Day 13 - Saturday September

Having discovered the changes to the buses and understood why people were complaining - some villages now have no bus service and this is a problem especially or the elderly. I asked my ladlady for a "full English" butty to be left in the fridge so that I could catch the 7.39am bus into Newport to enable me to get the first no.12 at 8.40, which I did. I alighted from the bus at Freshwater Bay at 9.20, which is the latest start for any days walking since I started apart from the first day which included a drive to Dover in the morning.
Today I made good progress arriving at the Tennyson memorial at 9.50 - not bad as it is a steady uphill into quite a fierce gale. I arrived at the needles at 10.30 and after pasing over Headdon Down and through Totland arrived at Yarmouth at 12.45pm. The boat departed at 1.15 and docked in Lymington at 2.00pm. It took me half an hour to walk into Lymington and along to the lifeboat station. From there at 2.30 it took me only 2 hours to arrive in Milford-on-Sea - taking me to 4.30p.m. I set off again after a pot of tea and a cream tea at 4.55pm and arrived at Barton-on-Sea at the bus stop to find a bus waiting as it had arrived early. By now it was 5.55 so I decided that I had been up since 6.00a.m. and it would take me another two hours at least to get home it was wiser to get the bus and on Tuesday plan to get the bus back and complete the last little bit. I'm trying to be sensible about my left leg as it is still somewhat swollen although the cellulitis has cleared and the pain gone. I also have some blisters to sort out.
Last night the weather forecast was for a lot of rain. In fact it was drizzly when I was on the bus in the morning but it came to nothing. There was shower when I was between Totland and Yarmouth for about twenty minutes and some spots in Lymington which came to nothing and the rest of the day was fine and sunny - so I've only had rain twice in two weeks which is encouraging. Distances today were about 10miles on the Isle of Wight and a further 14 on ther mainland - about 24 miles in total.
Another incidental is that this year is a fabulous year f0r blackberries and nobody seems interesting in picking them. On the Isle of Wight at Whitecliff Bay with a caravan park right by the path there were racemes of fruit overhanging the path and they had not been touched! I can offer advice on the best places for blackberries From Dover to Christchurch!