Day 52- Leek to Alton

Woke up this morning and could hear Mum packing up her stuff. Jade also woke up and looked at her watch which read 5:50am then said "I am NOT getting up yet!" I felt tired but needed a wee so thought i best get up and go now before the dog walkers arrived. I started sorting my stuff out and undid my thermarest to get abuse shouted at me. Jade went "BECK!" She was in a hideous mood that was clear already....great! 

Ignoring Jade i carried on packing away and mum brought me over a cup of tea which was lovely. I poked my head out of the tent to see the sun rising, it was really pretty and thought it looked like a nice morning however it seemed to change really suddenly and the next the i knew the sky was an angry grey and it started raining. Mum whose tent was already down had all her stuff out so had a mad panic and was running around trying to sort her stuff and keep everything dry. Stuff sorted Mum then sheltered in our tent and me and her drank our teas and ate breakfast. Jade then began moving and sorting out her stuff although she made it clear that she was not impressed at being woken up so early. I've never seen her in such a bad mood, it sounds like im being mean but i'm sure she would agree that it was the truth!

We had to pack the tent up wet this morning which is never nice but at 7:30 we were ready to start walking which is a record for us. The first part of the day was along the canal following the Staffordshire Way and luckily Jade soon cheered up a bit. We had a bit of difficulty finding the canal but when we were on it it was fine, although Jades leg was still hurting her and Mum had sore feet.  

Navigation wasn't so difficult today which was nice but we had a few steep hills! There was one really steep section up through the woods which we stormed up, at the top we had to walk along a bit of road and got wolf whistled at by two guys that passed by in a car because we looked so sweaty and attractive! The home stretch top Alton was along the road and i think that again we were all feeling tired and just wanted to get there. Along here we saw a farm called 'Holme Farm.' On this walk Jade has had an epiphany and has decided she wants to be farmer. She had told us just earlier that she was going to call her farm Holme Farm, me and Mum had told her told her there were already a few about called that so when we saw this we all found it quite funny!

When we got into Alton we dumped our bags and went into the Londis to ask about campsites. We had seen on the map that there weren't any actually in Alton but thought maybe we could get a bus to one then back to here in the morning. The man in Londis was straight on the phone ringing his friend who owned a campsite which was about 4 miles up the road. The campsite owner said he would come and pick us up so we quickly picked up some food for dinner then waited outside for him to come and collect us. 

We got to the campsite and they wanted to charge us £30!! Mum went "What?" and the man then lowered the price to £20 but to be honest the campsite wasn't even worth that. It was far from brilliant but i am glad we went there because i did really want a shower. We got there at 3:30 so we had a really nice lazy afternoon/ evening....perks of getting up early! And after a grey and wet day it was actually a pretty nice evening so mum built a washing line between the tents so we got some washing done. We also made the most of our money and Jade sat in the toilet block with the phones whilst they charged. Unfortunately i lost another 1 and half toenails so i'm now down to 7 and a half. We have also ran out of gas so are hoping that we can get some tomorrow!