My Pilgrimage - Our Journey

Should I do something with this experience?

2007-08-25T12:55:00.000+01:00

I know I promised to write about a couple of things that we encountered on the walk but never did. When the walk was finished I just wanted to put it out of my mind. I have no idea why I did not want to embrace the success. It seems it needed some time and now I am proud as punch about our achievement! Maybe I will fire of a couple more emails about the inconsistancy of wireless access, toilet paper and public right of way accross Europe!

But back to the question of what will I do with the experience. I think I wrote about it before; when I was younger I never let myself be stopped by any kind of barrier or hurdle. I was so good at the 'head down and go through anything' thing. The walk showed me that I have not lost it and on top of that I have got fantastic support in Gary to do ANYTHING (he is very indulgend!)

Here is my new project where I will need some of that grit and determination to get up and do stuff to get a little closer to my goal every day.

Sad news

2007-08-25T12:49:00.001+01:00

Gary's mum Lily died in July. Her bravery and encouragement when we were away is a great lesson for us. We miss her very much and the memory of this walk will be dedicated to her.

Es ist vorbei

2007-06-08T12:36:00.000+01:00

Auch mein Dank geht an Alle die uns auf unserer Reise unterstuetzt haben. Eure ‘hits’, Kommentare und E-mails haben uns immer gerade zum richtigen Zeitpunkt erreicht, genau dann wenn wir es gebraucht haben.

Die letzten zwei Tage seit dem wir daheim angekommen sind, sind etwas verwischt. Gary und ich hatten Schwierigkeiten gerade zu denken und vollstaendige Saetze herauszubringen war auch nicht einfach. Heute ist alles etwas besser und wir scheinen uns zu erholen.

Ich bin sehr dankbar das Gary und ich diese Reise zusammen so solide ueberstanden haben. Wir sind noch verheiratet, reden immer noch miteinander und hatten auch in der letzten Woche noch Gespraechsstoff beim Abendessen. Es hat sich gut abgewechselt wer schneller laufen konnte und weniger Schmerzen hatte und die Person hat dann auf den anderen aufgepasst. Unser Code ‘Wie geht es dir aus 10’ hat bis (fast) zum Schluss gut geklappt. 1 ist ‘mir geht es super und nix tut weh’ und 10 ist ‘ich kann keinen einzigen Schritt mehr laufen, es tut sehr weh’.

Unser Rythmus hat einfach gut zusammengepasst und Gary hat es immer geschafft mich aufzuheitern wenn mal alles nicht so lustig schien. Am meisten hat geholfen das wir beide sehr hartnaeckige Menschen sind und nicht leicht aufgeben – wer ist schon so verrueckt am letzten Tag noch einen Marathon hinzulegen nur um im eigenen Bett schlafen zu koennen?! (Ich bin mir uebrigens ziemlich sicher das Gary am letzten Tag beim Code geschummelt hat – ihm hat sein Schienbein wesentlich mehr Probleme bereitet als er zugeben wollte)

Ich will ich noch ueber ein paar (ueberraschende) Gegenstaende schreiben die sich als unerlaesslich herausgestellt haben waehrend unserer Reise aber dann scheint unser Blog komplett zu sein – irgendwie Schade weil wir so gerne unseren Zaehler angeschaut haben um zu sehen wieviele hits wir hatten und ob jemand einen Kommentar hinterlassen hatte. Wir haben uns einfach verbunden gefuehlt.

It is over

2007-06-08T12:35:00.001+01:00

My thanks to everybody who supported us on this journey. Your hits on our blog, comments and e-mails always came at the right time, just when we needed a boost.

The last two days since we have arrived home have been a bit of a blur. Gary and I have had difficulties to think straight and even forming whole sentences has been a challenge.Today everything is much easier and we seem to be recovering.

I am so grateful that Gary and I have survived this journey together. We are still married, still talk to each other and even during the last week we had stuff to chat about over dinner. We took turns in who could walk faster and was in less pain and that person simply looked after the other. Our code of ‘How are you out of 10’ worked well until (nearly) the end. 1 is ‘I am feeling great, nothing is hurting’ and 10 is ‘I can not walk another step, I am really hurting badly’

We had the same rhythm and Gary always managed to cheer me up when I needed it. What helped us most was that we are persistent people and tend not to give up easily – who else would be mad enough to walk a marathon on the last day only to be able to sleep in ones own bed. (I am pretty sure that Gary was not totally honest with his code response during the last day. I am certain his shin gave him much more trouble than he admitted)

There are a couple of (surprising) items I would like to write about which turned to be essential for the success of our journey. But after that it seems that our blog is complete. I am really sad about that at the moment – we loved to check our page counter in the evenings when we had an internet connection to see how many hits we had on our blog and who left a message. It was nice to know we were connected to home.

Thank you

2007-06-07T16:11:00.000+01:00

Late on Tuesday I bashed out a quick entry to tell everyone that we were home. My intention was to write something more substantial the following day. But whatever had kept us going for the previous 39 days ran out and yesterday we just did not feel capable of doing anything that required energy or clarity of thought.

On our walking days, we always had a target location to walk to. It was rarely an easy target and when we reached it, we generally felt that we could not walk another step. Manageable aches and pains and general tiredness all seemed to increase with proximity to our destination. Such seems to be the psychology of achieving difficult goals.

Reaching our ultimate goal seems to have had the same effect, increased by an order or two of magnitude. Whilst the journey was a wonderful and fun experience, getting up day after day at 7:30, excepting the 3 rest days, knowing that one is going to face a physical challenge, eventually takes its toll.

I had thought that I would want to write some reflections on the journey but, right now, I just feel like saying: “Yeah, we did it” and thanking you all for your support. So I think I will leave it there, at least for now, and simply close out with the final musical choices.

We didn't post a choice for our penultimate day but I can do so now. Jackson Browne makes another appearance with “Running on Empty” which is exactly how we felt.

For our final day, there are lots of contenders, not least Les's excellent suggestion. The theme from Mission Impossible comes to mind, as does “We Are the Champions” by Queen or a reprise of the overall theme of “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley.

But I have gone for something I really love, the celebratory and energetic: “Hey Ya!” by Outkast - here is the link to that wonderful video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAB7yGQsYks

Thanks again to everyone who encouraged and supported us. And if you didn't donate to our charity then it isn't too late to do so here: http://www.justgiving.com/walkingtobavaria

By the way, I am sure Doris will also want to post and I will leave it to her to make any additional music choices.

Day 39 – 44 km walked – Total of 842 km walked – Home

2007-06-06T00:24:00.000+01:00

A short entry for the time being to say that we are home - we'll do fuller update tomorrow when we begin our recovery. Do we need it - hell yes we do.

The closer we got to home, the more difficult it became to stop walking and find somewhere to sleep - the desire to get home was just too strong and we ended up walking 44 Km. The imperially inclined can do the maths and find that it is just over a standard marathon - with 13 Kg rucksucks of course.

"Do you think you can walk another 10Km or so, with that pain?"

"I can try".

We started at 9 am this morning and got home around 9:30 pm this evening. We are tired, in good spirits and our feet hurt. A few beers and a little wine has been consumed but now it is time for bed.

