Sounds like a good day out, makes me fancy another crack at it!
Yeah - its a great day... The one thing I dislike about it is ALL (well nearly all) the paths are made up of flagstones.. so uphill and downhill parts are like going up and down (hard) stairs. I think this is what hurt my knee/leg - the regular and quite hard (impact wise) of clumping down steps as opposed to picking my way down a slope hurt. I did start to wonder whether 4 hours training on a step machine would be best prep!
I also picked up 3 freshly dropped water bottles and a few sweet wrappers (I suspect from the big group in front). People eh..
I was a bit glib about it all - we just pitched up and went around. At breakfast at the B&B the next morning there were some geezers from sarf London who'd been training for 6-8 months to do it.. one had lost a few stone to do it etc.. fair play, good effort etc.. They finished in 7-8 hours (must have run some parts!). To me it seemed like a good day out (in a goal orientated way) and an opportunity to catch up with an old friend..