This photo is an example of good journalism but bad narrative suspense—it puts the key info in the lede position. I have arrived in Prestatyn, and finished my walk of, by my rough calculations, 297 miles (that includes lost detours, sidetrip for a castle, and the extra legwork to get from trail to B&B on some days).

You might think, from all my talk yesterday about the big open valley leading north to the sea, that I had finished with hills, and the final day would be all flat farms and suburbia around the booming beach resort of Prestatyn (What? You haven’t done a holiday in Prestatyn? Think of any beachside community in, say, Maryland or New Jersey, with a big seaside park and playground, an ‘amusement center’ which is really a rather tired videogame arcade, and lots of places to get ice cream and sodas.).

Ha! The trail has a final trick to play. Prestatyn actually rests at the eastern end of that big valley, with a nice line of hills descending gradually to the sea. Take a wild guess where the trail goes to get to Prestatyn. If you guessed ‘quickly down into the flats to give the sore muscles of walkers a rest,’ then that’s 20 points off for Gryffindor! (Why I’m making a Harry Potter reference is anyone’s guess). So, there’s some lovely country road walking and farm field walking, but it’s all on the hilly eastern edge of the big flat valley that runs to the sea.

And of course, that means that the trail offers periodic tantalizing views of the goal. There’s a rather mysterious perceptual principal at work here. Early in the day, I think to myself ‘Gosh, look how close I am to finishing.’

As the morning progresses, I know I’ve made miles, but the town remains elusively out of reach, like a castle in a fairy tale that recedes the deeper the poor knight goes into the wood.

And so it went, a mixture of cheerful singing, the occasional sad song (It turns out that, like my father, I can be brought dangerously close to tears by singing John Denver’s “Matthew.” I’m a rank sentimentalist.) and the odd mental digression (Submitted: The Welsh language is an elaborate ploy to confuse the English—”Where are the rebels, peasant?” demands the English soldier. “Bgwllych,” replies the Welsh peasant. “Was that Bwlch, or Gwylch?” “Frggle wyllch, yergh hump.”).

I encountered two very friendly horses in a field (I was on the other side of a fence, but they hovered at the fence and, cautiously, I let them smell my hand and actually gave one a gentle stroke on his nose. He wanted more, but I didn’t want to risk getting a horse bite.

I knew I was getting close when I could hear a major highway (it’s stunning, really, how far away you can hear a highway, especially when you’ve been away from them for weeks.

But still, the town would not appear, and the path rose into the hills for one last climb to Prestatyn Hill, which I am sure the local tourist board pitches as “a demanding but rewarding climb to lovely views of the sea and surrounding countryside; a treat for the family!” but which the Offa’s Dyke walker curses as the final punishment before the trail finally says “Alright, you’ve had enough punishment. Down you go, and be quick about it.”

And suddenly, I’m in a big town, with something like a quarter mile of High Street shops. Egads! I’ve seen maybe two towns near this size in three weeks. (It’s nowhere near as big a Bath, but bigger than Hay-on-Wye)

And right around this intersection, I broke out in a big grin, the sort that makes other pedestrians quickly move to the other side of the street. By God, I’ve done it. I just need to get to the beach.

And, after a bit of a twist to get around the train station, there I was, at trail’s end.

And of course, my camera exuberance got away with me.

So, let me end with some thoughts on big questions you may have been asking. (What’s that? You weren’t asking? Tough luck for you then; I’m answering them anyway, and it’s my blog.) Some of this repeats or expands things I’ve written earlier.

Why do I walk? It’s hard to explain the satisfaction I get out of long walking trips. Maybe it’s because I am a boy who was raised in suburbs, a man who has lived in the city, mostly one city, for the last 24 years, all of my adult life. Maybe it’s because I am by nature an introspective person who mostly enjoys the large amounts of time I spend alone, and walking trips, even with someone else as company, are by nature a reflective undertaking. It’s not as adventurous as, say mountain-climbing or surfing, but it’s not as narcotic as a beach vacation. Some might suggest that you can do reflection anywhere, and that a great vacation is a visit to a new city, or to exotic destinations where you learn about a radically different culture. I can see the allure of either of those, but three times now in five years, I’ve found satisfaction in walking trips in the U.K. or Ireland, where I can manage the language mostly (though some Brits might beg to differ about Americans’ capacity for speaking English…), but get enough difference from America and from my normal life (What is up with this plumbing? How does this door lock work? Why is everyone trying to push tea on me?) to be intriguing. I walk because I can reflect on my life, but not do it on my couch, which can seem a bit sad. I walk because my job demands a lot of mental work, but not a lot of physical exertion, and so a chance to stretch the muscles feels right and needed.

Why this huge walk now? Even before my promotion from Film Editor to Senior Editor at the end of 2010, I knew that the film critic phase of my life was drawing to a close. Career practicality demanded it. I needed some movement, some change, and I wasn’t, it had become clear, going to move up to the “big leagues” of a reviewer job at, say, The New York Times. But I’d been able to describe myself for seventeen years as, among other things, a film critic. It was a part of my identity, not just a job. So the change was going to be a shock. A walk seemed like a good way to take stock. And I am infinitely grateful that my bosses were open to this, even though at the time we were negotiating the terms of my promotion, I must have seemed insane in my insistence that using all my vacation time in a block was worth causing them so much grief. (Bless you both, Frank and Amy, for giving me this, and I hope it makes more sense after reading the last month’s dispatches.)

Also, I’d caught the long walk bug but good on my Coast to Coast trip two years ago, but I had also had my ass kicked by that walk, and I wanted to prove to myself that with better preparation, I would be able to kick the ass of a walk in return. All that time on the elliptical machines this year was worth it. Consider the asses of the Cotswold Way and the Offa’s Dyke Path officially kicked.

And, though it wasn’t part of why I planned this walk, the months since I started planning it have been really rough for people I care about. I’ve lost one friend who died too young. I’ve had another friend suffer a stroke, which gave us all a good scare. I’ve had another friend undergo major surgery. There’ve been some other things, but let’s just say I’ve been fighting to stay buoyant, and knowing the walk was coming helped me get through some patches when I thought life was trying to hurt everyone around me as some sort of a test. On my walk, all those people and the people who love them have been in my thoughts.

What’s next? In the last three days, five people, learning I was almost done with the ODP, have asked “So, what’s the next adventure?” I am a bit flustered by that question, because I have no idea. Because it’s a costly undertaking, I don’t see a trip in 2012 (Is that the sound of my bosses popping a Champagne cork I hear?), so I have time to think about whether it’s more in the British Isles, or whether I should branch out. I’ve had what sounded like a genuine invitation to drop in on Kathy and Keith in Australia, and I can imagine using that as an excuse to plan a walking trip there. Or perhaps Spain for the famous Pilgrimage Trail. Or somewhere in the lowland countries (fewer hills! yay!). At the end of today’s walk, I took a jokey photo, suggesting that I would take the sculpture’s name seriously—Beginning and End—and simply turn around. But that’s only a joke. I’ve had my time with the Cotswold Way, and with the Offa’s Dyke Path, and it’s been grand. And I’ve been glad to share that time with you.

Miles walked: 11 today. Since September 5: 279 official trail miles, 297 by my reckoning, with detours, getting lost, extra off-trail miles to B&Bs and such.