Thank you to you all for your support.

Musical choices and reflection to follow

Day 38 – 25 km walked – Total of 798 km walked – Lenham

2007-06-04T21:31:00.000+01:00

After yesterday's very hilly walk, we woke up a little stiffer than we were used to in Belgium. All in a days work for a walker not to look like an old age pensioner when getting up from breakfast. Breakfast needs a special mention today. After 36 days of Continental breakfasts with endless reams of bread rolls, ham and cheese and yesterday's said B&B which did not instill enough confidence in us to go for the full Monty (wise decision as we ended up with hard boiled poached eggs on toast) we went for it today. Lovely sausage and Internet connection, what else does a girl need in the morning :)

A special prize goes to Dem who was the only reader who spotted Gary's deliberate mistake of mixing up the North Downs with the South Downs. Just checking that you are all paying attention! Either nobody else is reading or you are not PAYING ATTENTION!!

To be truthful – we sometimes find it difficult to make the verbal difference between East and West. Yes, yes, we know we are walking west, north west, south west – probably a combination thereof throughout every day. East is the devils work and if we are heading there we are going the wrong way (like today for a couple of miles, but lets brush over that). However, what comes out of our mouths is quite different. 'Are we going in the right direction?' I ask my co-navigator and Gary gets his compass out.. 'Yes', he says after consulting it, we are heading South-East. 'Oh good' I say, then we should be reaching the Cherry soon, to cross the Channel and todays musical choice should be the 'Tie of the Iger'. I personally am now at the point where I feel I do have a high IQ by just remembering which week day it is and what country we are in.

Gary has only recently come into the interesting feelings that are created when a toe or two go numb. I have had the pleasure since the beginning of the walk on my left foot's big toe (which is actually the middle toe on that foot). The blood flow comes and goes........... ouchhh. A couple of days ago Gary started complaining that his sock kept getting stuck between his toes. On further investigation it was the same thing – numb toe. Wiggle at your own risk!

Today's walk was less hilly but equally pleasant. Not very many cars and certainly no brightly clad bicycle riders whistling past us. I have to get something of my chest about Lycra here: Guys, if Lycra gets stretched too much it becomes see-through. So, if you are wearing 'nada' beneath your Lycra cycling shorts and they have been stretched too much, lookers-on get way more information than when looking at, say, a builders crack.

Another pleasant feature of today's walk was that the Pilgrims way and the North Downs way have joined. My thoughts kept wandering to those people who walked this ancient route over the centuries. What are your hopes? Which body parts are hurting? Why the hell are you doing this???

Day 37 – 26 Km walked today – 773 Km walked in total - Wye

2007-06-04T08:13:00.000+01:00

I'm really proud of us today. Despite being on the way home, we were at a low relatively low ebb yesterday evening. In part, this was because we lost our rythtmn but perhaps more because we had come so far but some old physical concerns made us doubt whether we could finish it off.

But today was a new day and we walked 26Km up hill, down hill, up hill...and so on. It felt more like 30Km and was certainly more strenuous than that distance in the flatness of Belgium. And the scenery was wonderful.

We started out, as we ended yesterday, on the South Downs Way and what a contrast to Belgium. I will not day that we didn't notice the hills but we certainly didn't mind them, given the rewards. But after lunch, a minor wrong turn found us on the Pilgrim's Way. These days, the South Downs Way is better for walkers, as the a lot of the Pilgrim's Way is tarmac. But on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the tarmac was quiet and it was a special feeling to walk where so many feet had walked before.

To escape the tarmac for a while, we took a footpath that runs parallel to the road. It ran through a number of fields and it became clear, after the second, field, that the owner was not very keen on having people follow this ancient right of way. Signs went missing or were overgrown and styles were precarious. This came to its nadir in the final field which increasingly became nothing more than a field of thigh high stinging nettles. I was wearing shorts but we, now militant ramblers, were determined to get to the end. Four hours later, my legs are still tingling like mad.

Shortly after, we sat on a bench, dialed 118 118, which worked pretty well yesterday, to find some comfortable accommodation in Wye. It was a nasty shock to be told that there wasn't any and that we would have to go to Ashford. And then along came the lovely lady below, who happened to be passing by.

Not only did she tell us that there were indeed places in Wye, she walked with us into Wye, and showed us to the very the door of the place we are now staying. But she also waited outside, to ensure that we had a room, so that she could show us to somewhere else if they were full. I gave her the thumbs up and took the picture above. But her generosity didn't end there. When we came back to the dining room, we found that she had returned and left us an envelope containing a generous donation to our charity. What can we say but thank you.

So finally, to our musical choice. Having spent this afternoon on the Pilgrim's Way, I was going to choose the old hymn, “To be a Pilgrim”, with words by John Bunyan, which I have been singing on and off for weeks.

But I have also been looking for an excuse to include something by the late and very great Robert Nesta Marley. So in recognition of our assertion of our right to ramble, it is the great man and “Get Up, Stand Up (Stand Up For Your Rights)”.

Day 36 – 14 Km walked today – 747 Km walked in total (need to check) – Folkestone

2007-06-02T08:10:00.000+01:00

This was an odd sort of day. We started it in the beautiful city of Bruges and ended it in a bottom of the range Bed and Breakfast in Folkestone, sitting in our tiny room, eating takeaway Chinese food from a carton with a plastic fork.

In between we had very mixed emotions. Forced to take more public transport than we would have liked, we were keen to walk. But somehow, the day of rest plus the non-walking transport, got us out of our rhythm. Nonetheless, we were determined and started walking pretty late in the day by recent standards – 3pm.

And the walk was a real, welcome back to England wake-up call, after the flatness of Belgium. We climbed and climbed until we reached the top of the famous white cliffs. After that, we enjoyed a glorious, but hilly, walk along the coast to Folkestone, when our stamina ran out around 7pm and we started to hurt badly in old and new places.

So it was any port in a storm...but preferably Folkestone.

But it was good to be back in England and on our way home, so today's musical choice is Paul Simon and “Homeward Bound”.

Adjustment

2007-06-01T21:56:00.000+01:00

There are a number of reasons why we chose the slightly longer route via Ostend, rather than drop down to Calais. Two of those reasons were Leuven and Bruges. A decision that seemed to be completely vindicated by our thoroughly enjoyable stays in each place. Tomorrow, went our perfect plan, we would walk our last 20 Kilometres in Belgium, take the ferry from Ostend and begin our walk up the North Downs Way from Dover.

Unfortunately, however, it turns out that the fast ferry from Ostend to Dover is no more. Actually, we knew this yesterday but were unfazed because there is a ferry to Ramsgate. Our only decision then, was whether to walk from Ramsgate, probably via Canterbury, or whether to get a train to Dover and stick to the original route. But when we looked at booking today, it turns out that although the Ferry takes car and motorbike passengers, it does not take foot passengers.

At first, I thought this was quite funny but as the evening progressed, I became more and more pissed off at myself for not having sorted it out in advance. But then that had not been the spirit of the journey which was, essentially, not to plan more than a day ahead – although it could well be argued that this was somewhat different.

