Today should have been the London Marathon,

but it wasn't.
The vast majority of people who enter the London Marathon are raising money for charity and therefore, because it has been cancelled, charities are going to miss out on an awful lot of fundraising. So in its place has been the 2.6 challenge. All UK charities have been asking all of us to do something, anything, around the theme of 2.6 or 26 and donate money to charity. Well it stands to reason that if we're all doing it we can't go round getting sponsorship from our friends because they are also doing it. Fair enough, sponsor yourself. In case you were wondering, the theme is a combination of the fact that a marathon is 26 miles and it also happens to be today's date.

The plan was to hook up with a couple of mates, (I was prepared to be counted as person 0.6), maintain the statutory 2m (6 feet) from one another and go for a walk of about 2.6 hours, at the end of which each of us would give as much as we felt appropriate to the charity of our choice.

As it turned out there were four of us, our 2m separation fluctuated quite a bit and we were out for four hours.

It was a glorious day, I walked from Chatham to Rochester, picked up S & E, reached the river and turned upstream along the Esplanade, picked up J and then carried on to Borstal. Almost identical to the route I had cycled on Easter Sunday. But then we continued weaving our way up the hill in search of Fort Borstal (Historical Place). It is quite obviously inaccessible so we carried on to the fearsomely inaccessible Borstal Institution and sat on the grass in the sunshine in front of its imposing 1908 entrance. Of course these days it is Her Majesty's Prison and Young Offenders' Institution, Rochester. We could hear those inside also enjoying the sunshine in the exercise yard behind the very high razor-wire-topped wall which on our side is peppered with notices to the effect that this is a drone no-fly-zone and failure to comply will result in two years on the other side of same wall.

By the time I got home I'd walked approximately 7 miles and while my feet soak I shall decide how much I can afford to donate to Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust

Oops! Forgot to add this extra for this week's Derelict Sunday Challenge, also from Borstal, but not its most famous Institutuion.