UPDATE 13 May 2004 (Day 6):
We started the last day from the lay-by on the A41 that John had picked us up from yesterday. The original plan had been to have a short day yesterday and commence from the beginning of the 'Way for the Millennium' today, which would have left us with 19 miles to complete. Earlier in the week we decided to split this more evenly making the final stretch a little easier. The majority of today's walk was by road and it was never going to be very scenic, so we won't bore you with too many pictures of lorries passing at high speed or lots of road signs.

A41 starting point

Speeding not allowed

Traffic

There were one or two surprises on route. This house and garden on a bend of the A41 was one of them, with what must be the largest collection of garden and wall ornaments ever seen!

Amazing garden

We pounded the tarmac relentlessly with tried feet and aching joints and were most unimpressed with all the hills, which went up and down without any purpose. We much preferred the canal engineers' way of dealing with them by cutting straight through. It was during this long hard slog that we received an encouraging text message from Tracey (at Mark's work) which really perked us up! After several hours hard going, interspersed with two stops on route for a sandwich and a cuppa in the motor home, we were finally within striking distance at 3 miles out.

Stop that sign falling over

No way are they diverting us!

Most of the last 3 miles were uphill but being close to the end gave us a huge boost and helped to put the aches and pains to the back of our minds. When we reached the final descent into Ironbridge Gorge we found that the road was closed. We decided we would rather be arrested than be diverted from our route now and fortunately it turned out that it was open to foot traffic.

Ironbridge Gorge

A mirage?

No he's real

As we made our final approach to the Iron Bridge we spotted a familiar figure in the centre with some final encouragement for those last few steps. It was John, who's been like a mother to us during the whole trip, with two of the hardest earned pints we've ever had.

A deserved first pint

Done it!

After disposing of the beer we had a wander round and took some photographs of the bridge and some shots that we hope the newspapers will use to publicise the walk and its objectives.

The Iron Bridge

We then retired to the nearest pub to replenish our liquid levels and phone everyone we knew to tell them we'd completed the journey. The total distance was logged at fractionally over 95 miles, which was slightly longer than anticipated but should earn us an extra few quid from those of you who sponsored us per mile.

Ok, let have another

95 miles total

After temporarily satisfying our thirsts we took a few more photographs, one of which was this panoramic of the gorge, then it was over to John to get us safely back to Marple so we could all have a proper celebration at the Ring o' Bells. This we duly did, which is why this final update is a little later than usual.

Thank you to everyone who has supported and sponsored us on this endeavor and especially to John Connors our driver, without whom the trip would have been so much more difficult and possibly not achievable at all.

Ironbridge Gorge

The next task is to collect all the sponsorship money! We'll update the Iron Bridge Project Diary to advise how much has been raised by the walk and keep you informed of the project's ongoing progress as usual.