Well, there is always Zeebrugge, I thought, which is even closer to Bruges than Ostend. But nowadays, it turns out, ferries from Zeebruge, only go to Hull! It seems that the intense ferry competition had already closed down our options but did we know it. Even services from Dunkirk look pretty limited these days.

So what to do? A tempting option was and is to get on a train back to Brussels and use my mountain of Eurostar points to travel all of the way home in Business Class – we have walked over 700 Km, we deserve to finish with a little luxury, goes this argument. Another option is to walk to Calais, adding something like another 5 days to our journey, despite our various and many aches and pains. But to be frank we are physically and mentally tired, prepared now only for a last push from Dover to home.

We have, therefore, gone for a compromise. We will make an “adjustment”. Tomorrow we will get a train and make the short trip down the coast to Calais and get a Ferry to Dover. We will imagine that we have stepped back, briefly, in time, to when the Hoverspeed used to glide serenely out of Ostend harbour before powering its way to Dover. It will be as if the the “adjustment” had never happened. It will be a little secret, just between me and Doris.

It is tempting to pick David Bowie and “Changes” for today's musical choice but in the spirit of todays' adjustment, and pretending that we are still going from Ostend, today's choice is Marvin Gaye and “Sexual Healing”. A delicious, goose-pimple inducing song, from the album Midnight Love, recorded while Marvin was living, improbable as that sounds, in Ostend – strange but true.

Before I go, Doris says that I should mention that, I am posting this while seated on the toilet – wait don't run away, thinking that noxious odours can be transmitted through cyberspace – it is not what it seems. It is just that it is the only place in our hotel room that we can get a decent wi-fi signal. I am seating comfortably (everything is relative) on a cushion. But hang on, now that I am here....better sign off.

Day 35 Day of Rest - Bruges

2007-05-31T20:14:00.000+01:00

An early investigation shows that Bruges is littered with Belgian chocolate shops.........................

Day 34 – 20 km walked – Total of 733 km walked – Bruges

2007-05-31T20:02:00.000+01:00

The last hour of yesterday's walk was one of two very brief times on this trip when I truly did not enjoy our journey. We had to walk on a narrow but busy road - drivers seemed to have little regard for us and cut it very fine, leaving dangerously little room when passing. Also a very strong wind had come up and we had to walk under some fragile looking trees - and my foot was hurting. When we eventually got to the only hotel in the area, we had to make such an inconvenient detour for, it was not exactly the Ritz.

This morning everything looked different again, with a blue sky and the sun was shining (we have been incredibly lucky with the weather – for the last week it has only rained just after we reached our hotel for the day or at night). We quickly found a very pleasant off road cycling way that would take us back to the Ghent – Bruges canal. In fact today was the most pleasant walk we have completed since we entered Belgium. The canal was lined by mature trees and fields, for a while there was even a proper non tarmacked walk way for us walkers only. *bliss*

On the way we met to lovely Australian ladies who were cycling across the Netherlands and now Belgium. They were going to Maastricht, the same way we have come west, they are going east. So I dug deep in my rucksack and got out the Chinese Menu style cycle maps we had used, explained the secret of how it works and let them have our maps. Hope they come in useful!

We arrived in Bruges in good time and fell in love immediately. We had to cross the 'Grote Markt' on our way to our hotel. It was as impressive as we have seen in so many other Belgian towns.

But here they have equally beautifully restored buildings away from the main square and canals to boot. Tres romantic, Paris and Venice eat your heart out!

Gary has already decided that we are going to do the full tourist programme tomorrow (he might have to take the canal boat trip in those bright orange buckets on his own though). I am looking forward to taking the camera out and getting some arty pictures.

Today's song choice is dedicated to Gary's mother Lily who today was admitted to hospital to receive a blood transfusion. She has been wonderfully supportive and encouraging throughout our walk and we had to promise hand on heart that we were not coming home early because of her. Honest Lily it is for purely selfish reasons that we chose shorter routes. Our feet and aching bones can be quite persuading.

Gary mentioned this Abba song once before but it was not chosen. Lily you ARE a Super Trooper.

Scientific research continues

2007-05-30T20:09:00.000+01:00

I have some good news and some bad news.

My research confirms that Chimay trappist beer is truly one of the world's primier beers.

Unfortunately, however, I have unable to determine whether "red label" at 7% or "blue label" at 9% is the best manifestation of this wonderful brew.

Rest assured, I will continue to pursue my investigation with renewed vigour, knowing we have but a few days left in....er....this country....and gawd bless all who sail in her...hic

Day 33 – 23 km walked –total walked of 713 km – Aalter

2007-05-30T19:27:00.000+01:00

I ended yesterday's entry with the words “it is now just two relatively short walks to get to Bruges”.I hadn't measured it out myself and probably should have written: Doris tells me it is now just two relatively short walks to Bruges. The key word here, as Doris pointed out when I asked her, is “relatively”.Less than 30Km each she now informs me. As you can see, today was over 20Km and tomorrow's walking into Bruges is at leat 25Km.

Actually, today's walk would have been slightly shorter, had we not had to take a long detour away from our route to get to our hotel. The hotel is, by the way, is pleasantly situated within hearing distance of a busy ring-road and has air conditioning that periodically leaps into action with all the subtlety of a Concorde taking off. It could be an interesting night and I might have to foresake my intended sobriety for some of that special Belgian sleeping potion.

The walk itself was a pleasant one along the banks of the canal that runs from Ghent to Oostende via Bruges. When I say canal, however, the British amongst us have to forget notions of narrow-boats – it is w---i---d----e.

Getting out of Ghent was a trial in itself – it just seemed to go on forever. Somewhat disorientated, we asked a man, who was emerging from his house with his young son, for directions. We were really only asking for a general direction to get us back on track but he insisted on delaying his journey and study his own map, to help us. Having sorted it out in his own mind, he then insisted on driving us to the point on the canal that we were trying to get to.

So instead of going out with his son, this lovely man, packed me, Doris and his son, into his car to drive us to somewhere that we could usefully restart our journey. Not very far away, as it turned out but we were and are very grateful.

Later on, we were passed by and amazing looking vehicle that seemed to be some combination of a low-lying bicycle and a go-kart. It zipped past so quickly, that I didn't get time to snap a picture. Later, however, we came across it's driver, studying a map on a bridge that we were crossing. Not only could I now get a picture but he was a studying a cycling route map that we had previously been told didn't exist for this area.

“Yes, I'm English,” he responded to by standard opening of “excuse me but do you speak English”.

As an aside, most Belgians seem to speak almost flawless English. They usually respond to my question by telling me, modestly, that they speak a little, before conversing faultlessly.

Anyway, “G”, the Englishman, told me that he was testing the vehicle, which I think he said was called a “velomobile”, as he was thinking of buying one. Despite the slightly worn exterior of this particular model, he proceeded to tell me the technical details which seemed impressive, even though most of it went over my head.

“It goes like the clappers,” G informed me and this I well understood.

He then helpfully read out, what I now know as node numbers, from the cycle route map, charting our journey from where we were to our destination. I thanked him for his kindness and he returned to tinkering with his vehicle.

