Imps, games & more walking

So far, we have walked at least eight miles every day, which seemed like a charming idea when we started and slightly less charming somewhere around mile six.

We’ve walked up and down Steep Hill, through meadows, past wild horses, and along waterways covered in moss, with houseboats tucked in like they had nowhere else they needed to be. England keeps doing this thing where you turn a corner and suddenly you’re standing inside a painting, except your feet hurt and someone needs a snack.

We also did a very silly thing, which turned out to  w fun..

There is a legend here about an imp who was terrorizing the local cathedral until an angel came along and froze him into stone. You can find the little guy in the cathedral, looking appropriately guilty. But apparently one imp was not enough for someone in the tourism industry, so the story has been expanded: there are supposedly two imps, and the second one is wandering around Lincoln trying to free his friend. Naturally, this meant we had to go looking for all the little imps scattered around the city.

So we did. We followed clues, wandered down streets we probably would not have otherwise found, learned bits of history, and eventually ended up at the Imp Emporium, which felt like the appropriate place to celebrate having successfully completed a completely unnecessary adventure.

We’ve also played a lot of Space Base, a game at which I usually lose with impressive consistency. But I love it anyway, which is probably a useful life lesson: sometimes you can be terrible at something and still have a really good time.

Tomorrow we’re off to York.

We are all tired. The good kind of tired. The kind that comes from walking until your legs complain, laughing with people you love, seeing things you’ve only read about, and collecting the little stories that will eventually become the best part of the trip.

The feet will recover.

The memories are already staying.