A lot has happened since the last time I wrote. I am currently in North Yorkshire in the village of Malham. I have come up here to visit some friends and I am staying just below Malham Cove in the village of Malham itself. It is a great place for walking. I love Northamptonshire and my life on the canal but it is a bit flat. For the Hadrian Hundred I need to do some hill work and Malham is the very place!

The walk up from Malham to the top of Malham Cove is a bit of a schlep for me, there is a lot of "up" from the village to the top of the Cove and I find that rather hard. The trip from the Cove to the Tarn is not so hard but there are a couple of step bits which make my legs hurt. Such is life and pain has to be accepted.

This week I have had some pretty bad news and I am quite depressed at the moment. I have a history of depression. I mean serious depression, not the normal being a bit pissed off. My depression has caused me to be hospitalised for months at a time and I am still on drugs to try and control it. They do not really work but I have to take them because they might! Mentally ill people have a habit of not taking their drugs an getting criticised for it. I just take the drugs and put up with the side effects. At least no-one can say you are ill because you have not taken your drugs.

I have not managed to do my twenty kilometre walk yet. I have done a lot of walking here in Malhamdale but only managed to get up to sixteen kilometres. If I was at home on the canal I would have done twenty kilometres without problems but I do struggle to climb. I can go at a good speed when it is flat but as soon as there is any "up" I really, really struggle. I slow down to a crawl. There is no doubt that I need to do a lot more hill work for the Hadrian Hundred.

Every day I have tried to push myself a bit, that is to walk a bit further each day. I am now sure that this is not the way to go. I need days off to recover. Doing this walk is very important to me but I am not going to let it take over my life completely. I want to do other things as well as walk.

Ever since I found out that I was trans-gender I have been very positive and quite happy which is unusual for me. I have a history of depression, as I said, but finding the cause has made a night and day difference.

I was planning to have Face Feminisation Surgery (FFS) over the winter and appear as a woman next year. I know that the NHS will not pay for this because it is considered cosmetic. I thought that getting my face done would give me a bit more confidence to face the world presenting as a girl.

My friend Meg is a doctor and she asked one of her friends who is a consultant plastic surgeon how I should go about finding someone to do my face surgery.

Basically he said that there was no way that this could be done. He said that any surgery would have to be part of a multi-disciplinary approach and that means that I will have to wait until I have seen the people at the Gender Identity Clinic.

As I have not heard from the Clinic I thought that I better make sure if they had got my referral and see if I could get any idea about how long the wait is.

They do not answer their 'phone but do reply to e-mails well. The wait is thirty-three months. That is nearly three year! This is the waiting list for the first appointment, not any treatment. Then you have to wait for the assessment and tests, then you have to wait for treatment.

To me this is a death sentence. This is so far into the future that I as far as I am concerned the NHS is not offering any treatment at all.

So the walking is going very well and I feel that I am getting there but my private life, the important bit, is in tatters. All my plans and hopes have been shattered!