Later, as we walked along the canal, the velemobile passed us at speed - a cheery disembodied hand waved from the cockpit and it disappeared into the distance, going like the clappers.

I never did add a musical choice for yesterday, so for the second time am going to have a single choice for yesterday and today.

I am not supposed to tell you but Doris has had a problem with her foot that has been troubling her at least a couple of weeks. She has some sort of strain that eases with walking in the morning but stiffens up and becomes painful in the afternoon. But day after day, she laces her foot tightly into her boot and carries on as if nothing were wrong. At the end of today, I think it was particularly painful.

I am not supposed to tell you because, I think, she thinks it might make her sound like and attention seeking, drama queen, wimp. Nothing could be further from the truth. She is nothing short of courageous although I know she will not like me saying it - so please keep it just between just you and me.

So the choice for both yesterday and today is dedicated to Doris and Elton John's “I'm still standing.”

Day 32 – 22 km walked –total walked of 690 km – Ghent

2007-05-29T21:07:00.000+01:00

Today was cold and windy – the first time that we have experienced those conditions.

Now, Doris had laughed at me for bringing a woolly hat and gloves. But there is nothing laughable about cold ears or hands and it was she who felt the biting wind first and was quick to take advantage of my prescient purchases, hitherto carried for 31 unused days.

But it was not much longer before my ears began to suffer, the wind whistled through my missing tooth, and I needed to get creative with my cap.

This made Doris dissolve into giggles, only surpassed when I remembered that my wind-stopper jacket has a hood for this very purpose. I will admit that it is not my best look but is was very effective and enabled us both to carry on toastily.

Ghent is a sprawling conurbation, so for the only the second time on this journey, we decided to skip the walk the purist walk into the centre and enjoyed the luxury of train transport for a couple of stops.

You may recall that, after Würzburg, I vowed never to walk across a city again. In fact we have done so, wittingly or not, nearly every time, with the journey into Aachen (but not out) and Ghent, as the only exceptions. Over the next few days, our plan is to walk all of the way into both Bruges and Oostende.

As we want to get out of Ghent pretty pronto tomorrow morning, we decided to stay near the station rather than in the, reportedly, lovely town centre. We we really should have visited but will instead pig out on Bruges, having equally enjoyed Dendermonde below.

Nonetheless, we came up trumps culinary-wise, as just around the corner from where we are staying, is only one of eight (so they told us) organically certified vegetarian restaurants in Belgium. The food, which had a strong African influence, was superb, as was the lovely organic Belgium beer – well I had to try it!

Finally, here, just a stone's throw from the station, is a testament to the Belgium people's love of the bicycle.

It is now just two relatively short walks to get to Bruges.

Today's musical choice: need to have a think - will hopefully post later

Day 31 – 19 km walked –total walked of 668 km – Dendermonde

2007-05-28T20:52:00.000+01:00

As we have already said, our choice of destinations is now driven by where we can get accommodation rather than what seems to be a sensible walking target.

We booked this evening's accommodation two days ago, at the same time as we booked last night's in Bornem. Incidentally, although last night's hotel was delightful, there was, unfortunately, a market on the square the next day and we woken early by hosiery and cheese which arrived around 5:30 am.

Today's walk was shorter than originally estimated, once we had taken Doris's famous “straight-cuts”, and we arrived in Dendermonde at around 14:00, having previously informed the owners that we would be there around 16:00. Not usually an issue but, on this occasion, it could have been, as we were staying in a bed and breakfast rather than a hotel.

Concerns increased as the tail end of our walk took us through endless industrial landscapes, into a place that turned out to be a lot bigger than we realised. Well researched as ever, we were walking into a City rather than a village and not, it seemed, through the best part of town. But if there is one thing I have learned on this journey, it is not to judge one's circumstances too quickly – or at least to be willing to reappraise and re-frame quickly.

On arrival we were greeted by not one but two charming hosts, in a newly, and beautifully, renovated house that has only been open for business for a few weeks. As we are the only residents this evening, and as the owners do not live in, we have the run of a large townhouse. Not only do we have a large bedroom and enormous bathroom, we have a generous lounge, kitchen and fridge full of beer and wine.

Not only that but on arriving back from dinner, we found a note alongside a bottle of trappist beer that can only be bought at the actual abbey. What a lovely thought. And was it delicious? Hell yes, it was delicious. So a big thank you to Linda and recommendation of our hosts at http://www.domusportus.be/index%20english.html and the wonderful beer at http://www.sintsixtus.be/eng/index2.html or less modestly at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westvleteren_Brewery.

And there were these lovely people who knocked at the front door, looking for accommodation for their wedding party in September. I ended up showing around our current “home”. Dieter talks more than me which is saying something. It turns out that, on a number of occasions, he has completed the “death walk” of 100 Km (to be completed in just one day) that takes place every year, in a round trip, from our previous night's location in Bormen. He told me that it begins with the participants in coffins but I wonder if he got that the wrong way around. Blimey – tough geezers.

If you are reading this, have a great wedding and an enjoyable honeymoon in SA.

And finally, we have, through necessity, being doing some planning ahead and thought we would share our potential itinerary.

Tuesday 28^th May we will be in Gent
Thursday 30^th May we will be in Bruges and will take a day off to enjoy the City
Friday 31^st May we will be in Ostend
Saturday 1^st of June we should have crossed to Dover and be somewhere beyond

We both think that once we get back to England, we will be pretty motivated to complete the journey rather than linger, so think we will get home on Tuesday 4^th or Wednesday 5^th June but, as ever, we will take it as it comes, and if it is later for whatever reason then so be it.

Is it strange to think that we are close to embarking on our last week. Thank you all for your great support. See you soon.

Today's musical choice is the very soppy "Alone Together" by Carly Simon.

Day 30 – 20 km walked –total walked of 649 km – Bornem

2007-05-27T20:16:00.000+01:00

Today we had a choice: walk around 30 Km, or more, on reasonably attractive but indirect cycle ways or walk 20 Km on a cycle way that tracks the main road. Having walked 30 Km yesterday, we opted for the latter. It was physically less taxing than the first option but, in the past, we have found that the predominantly road based walking seems to take more out of us mentally – today was no different. It did, however, have the virtue of getting us to our destination just after 15:00, in plenty of time for a much needed siesta.

Our hotel is small but has a very large and staggeringly busy restaurant. Emboldened by this, I asked for all local options and ended up with a slightly off tasting beer, brewed in this very town, and eel in a thick spinach sauce. The latter was good but will not be racing to the top of my all time list. As for the beer, I do wonder if it was not quite right or, perhaps, I have finally met a beer I didn't like very much – quite a shocker, especially in Belgium!

I have tried to sample local beers wherever possible but have to report to my beer drinking friends – they know who they are – that Chimay still stands head and shoulders above anything else I have tried so far. No shame to the others of course, as Chimay is an extraordinarily good beer though surprisingly not widely available over the last couple of days.

This leads me to say that I hope I have not given a negative impression of Belgium. The people are as friendly as can be, they care about food, brew great beer and have some lovely towns. It is simply that they are into bicycling rather than walking. Unfortunately, this has been a problem for us because it means having to walk along cycle ways. Not an ordeal but what seems a gentle detour on a bike often turns out to be a long way on foot and, therefore, not ideal for us.

