Heavy Mileage

This weekend’s been a busy one, what with one thing and another.

Saturday was supposed to be quiet – because Sunday was already planned with a day-trip to Reading and had other stuff going on – but I wanted to do something. So, being an idiot, I opted for a day-trip to London, primarily to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year photos at the Natural History Museum, which I hadn’t been to in at least twenty years.

The idiot part is primarily that I decided to walk there – from Euston to Natural History Museum. And back. That’s 7km each way, plus whatever else I wanted to do.  I just thought “well, I can do 5km easily, so the other 2km will be easy” – forgetting that 2km is another mile-and-a-bit.

Of course, I managed it, and I enjoyed the exhibition – but I’d miscalculated a few other things along the way. I’d not realised that it was in the school holidays, and I didn’t think there’d be so many people and children going to a museum on the first really decent warm/sunny day of the year.

So, having walked there, it was then a case of moving slowly through a 40-minute queue to get in to the place, which did an excellent job of reminding me why I’ve never wanted children. The exhibition itself was good – but by then I didn’t want to spend too much more time in the area, there were just too many people and spawn around.

That decision made – and having acknowledged that I was rather more knackered than I’d expected – I opted for walking back to Euston (see, I said I was an idiot) rather than the extra bit of walking I’d planned, to go back to the South Bank as well. That’ll wait ’til I’m next in London, which is only a couple of weeks away anyway.

Another 7km did pretty much stuff me, though – I can’t deny it.

All told, Saturday involved walking no less than 21km (slightly over 13 miles) – and I knew I was planning to walk a fair bit more on Sunday (of which more in another post) which made it all even sillier.

It was a good day, and I’m glad I did it, but yeah, Saturday night was pretty painful. I just won’t learn…