I actually reached Loch Ness on April 1st and ran the length of the loch to Inverness and then well into the Scottish Highlands. I haven’t posted my progress since then because I’ve moved back home to Beckenham, as you know, and it’s taken a while for the dust to settle.

About the end of February I sustained some sort of injury to my right knee, which swelled up to double its size, and I hobbled around for six weeks hoping the inflammation would ease. It hurt a lot and, though I continued running on the treadmill for a while, it became increasingly painful and worrying, the pain keeping me up at night so I wasn’t sleeping. I lost a few weeks of contributory workouts as I decided to rest it.

Coming back home, and deciding that my knee was a little better, I started running outside again in an attempt to regain my fitness levels but my knee did not agree. In a desperate attempt to keep going with my three times weekly workouts, I started rowing, which seems to have had a miraculous effect on my knee swelling and pain. Rowing works the knee, but without putting weight on it, you see, and that’s obviously been beneficial. 

I can’t register rowing workouts to contribute to my Conqueror Challenge, but I am walking the dogs between 3.5 and 5km every day and these do count as Outdoor Walking. I have given up with pavement running, at least for the next few months while my knee heals but this week took delivery of a new treadmill just in time to complete this run in a stylish blaze of glory, which I hope to do tomorrow. 

So there we are, all caught up. Sadly the information about these Conqueror postcards has disappeared from my inbox but here are links to the relevant wiki pages so you don’t have to do any extra homework.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunrobin_Castle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Sinclair_Girnigoe