Day 1/5 🥾 The Two Saints Way, Staffordshire and Cheshire
- Jun 25
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 24
The Two Saints Way is a 149km long-distance walking route connecting St Chad's Church in Lichfield with Chester Cathedral. I decided to walk the trail as a training hike ahead of the GR5, using it as an opportunity to test my gear, carry a full backpack and get my trail legs back before heading to Europe.
ℹ️ Stats
Weather: dry & sunny ☀️
From: St Chad's Church ⛪️
Start time: 10.10am
To: past Milford
End time: 7.30pm
Accommodation: wild camped 🏕️
Terrain: flat, rocky, gravel, forest paths & roads
🥾 Km: 27.88
🥾 Miles: 16.4
🦶 Steps: 36,584
Total Distance: 27.88 / 149km | 19% Done ✅
💰 Costs: Travel to Start
Train 🚂 Hoylake to Liverpool £5
Train 🚂 Liverpool to Lichfield £27.50
Accommodation in Lichfield £85
Taxi to church £6
Food & snacks £46
Blackcurrant cordial & water £3.20 WTF
Subjective Feeling Out of 10
Enjoyment: 8/10
Fatigue: 3/10
Ease of terrain: 1/10 – there was nothing challenging at all about the terrain. Apart from a few overgrown sections, but they were very few.
⭐️ Highlights: Good to be back on a trail, nice to feel the weight of a pack again. Just lovely being outdoors in the countryside. Lichfield Cathedral was pretty 🤩
🏔️ Challenges: Price of water and cordial!
💭 Thoughts: I have missed this! It is so glorious! What a great start to the trip 🥳
Two Saints Way: Shaking Out the Legs Before the GR5
A Busy Week Before the Trail
I had a pretty busy week leading up to setting off on the Two Saints Way.
I spent a couple of days down in London catching up with family who were over from Australia. It was so wonderful to see everyone. We packed in plenty of good food, sightseeing and tourist activities, including a trip on the London Eye.
As much fun as it was, I was quickly reminded of just how busy and hectic London can be when you don't live there all the time. Even travelling by Tube can be surprisingly draining.
When I got home, it was straight back to work 💻. I'm on a fairly tight deadline at the moment, trying to get podcast episodes edited, show notes written and all the social media promotion scheduled before I head off on the GR5. Ideally, I'd love to have all 19 episodes completely finished, but realistically I still have a couple left to edit. That's okay though. I have enough episodes scheduled to take me through until 6th October, and I can finish the remainder when I get back from this trip.
The week was pretty intense. Alongside work (at AIM), I was still fitting in my personal training sessions with Franco at UTS and making sure I prioritised recovery too, using the red light bed, compression trousers and hyperbaric oxygen chamber at AIM. It was definitely a full-on week.
Travel Day
Friday was my travel day 🚂.
I'd already booked my train and accommodation in advance, so everything went very smoothly. I arrived in Lichfield and had just a ten-minute walk to my accommodation. It was perfect for what I needed—clean, safe and comfortable. I was staying with a family who had a couple of dogs, and for £85 it was exactly right.
I sat outside with my M&S chicken Caesar salad, added a couple of extra boiled eggs, drank two cans of gin and tonic and simply relaxed.
By about 8 pm, I accidentally dozed off, only to wake up at 11 pm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I haven't brushed my teeth or properly gone to bed yet!"
After sorting myself out, I climbed into bed and slept right through until 7.30 am.
A very long sleep for me, but I think it showed just how much rest and recovery I needed.
Starting the Two Saints Way
The next morning, everything was packed and ready to go 🎒.
Usually, I would happily walk the forty minutes into town, but knowing I had a big day ahead of me, I spent £7 on an Uber instead. Sometimes energy is worth more than money.
I arrived at St Chad's Church ⛪️, a beautiful little church where the official start point of the Two Saints Way can be found beside the well at the back of the church.
Then it was time to shoulder the pack and start walking 🥾.
My backpack weighs around 15 kg and I was carrying about three litres of water. It's been hot, and I'm also carrying plenty of snacks to help keep costs down.
The plan for this trip is to make it as affordable as possible by wild camping where I can and avoiding unnecessary spending in supermarkets, pubs and restaurants. I do have one night booked in Chester, but otherwise this is all about keeping things simple.
Testing My Systems
The trail is around 92 miles long, so ideally I need to average between 23 and 25 miles per day.
Day one didn't quite hit that target. I finished just under 17 miles, but honestly, that's completely fine. I started relatively late, at around 10.10 am, which meant I'd already lost three hours of potential walking time.
More importantly, this trip isn't about pushing myself to the limit.
This is a training trip.
It's about shaking down my gear, testing my systems and seeing how my body responds to consecutive days on the trail.
So far, everything is going really well 👍.
I'd been walking for around six hours by the end of the day, but because so much of my recent training involved long afternoon walks after college, psychologically I actually felt like I was just getting started.
During my training, I'd often leave college at 3.45 pm and still be walking at 7 pm. So when 4 pm rolled around on this hike, I wasn't thinking, "I'm ready to stop." Instead, I felt like I could happily keep going and knock out another 15 km.
That was actually a really nice feeling.
Day 1 Takeaways
Physically, I'm feeling strong 💪.
The only thing I've noticed is that I'm getting quite a bit of heat rash, particularly around my lower back. It's not something I've really dealt with before, so I'll need to have a think about how to manage that moving forward.
Other than that, everything has been great.
The pack feels comfortable.
Pepper is happy.
The INOV8 trainers are feeling good.
And it's just really, really nice to be back out here.
Continue the Journey 🥾
Day 2 brings curious cows, canal paths, soaring temperatures and more lessons as I continue along the Two Saints Way.
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