Belgians seem to be fanatical about cycling: often cycling in large groups, with no age boundaries, in lurid, decal clad outfits at terrifying speeds, on very straight paths. There are others who cycle more sedately but their outfits are rarely less sedate than high camp Abba. If you thought cyclists in London are brave – to wear what they do – then you aint seen nothing.

Doris didn't suggest a musical choice for yesterday, so I will suggest one in honour of straightness, for both yesterday AND today. The cycle ways, canals and roadways may not always go where one wants but they go straight from A to B. A very tenuous excuse to pick Bob Seger and “Still the same”

And finally an appeal to anyone who has stayed in the lovely City of Bruges. We currently intend to spend a rest day there and would be grateful for any hotel recommenations.

Day 29 - postscript

2007-05-26T22:29:00.000+01:00

I have woken up briefly, to report that travel and accommodation in Belgium continues to frustrate us. After days of straight roads, cycle ways and canals, we find that there is not direct-ish route west towards Ghent. Instead, we are going to have to take a meandering route that goes north then back again south. This would be fine if we knew that we were going to be enjoying glorious scenery and pleasant walking but, unfortunately, we know that it will be compromises made up of cycle ways and roads. The temptation to jump on a train has never been greater.

Nonetheless, we both want to complete the journey on foot, so will stick at it, at least for the time being, accepting that for now, the pleasure of travelling is being replaced by the pleasure of arriving.

Day 29 – 29 km walked – a total of 629 km – Mechelen

2007-05-26T21:05:00.000+01:00

It is Saturday night, 9pm and Gary has just fallen asleep – oh we do lead an exciting life!!! We are getting tired - not necessarily physically but more mentally. No, we are not in bad spirits - quite the opposite but to do this walk we had to adapt our lives to a completely new routine and have found that we need to go with the daily flow to keep ourselves sane. We had agreed to meet up with friends and family before the walk - we also had this idea of pre-arranging private accommodation with kind people. But it turned out that we needed to be fairly selfish and single minded to do what we are doing. We needed to listen to our bodies, see what the terrain asked of us and adapt the length of our walk accordingly. We tend not to think ahead more than a day, as it seems that we can not cope with much more. My apologies to everybody we did not meet and the nearly forgotten 40^th birthday of my brother-in-law Tony. Happy birthday again!!!!!!

Since Belgium and finding accommodation is tricky, we now at least try to book the next night ahead. Last night we stayed at the Holiday Inn in beautiful Leuven, as I was able to get a rock bottom deal for the night and there are two things you can rely on at a Holiday Inn: surly receptionists and two double beds when you ask for a twin room. We had a very quiet room and this morning over a good breakfast we started fantasising about staying another night, having a better look at Leuven and resting up. So we decided we would like to stay if you could get the same deal for another night. Said receptionist took great delight in telling Gary that there was no room at the inn for the likes of us.

We did some quick re-framing and decided that the room was a little gloomy anyway, the wireless LAN overpriced at 30 Euros for 24 hours (they really are taking the biscuit with those kind of prices – I am saving the full rant about the inconsistency of W-Lan pricing for another blog ). Last night we had bought just two hours connection time to write our blog, check the mail and book the next accommodation and the connection was lousy, it kept dropping. AND after our fabulous meal yesterday evening we could do with a good walk. So we packed our bags and did a very quick 29 km. Apparently I was storming ahead at unheard of speeds on our dead straight walk along the canal that connects Leuven and Mechelen. It seems that Chardonnay and three course celebratory meals are working like rocket fuel for me!

Mechelen is another old Belgian town we can recommend for its stunning city center. We are really impressed with the beautifully renovated buildings and the towns huge market squares. Who would have thunk that Belgium has so much to offer!

Part of the reason we walked a little faster was to arrive whilst Tourist information and book shops were still open, as we needed to buy a map for the next part of our journey. Doing that we realised that we have run into the old problem again. The well sign posted cycle network is going to run out half-way through tomorrow and we are probably again reduced to walking on busy roads. It seems to be a county by county issue if they maintain these well posted cycle routes or not. I believe they will be available again around Bruges which leaves us with about 70 km of a problem. I am sure we will find a way!

Day 28 – 19 Km walked today – total walked of 600 Km - Leuven

2007-05-25T21:14:00.000+01:00

Eagle-eyed observers may have noticed that the delights of Chimay Dubbel caused me to mistype yesterday's total walked which I have now corrected to 581 Km. Spookily, today's walk of 19 Km makes our total walked to a round 600 Km, with no cheating or rounding up.

With no marked cycle ways to Leuven, we decided that today was about “getting the job done.” Originally, we intended to try to navigate from village to village, on back roads. But starting out in rain and missing the cycle way out of town, we found ourselves on a 19 Km, dead straight, flat, road to Leuven – respect to the Romans who did a lot of stuff around here – nice one boys.

By the way, it is not just the roads that are straight – have a look at this cycle way from yesterday.

The previous night Doris had done her usual bargain hunting and come up with an amazing deal on a hotel in Leuven. Also, as I had spent some time working in Leuven a long time ago, I knew it was a nice place unless the bulldozers had moved in and the university relocated. So we had plenty of incentive to get there and figured out that if we stayed on the main road and really went for it, we could be there at 14:00, to enjoy both our posh hotel and the town. We arrived in the town centre at 13:55, escaping the worst of the day's heat which we had already seen measured at 27 degrees.

[Note for Jsam if he is still reading. The work in Leuven was with Langton for a client named Pencoprint]

We both slept badly last night because although our hotel was friendly and hospitable, it had no air conditioning and was on a main road and junction / drop-off point. The night was a tussle between withstanding the noise and tolerating the humid heat that remained from a day of around 30 degrees. We oscillated between the two, window opening and closing continuously, with sleep the helpless victim.

So having arrived early, we decided on a siesta, from which we have just woken, despite the church clock that chimes every quarter of an hour, in otherwise total silence. We are hoping that the chiming will either stop at a respectable hour or go unnoticed, as it did during our siestas – watch this space.

As the bulldozers have indeed not moved in and Leuven seems to have maintained its leisurely student ambiance, together with more bicycles that you can shake a stick at – stay calm Les, I know what you are thinking – we are off to have a mooch around and find somewhere nice to eat.

Maybe, we'll write some more later but as I will have my eyes open for lovely local trappist beers, then perhaps not...

...now if last night was through rose, or perhaps Chimay, tinted glasses then the judgment that follows is totally objective: we lurve Leuven. This is a lovely place.

A stone's throw from our hotel, is a very long, narrow, street full of nothing but restaurants. It is mostly European cuisine but there are also tempting Moroccan, Japanese and others. All have seating outside and on a warm Friday night it was bustling with diners eating, drinking and just wandering up an down trying to decide. It is a great atmosphere and we lingered as long as our tired limbs would allow.

It is tempting to linger even longer, perhaps a day or more, to try more places and enjoy a really great ambiance. But we both now feel that , although we continue to enjoy the journey, we are on our way home and an additional day here, is a day more away from home. That said, we are greatly looking forward to Bruges and may well take a day out to enjoy it to the full. But for a other travelers, with different goals, we unreservedly recommend Lueven as a place to stay and linger.

