Run Britain Day 78: Caernarfon to an abrupt stop in Bangor

When I was really struggling with mental health, I had what the psychiatrist told me was dissociation. It’s when your brain feels detached from your thought, feelings or reality and it can be a coping mechanism for dealing with severe stress.

Until today, it hadn’t happened to me for months and months.

But today when was heading out of Bangor and I saw the giant ducks attempting to take off, I thought it was probably time to call it a day.

They weren’t giant ducks, they were sheep, and my rational brain knew that. But my head just couldn’t stop telling me that they were ducks and I was hallucinating. I also couldn’t really work out where I was or how I had got there. The snow on the ground, the mountains and the Welsh language signs probably didn’t help the feeling that I was in another country. But I couldn’t fully pinpoint that country or what I was doing there.

I know people who have hallucinated badly while undertaking big missions like this. I don’t think this was really hallucinating (I knew the ducks were sheep really), but I do know that it was scary.