Day 1 of our adventure started in Bath by the Abbey where there is a special circle with an acorn on it to mark the beginning of the long distance route. The route then takes you (very clearly if you follow the acorns) through some of the streets and parks in Bath until you start winding your way up and out of Bath city towards Lansdown.
I had chosen Judo to accompany me on this first leg of the route which totalled 10 miles, or would have if I had not dropped my phone taking pictures at the top of a hill and added an extra 3/4 of a mile! The weather although lovely and sunny was a jump up in temperature to recent days and so I found the heat, even at 9am, quite hard work with all the hill work.
We passed by the site of the battle of Lansdown with lots of brightly designed, metal flags and a couple of monuments but we didn’t really stop to read the information boards, as the dogs might have been bored!
The hills were relentless, we just seemed to go up and up and up and then up some more, with just a few downhill sections for a bit of relief. We stopped regularly to give the dogs water if they needed it but to be honest they are all fitter than we are and weren’t bothered by the higher temperatures, although because of the inclines we were walking large sections of the route anyway to save our legs.
After the first 10 miles we made our way up another hill into Cold Aston for a dog swap and a re-fuel for us.
A quick pit stop and we were on our way again with different dogs, this time the girls, so I had Tegan with me. We had a couple of major road crossings to deal with in this short section but there was little traffic due to it being mid morning on a Thursday, so this was not an issue.
In the middle of our 5 mile route we came across a herd of very inquisitive and quite frankly scary, cows! They managed to distract us enough to mean we missed a route marker and found ourselves crawling under and over a gate to get out of the way of the herd who were following us.
The last couple of miles were again mainly uphill and through fields to a lay-by near Tormarton where we ended our first day of canicrossing the Cotswold Way.
Thanks once again to all our sponsors Arctic Wolf, Meat Love, Big Bobble Hats, K9 Trail Time and Pupmalup, we had a great first day and spent the rest of the day at home resting up for Day 2.