Before closing this evening, I need to mention that Doris managed to translate the Chimay label. It turns out that this wonderful beer, one of the top three in the world in my humble opinion, is still brewed by monks who donate most of the profits to worthy causes.

So in finishing this glass in front on me, I am not only doing God's work, I am also contributing to worthy causes. Better have another – gawd bless...hic...never had to walk with a hangover yet...first time for everything I guess...all in a good cause...

Musical choice...hic...hic.... is Queen and “Don't Stop Me Now”....because I am having a good time, having a good time – sing along you bastards!

Oh! I nearly forgot to mention that today we have walked for exactly four weeks, 600 Km and are pretty pleased with ourselves...time for ermm...a toast|

Day 27 – 23 km walked today – total walked of 581 km - Tienen

2007-05-24T22:09:00.000+01:00

Today was a lesson in relativity.

After a joyless day, yesterday, I woke this morning wondering how many such days I could tolerate before concluding that this was not what our journey was about, jumping on a train to Oostend and completing the last few days in England. As it turned out, we cracked Belgium's enigma code – to a point – and had good day that ended in a pleasing swell of Chianti and Chimay.

After 5 days in Belgium, buying walking maps that didn't show footpaths, we acquired a map that showed the various cycle routes. The secret to the routes, it turned out, was that the numbers on the sign-posts that we saw littered across the county are not route numbers but destinations – like a bizarre topographical Chinese Takeaway, designed to save a couple of bytes, destinations are referred to as numbers, not words. Equipped with the code, it was easy to navigate. So today, we navigated along pleasant walkways – well cycle-ways really – having to consult neither compass nor detailed map.

A couple of weeks ago, our walk would have been dismissed as boring but after a day walking within inches of roaring trucks and buses, it seemed like paradise.

It was a day of 30 degree heat, in which it was hard to find shade, but when we did, walking amongst field after field of strawberry pickers, we managed to secure a box of freshly picked strawberries – a thing of real wonder when so freshly picked.

And then, this evening, we had a nice Italian meal in the town square, followed up by a couple of beers and glasses of wine in the brasserie under our hotel. In fact, the hotel is pretty down at heel and the brasserie is a busy boozer on a busy, noisy, street but after a couple of glasses of wine and a couple of glasses of Chimay Dubbel, it seemed like the most perfect place in Europe.

Unfortunately, tomorrow's journey will not be as straightforward, as there is no cycle route between here and our next destination, the lovely university town of Lueven, but at least we know that, after that, we can get back to the cycle ways.

Tomorrow is a big milestone. It will be the end of our fourth week; we will have walked over 600 Km and Blighty will be just over a week away.

So after a despondent start today, the sun came out and everything feels very, very good – the journey is everything but we are on our way home and that feels good.

It is tempting to raid the Beatles catalogue again for “Here comes the sun” or “Strawberry Fields” but after walking 23 Km in 30 degree heat without any shade, todays musical choice has to be “Feeling Hot Hot,” by, we think, Bina Mistry but not totally sure.

P.S. my bouyant mood is testified to by the fact that, yesterday, my iPOD (and of course Doris) kept me going. Today my iPOD seems to be broken and I don't very much care. Fortunately, Doris isn't broken and I do very much care.

P.P.S

Here are two lovely guys that we met today. Neither spoke English but it ended up with me speaking schoolboy French to the guy on the right who translated into Flemish to for the guy on the left. Really sweet, warm, interested guys - the only shame being that we were not able to comminicate better.

Day 26 – 20 km walked – a total of 558 km - St. Truiden

2007-05-23T21:38:00.000+01:00

We did not exactly fight over who would write this blog because we both felt we might end up writing an angry tirade about the lack of signed walk ways or at least reliable walking maps in Belgium. If you ever wondered what the Romans did for the Belgians, have a look at the map and the road between Tongeres and St. Truiden. It is straight and busy and we ended up walking most of it today. We tried once to venture off to walk between quiet fruit trees but ended up at a dead end where a river blocked our way and the only option left was to retrace our steps.

Gary was a trooper, he had not slept well last night and his rucksack felt incredibly heavy this morning. He could not get comfortable and ended up with back ache. But he just walked on and on and eventually we made it.

He cheered up when we realised that due to the Champions League Final, the town had organised a Ladies shopping evening. We have never seen that many women all dressed up, lingering in a town center. The weather was fantastic (and rather hot) today so the ladies had dressed appropriately.

They are waiting all to do this:

We had lost a lot of time this morning with trying to find a map useful for walkers. We had to wait for a bookshop to open and they sold us a 1:50.000 map which in Germany worked really well. But not here. Same problem as the last couple of days. We can not rely that what is on the map and what is there in reality matches or can be used by the public. Dem you are quite right, we need to fly in the Ramblers Association and get this lot up to speed.

But when you see all the cyclist in their professional gear, flying past us, you realise that in Belgium they are simply more interested in cycling than walking. Eddie Merx has a lot to answer for!

Part of the reason why Gary could not sleep last night was because he tried to be organised and find accommodation for us for the next stages. He simply could not find anything on the route we initially wanted to walk. It seems there is not a lot available outside of larger towns. This is why we opted for St. Truiden today.

But when we fought our way through all those women mingling and finally arrived at the Tourist Information to find that it had closed about 10 minutes before. A man came out, so I thought maybe they stayed open late and went past him to go in. He was quite abrupt and said it was closed. Well obviously it wasn't because he just came through the open door.

We asked him for some help to find a hotel and got a pretty unsatisfying answer involving the word closed and that he was the organiser for the Ladies shopping day and had no time. So I went past him through the door because I had seen a lady still moving about inside. He was close to man-handling me to stop me but I was faster :)). Inside the nice lady organised us a hotel within three minutes and we were happy.

Accommodation is much more expensive in Belgium, where we would pay an average of 70 Euros in Germany we end up paying about 100 Euros in Belgium. Supply and demand I reckon. I think my next venture is a chain of well priced and equipped hotels in Belgium.

Gary's choice of song today is: 'Fuck forever' by Babyshambles, the only thing that cheered him up again after we had to backtrack our walking today to get back to the main road.

Gary adds:

Doris was kind enough to cite me as today's super trooper – cue for a song? – but actually she was more so but I am told I will have to do that another day.

The only thing that Doris missed out was how close we came to a siege in the Tourist Office. As Doris headed for the nice lady at the counter, despite the man's protestations that they were closed, I, who had not seen the nice lady, was heading towards the front door, intending to arrive before the unhelpful man.

I visualised my sturdy walking-boot against the foot of the door, blocking his exit, as I mentally rehearsed the words, “I need a hotel and a map and I need it now,” rapidly followed by, “then you are going to have to call the police.” So would begin the siege of Grote Markt, with Doris and I henceforth being known as the Sint Truiden two.

We have had better days than today but I think that I best leave it there and look forward to a new one tomorrow – all part of the journey.

