Vans trainers that had seen better days and had almost no grip on the soles - perfect choice for cross country travel.The mornings were the worst for me. Karim would wake up before me, shout at me for a ...