16 for Tia

Tia would have turned 16 this year. Another marker that wouldn't come to be. After Tia was lost and born to stillbirth on 31 August 2010, we quickly had a slew of firsts. The first Christmas without her. First mother's day. First birthday. First day at nursery, first day of school. Not turning 10. 16 is another big age. Then so is 18 and all the others. As a family, we always try to mark her day with something we do together. Something special. For her 10th year, Julie ran ten 10K runs. We were all incredibly proud. This year, I suggested we walk. The thought was inspired by chatting to Jake, and originally I suggested we could walk 16 miles. We'd decided this much earlier in the year, and we started to do some smaller trails - something like 1-2 hour walks. I was pretty apparent, particularly with how my MS affects my feet, that 16km should be the target. We carefully worked to find and customise a route (we used AllTrails but also tried Outdoor Active) so that we could find 16km…