Day 25 – 29 Km walked today, making an overall total of 538 Km - Tongeren / Tondres

2007-05-22T21:29:00.000+01:00

A mixed day in terms of both weather and walking. This morning was warm and misty, before clearing up to give us blazing sunshine around lunchtime, followed by a humid afternoon of thunderstorms and rain.

Walking was just as mixed. This morning we knocked out the kilometres, crossing the river Muese, just south of Maastricht, around lunchtime. But then things went a bit wobbly. Having crossed the Muese, a very wide river, we still had to cross the Albert Canal, which runs parallel and is just as wide. We had two choices. Either walk south a couple of kilometres to the bridge marked on the cycle route and then trudge north again. Or clamber up a slope to the road bridge which would take us a more direct route when we arrived at the other side. We chose the latter.

Whether the alternative would have been any better, we will never know but we soon found that our chosen route did not, in fact, offer us a direct route east. Instead, we had to head north, to get over a mighty hill and then all the way back south again. From then on, it was mostly slogging along roads. Alas, so far, we have not been having much luck with walking routes in Belgian which do not seem to be well marked. But perhaps we are just looking in the wrong place. Tomorrow, we will have an opportunity to look for some more specific local maps than the ones we have been using so far in Belgium.

Having mentioned the Albert Canal, I can not help but mention my old geography teacher, Mr. Croom. Mr. Croom, or Eddie Croom, as we called him – I was never sure whether his name was really Eddie but there you have it – had a speech characteristic, such that he pronounced the world “Albert” as “Elbert” and the word “Canal” as Kennell. When studying European geography, he was always inclined to stress the importance of the Elbert Kennell, much to our collective hysteria. Now having seen the Elbert Kennell, I realise that it is a mighty Kennell indeed and worthy of great respect. But it was Eddie's pronunciation that captured our interest.

Not as lesson passed that term without someone asking, “Sir, what's the name of that big canal in Belgium, Sir?

“I am losing count of the number of times I have told you Murphy, it's the Elbert Kennell”.

Anyway, Eddie if you are reading, you were very tolerant of us and a decent rugby player, so here is a picture of that particular waterway, for you.

And in honour of our waterway travails, today's musical choice is “Bridge over troubled waters” by Simon and Garfunkel.

On a more sober note, walking where we have, we have seen a fair few war memorials. I have, however, been stuck by two so far - although I am sure I will see many more.

We saw the one below yesterday, just outside Lueven. At first, being a poor French speaker, I couldn't understand the inscription but was struck by the stone carved picture, of someone climbing through a fence.

The inscription read “AUX VICTIMES BELGES – ALLIES qui perirent ici par le fil éléctrique 1914 – 1918”

Somewhere near the border between Holland and Belgium, it is a tribute to those who died on an electric wire (or fence). Pretty sobering stuff.

Another one that struck a cord was in Germany, near Remagen, where the allies first crossed the Rhine. As with the the other memorial, it was the powerful look of it that first drew the attention.

This time, at least one of us had the language skills to translate the inscription: “Here lie 1212 victims of war and tyranny. Nearly all died in 1945 at the prison 'Goldene Meile'. To honour the dead and warn the living.”

As far as we can make out, they were German prisoners, captured in the battle for the bridge.

Day 24 – 22km walked – that makes a total of 509 km - Saint Martins Voeren

2007-05-22T18:04:00.000+01:00

As Gary mentioned yesterday – due to lack of hotel choices we had to walk south *gasp* and go back north today. Luckily, we found that they do have marked walk ways in Belgium – they do not co-ordinate with my map of the area but we picked up a really pleasant walk past Plombiere and after about 3 hours walking, we were back on track going slightly north and mainly west.

We followed a route marked with a red and white sign through some picturesque scenery until it abruptly ended between a broken bridge and barb-wired fields in the middle of nowhere. As going back is not an option for us, we opted for trespassing and immediately faced a man who claimed he only spoke Dutch even though we were in Belgium.

He mentioned the word 'privee' several times (in French??) which we duly ignored. I whipped out the map and with my biggest smile asked him to point us in the right direction. It took us about 10 minutes of uphill walking (a big feature of today) to get back on track.

Less confident of the red and white marked walkway, we tried to find one or two of the walkways clearly marked on my map. Either the map is completely out of date or (more likely) in Belgium they do not take it so seriously with public way of right and farmers just put up fences where they feel like it.

So we mainly walked on little used public roads with steady long climbs. The weather has improved greatly and we got rather hot and thirsty. But we bravely walked past 'The Kings Head' in Teuven to get to our destination at a respectable time – and anyway, Gary has never been keen on Irish Beer (the pub with the Union Jack flag was featuring a Guinness sign too) he was hankering for something local, brewed by Trappist monks.

After a bit of back and forth with the help of some very friendly locals, we found our hotel for tonight. It is situated in a glorious spot out of town. The room is rather “bijou” and using the equally small shower needed skill but we just took our books and sat outside in their beautiful gardens and enjoyed a rather good meal. Gary got some local beer from Val Dieu which is coming in at 8% alcohol. I can feel a melodious night of snoring coming on.

I am on my third book since we started the journey. My first one was the rather entertaining title 'Cooking with Fernet Branca' the second was a crime novel by a lady called Anna Hold which ended with an open ending and we all know what that means. So I now have to find out if this Norwegian lady is also translated into English and if she has written the sequel. Today I started my third which was given to us by our visitors Rolf and Monique and it is called 'Looking for the Lost' a vibrant meditative walk in search of the soul of Japan by Alan Booth. This is a very thoughtful gift because they loved their time in Japan as much as Gary did his and I my holiday there. And it is about walking and what happens when you walk.

My song choice for today is: 'If you are happy and you know it clap your hands'. I sing it often on the road because I can and because Gary always obliges with enthusiastic clapping.

Day 23 – 22 Kilometres walked today – total walked:487 Kilometres – Kelmis

2007-05-22T17:43:00.001+01:00

After just over three weeks in Germany, early this afternoon we crossed over the border into Belgium. We went via a very popular tourist destination where the borders of Germany, Holland and Belgium all meet at a single point.

Actually, there is nothing much to see, except a post in the ground representing the exact spot. The lack of much else did not, however, stop swarms of people coming to the slightly naff cafés and gift shops. Below is a picture of people milling around the very spot. I do have a picture of the cafés and gift shops, to prove that they exist, but it is slightly less exciting than the picture below, so I'll spare you the bandwidth.

We then descended the hill into Belgium, not intending to walk too far today, having already managed to get past the rather large conurbation which is Aachen, with the help of an 8 minute train ride to avoid the worst of the street slogging (or so we thought).

Alas things didn't go quite as planned. We decided to walk all of the way out of Aachen and it turned out to be further than we thought. Then, our chosen location in Belgium didn't have a hotel. The map said the next village south did, so we headed there. No Dice. And so we went on southwards, until we wearily trudged into Kelmis, having walked 15 Kilometres from Aachen. That is a lot in an afternoon, a time when we are usually less energetic, and it was in addition to the 7 Kilometres that morning, walking into Aachen, before we hopped on the train.

The really frustrating thing is that tomorrow, we will have to head back north, almost retracing our steps to our original Belgian destination to get back on our route.

