Friday 6th May
Avebury ~ Ogbourne St. George 9.5 miles
Set off in the morning and walked over to Ogbourne St. George. Lovely easy walk on a wide grassy path. Walked down to Ogbourne St. George and luckily the cows weren't there this time, like they were last year. Stayed at Lavender House again because Jane was very friendly, it was comfortable and we liked it from before. Went to Inn at the Well again for dinner and met 2 guys who were doing the walk. One of them had a bad back and was having trouble walking.

Ogbourne St. George ~ Sparsholt Down 16 miles
Miserable drizzly day today and the path out of Ogbourne St. George at the side of the road was very overgrown with nettles and weeds and long wet grass. It was a long walk over to Bury Down and near Uffington we saw loads of black and white horses which came over to have a look at me in my smart red waterproof coat. Some people passed us on some sort of sponsored walk. They weren't very friendly and seemed intent on walking as fast as possible without even enjoying the lovely scenery. There was a very rude woman in the group, with 2 badly behaved dogs. Seemingly she hadn't trained them very well so they had to stay on lead most of the time, which was a shame because they would have enjoyed the walk more if they could have run about like I was doing. She shouted at Boss Woman to get control of me because her dogs didn't like other dogs and they were barking and growling at me. Luckily Boss Woman didn't put me on lead and ignored the silly woman. I, of course, was well behaved and ignored them like Boss Woman did. It was raining hard by the time we got to Bury Down and we were all very hungry, tired and wet. We stayed at Hill Barn and the lovely lady made us very welcome in her nice warm comfortable house and made Boss Woman and Big Guy a very delicious dinner of Salmon with fresh fruit meringue for dessert. There were some warm radiators in our room so Boss Woman could get all our clothes dry ready for our walk again tomorrow. There were 2 other men staying there as well and they got lost which made them arrive very late, so the very nice lady had to go and fetch them in her car. If they had GPS on their phone like Boss Woman does, they wouldn't have got lost.

Sparsholt Down ~ Goring on Thames 18 miles
Stopped raining today and we had a lovely steady walk on the level and downhill all the way to Goring. Really nice views all the way and the only thing that spoiled it was that there were a load of school kids walking it and they left loads of litter everywhere. When I went to get a drink of water from the water trough near Bury Down, like I did last year, it was full of toilet paper and poo that the kids had left behind. The Station Hotel in Goring where we stayed was absolutely the most disgusting filthy place we have ever been in. It was very noisy with teenagers screaming until late at night and Boss Woman and Big Guy didn't even have a shower because it was so dirty. Apparently the poor Manager was (very badly) running the place himself because his bone idle wife didn't help him and he couldn't manage it all by himself. At least he gave Boss Woman £5 to sponsor me for my walk.

Goring on Thames to Watlington 15 miles
Pouring down this morning and we had to walk through fields with long wet grass, so not very nice walking. Anyway we carried on through loads of fields and when we got to some woods it was a nice respite from the rain. We saw a woman walking 2 very nice dogs which I had a sniffy with and then we saw a man who said he had RUN the whole of the Ridgeway in one day but Boss Woman and Big Guy didn't believe him. Chased a few squirrels but they were lucky I was tired and couldn't catch them. I was glad when we got to Watlington at the end of the day because I was very tired and very wet.

Watlington ~ Bledlow 9 miles
Big Guy had to go back to work so just me, Amber and Boss Woman walked the 9 miles to Bledlow today. It was a lovely walk and not raining much and because most of the walk was in the trees we kept fairly dry. We chased a few squirrels which made it interesting and there were plenty of people to make a fuss of us and other dogs for us to have a sniffy with.

Bledlow ~ Wendover 8 miles
Big Guy took us over to Wendover early this morning and me, Boss Woman and Amber walked back. Normally it would have been a beautiful walk but becuase it was absoluely pouring down it was a bit miserable. Glad to get back to Bledlow at the end of the day and get warm and dry.

Wendover ~ Ivinghoe Beacon 11.5 miles
Big Guy took us over to Wendover again early this morning to start today's walk. We met a very nice woman who was walking the last day with us with her naughty Patterdale and her grumpy Staffie. Us dogs didn't get on very well at all and when we stopped for a snack in Wendover woods, Amber had a bit of a tussle with the grumpy Staffie. Luckily it was just a minor tussle and no harm was done. We met another man who was walking from Wendover to Ivinghoe Beacon and he caught us up not far from Ivinghoe Beacon and very kindly gave Boss Woman £5 sponsor money for my walk. It was raining hard and blowing an absolute gale and about 3 miles from the end as we were walking through some woods we heard a really loud crash and just 4 metres behind us, where we had been walking a few seconds before, a big tree fell across the footpath. Anyway luckily we didn't get hit by any other falling trees and managed to finish the rest of the walk without incident, although it was very windy on the top and nearly blew us away.