As I write this, it’s about 6am on Monday morning, my last day. For all of Sunday, I could hear the drumbeat of completion driving me on. Early on in this blog, I wrote about the two modes of walking, counting and not counting, which divided the experience into an obsession with keeping score (miles done, pace) and an openness to the experience as it comes. The drumbeat of completion is something even more basic than counting—deep down, there’s a sense of the goal, tantalizingly close, and a drive to finish. Sunday, the drumbeat, which I suppose has been quietly building in the background for a few days, became quite loud because, from a high hilltop in the Clwyd Range, I got my first definite sight of the Irish Sea, where I will soon touch seawater. (It strikes me as a lovely reverse echo that two years ago, Tracy and I started at the Irish Sea and spent more than two weeks getting from it to the North Sea, and now I make the Irish Sea my endpoint.)

The drumbeat is its own danger, because it spurs you on as fast as possible (yes, it’s a variant of the counting mentality) to finish this hill, finish this mile, finish this day, finish this walk. But it’s also part of what kept me going in the Clwyd Range, which is no harder than the Black Mountains in the south, except that it is a more relentless series of steep ups and steep downs (beware whenever a guidebook describes the path as rising steadily, or, heaven forbid, goes so far as to call something steep. That, my friends, means trouble, since walking guidebooks are a model of understatement about the physical challenge). Also, the Clwyds come late in the walk, when the knees and thigh muscles and that one set of little muscles high in my back that have tensed from carrying a pack for three weeks are all ready to call it a day.

But Sunday was a good day. None of the sublime raptures or weird exuberance of earlier days, but a day of steady accomplishment as the path goes up and down like the trace of a heartbeat on a heart monitor.

Interesting twist: Because it was Sunday, and because the ODP and other trails all crisscross the Clwyds, and because there are three little parking lots along the trail where people can drop in and do a bit of hill hiking, I saw a lot of people today. Making it especially tempting for weekend walkers is that there is a clearly defined goal; you can walk up to the ruins of the Jubilee Tower, erected in 1810 to celebrate 50 years on the throne for George III. Thousands walked up the hill to see this huge tower opened and illuminated in 1810, but in 1863, a massive storm brought it tumbling down, leaving only its still impressive base as a “modern” hill fort ruin.

I try not to be snobbish about people out doing a day hike, but I have to admit to a twinge of annoyance at the thought that no one could tell me apart from them. “Don’t you all understand? I’ve walked 265 miles in the last three weeks, Yes, it’s wonderful that you brought your daughters out for a hike, but I’m out for a HIKE.”

Oh, and I had one of those simple people-observing moments, a portrait of family life in a simple image. Mother, daughter of about 13, and father are walking together. The daughter, clearly still in the nice phase, is asking Dad if they can do some particular thing when they get home. She’s asking sweetly, daddy’s little angel. About 10 yards ahead, slightly older teen daughter walks in a way that is designed to convey both annoyance and ‘I’m not with them.’ Her hair, straight and cut in a grown-out Louise Brooks bob, is dyed magenta, except that she has dyed an outer layer jet black, so it works like a fringe curtain. The two family dogs frolic on the path, checking in occasionally with Dad, then running ahead, then coming back to say hello to sulky teen. It’s all so vivid I can almost hear her stomping off to her room when they get home so she can put on her earphones and get away from those awful people her family.

The rise to the Jubilee Tower was my second big up of the day, but it also offered its treats. That’s where I first saw the Irish Sea, and that’s where I saw another sign with mileage (it says Prestatyn 20 miles) to spur me on. From here, the view ahead looks like it must all be downhill to get to the flatlands of the wide valley to the west, which leads like a corridor northward to the sea. But of course, the hills and the path have their own mad logic, so there are in fact tow rounds of steep downs and steep ups before I make a significant descent from the 400-ish meter terrain up here to the low country (and even then, there’s plenty of smaller up and down—a hundred meters up and down is nothing to sneeze at when it is packed into a mile).

The last big up push goes around a feature called Moel Arthur (moel means a bare hill), which has the remains of a hill fort. There’s an option to go over Moel Arthur and see the raised ground where defenses must have been (not much more remains of these old hill forts—if it’s a ruin of a castle or something, it’s marked differently on the map), but when I saw the sheer bloody-minded up-ness of the endeavor, the drumbeat of completion kept me on the ODP, which still does a fair bit of rising from the base of Moel Arthur, but does that rise to skirt around the side.

And then there was a lot of long slow descent. Tantalizingly slow. My pace was steady, but there’s just so darn much ground to cover before coming to the tiny town of Bodfari and, a mile beyond it (up into some lower hills, naturally…), my B&B for the night.

The last torture of the day was this: I believe from my instructions for getting to the B&B that the only place to eat in miles, the local pub of course, is closed on Sunday. So I was going to be relying on my hostess to provide dinner, which the instructions note is expected on Sundays.

But as I hit the road where the path passes literally in front of the pub, I saw a sign out indicating that it was open. Wonder of wonders! I could stop in, have a meal, and then go up to the B&B, saving me from the awkward experience of dining alone at a table with a hostess hovering quietly somewhere nearby. It’s fine for breakfast, but when I’ve done dinners like this at B&Bs alone in previous trips, I’ve found it unappetizing. With someone else along, I am sure it would be fine, but alone it feels weird.

But no. On Sundays, the pub is open to serve drinks, but not food. You know, Sunday, the weekend, when people like to go out for a bite? Yeah, this pub thinks that’s a time not to serve food. Sigh.

Fortunately for me, this B&B has an incredibly spacious little guest suite, with a bedroom and a private sitting room with a view of the valley. And my hostess, seemingly sensing my needs, brought up the ham sandwich and salad I asked for on a tray (she was a bit surprised I declined brown trout and a baked potato, but that would have been a dining room table production, I am sure).

And today, Monday September 26, I will walk the last 12 miles into Prestatyn. In my last post, look for a photo of a stunned, exuberant, relieved, self-assured, weary traveler.

Miles walked: 12.5