Availability of even modest accommodation may have an increasing influence over our route. Unlike when we were in areas of high tourism, we can no longer assume that large villages or small towns will necessarily have a hotel. We may have to start targeting places that we know have hotels, rather than leaving things to chance as we did so often in the past.

The other problem that one faces in this region is what language to speak – or in my case, what language to attempt to speak. This is the Flemish speaking part of Belgium but a lot of people speak German, as it is so close by. But when Doris popped into a pizzeria to ask directions, they spoke in French. And, I think I heard, a little Italian! Then we pitched up at this hotel - incidentally, we are staying in the Park Hotel which is the fourth time that we have stayed in a hotel of that name – and everyone here speaks German as a first language!

So the problem really is, depending what language you open up with, are you likely to insult anyone? This doesn't seem to throw Doris, who just opens up in German and waits to see what happens. I hover in the background, chucking out a few English phrases, to try to let them know that we are not a pair of neo-imperialists. So far, apart from the pizzeria, everyone has responded in German. Expect, that is, the bloke and two women with the horses and the horse-box who turned out, to my ear, to be from somewhere near Bolton. Their car was registered in Germany and they told us that the live in Holland, so as you can see, it is not an easy one to call around here.

Anyway, I am pretty knackered and off to bed.

Musical choice:

The Who 'Can't explain' after also considering 10,000 Maniacs 'Don't talk'

Day 22 – 18 Kilometres walked today – total walked: 465 Kilometres – Gressenich

2007-05-19T20:51:00.000+01:00

A very short entry today, as we have been busy this evening enjoying the company of our great friends Rolf, Monique, Nico and Ines who drove all of the way from Luxembourg today, to join us for a day on our journey.

It was a real joy to see them and spend time with them and I will dedicate today's musical choice to them - Neil Young's "Long May You Run"

Thank you for coming all this way - it was great to see you.

Day 21 – 29 Kilometres walked today – total walked: 447 Kilometres – Kreuzau

2007-05-18T20:40:00.000+01:00

The weather was absolutely beautiful today. The walk was flat, pleasant and further than we realised it would be.

Unfortunately, we could not find a hotel in Kreuzau , our target destination. Having already walked 29 Km, we were in no shape to walk anywhere else and had to hop on a small commuter train, much like the Docklands Light Railway, to take us off of our route, a few stops southwards. This took us to a beautiful spot named Obermaubach which is right on the edge of a large lake, nestling within large wooded hills – or perhaps mountains – I have never been sure what qualifies. The area is stunning and very reminiscent of The Lake District in England – it is the Nordeifel National Park.

We has intended to tiptoe around most of this area, to avoid having to tackle the very big hills. But having been, unintentionally, thrown into it, we have decided that leaving without a fight would be bad form. So although our target destination tomorrow is unchanged, we are going to try to walk from here rather than getting the train back up to Kreuzau, as originally intended. It will be challenging but will hopefully also be rewarding.

And although our hotel is the cheapest we have stayed in so far, it served up huge bowls of chunky, home-made soups, a very welcome change from menus that consist mainly of schnitzel and spargel. Eating on the road is getting trying. It is not German food per se, as I am fairly certain that one would get the same experience, with different dishes, at home. The problem is that of essentially the same menu in every place. And I cannot tell you how much bread, cheese and ham I have eaten, for breakfast and lunch. Whilst talking about food, I feel I should also mention that, since we left Bavaria, Bratwurst and Suaerkraut have been totally, and sadly, absent from the menus. A great shame as, together with Weizenbier, it was one of the things I was looking forward to getting a lot of.

Today's musical choice, in honour of the chunky soup, is The Rolling Stones and “You Can't Always Get What You Want”.

Recalculation

2007-05-17T16:04:00.000+01:00

Big news – the total distance that we have to walk may be closer to 1000 Km than the 1200 Km that we originally estimated. At an average of 20 Km per day, this could knock 10 days off our estimated duration. I say could with emphasis because unforeseen challenges may yet lie ahead in terms of terrain and injury. And our measurements could turn out to be as fallible as they were before. But if it turns out to be correct, we could be at our half way point within the next few days.

This is because we decided not to follow the E8 which, as I have written before, has a tendency to take you all over the shop, covering relatively small distances with very roundabout routes. This is in contrast to the Niebelungenweg which we followed from Wertheim until we cut across to Rüdesheim and which took us through some epic scenery but in a relatively direct way. I would recommend the Niebelungenweg walk to anyone and, this being Germany, it is fabulously well sign-posted.

And actually, not only was the Niebelungenweg itself well sign-posted but other walking paths in the same area, labelled with numbers on the maps, were also well sign-posted in a surprisingly in, dare I say it, an efficient and practical way - as the tree below illustrates.

Our beloved Niebelungenweg was marked with a yellow square. Below is Doris, reassured that we are on the right track.

Doris didn't include a musical choice for yesterday, so that falls to me.

Yesterday while walking in the rain, on a boring stretch alongside a road, we were passed by a convoy of tractors that were pulling trailers. It looked like they belonged to some sort of circus or wild-west show. The drivers all waved to us, in encouragement, as they passed. I speculated on why and wondered whether it was perhaps because they felt there was some sort of camaraderie of the road. It prompted a song in my head and although the words of the song do not fit, the title does.

When I first mentioned the idea of this pilgrimage to Doris, she simply said that it was a good idea. She probably realised, more than I did, the practical difficulties it would present. But she just left me to explore and dream my new little dream, without a single negative or restraining word.

And when it came time to put one foot in front of the other, she did so with purpose, without complaint and always with an open mind. We have both had various injuries and at times, it has, perhaps, been more challenging than we have let on. But Doris has never been anything but positive and has always been totally supportive and encouraging of me, when I have had my problems. Without her I would have given up long ago.

So, with thanks to Nanci Griffith, this one is for Doris who is “My Brave Companion of the Road.”

Day 20 - A day of rest

2007-05-17T08:46:00.001+01:00

Day 19 - 19km walked Total walked: 418 km Euskirchen

2007-05-16T16:56:00.001+01:00

We walked all day through rain dressed like blue and black Michelin men. It was very enjoyable to be dry insite!

Decided to stop for today and are now roughing it at the Parkhotel in Euskirchen
(one of my special hrs.com deals because there is a bank holiday in Germany tomorrow - though we still remember what happened at the last 'special deal' hotel !!)

More later when we had a jacuzzi and something to eat...........

Day 18 – 30 Kilometres walked today – total walked: 399 Kilometres – Meckenheim

2007-05-15T21:40:00.000+01:00

In contrast to yesterday, both Doris and I were full of energy today. As you can see, we walked 30 Kilometres today, leaving us just one kilometre short of having completed a third of the originally estimated distance of 1200 Kilometres!

I say “originally estimated” because this was based on a route that followed the E8, European walking route up the Rhine to Bonn and then over to Aachen. Doris has, however, hatched a plan, for a slightly shorter route, for the rest of the German route, that is now taking us directly to Aachen.

The distance and time saving will not be great overall but will, hopefully, save us a few days. I say hopefully because between us and Aachen lies a region know as Eiffel – no prizes for what that means. We will either find ourselves cleverly threading our way between some very big hills or walking very slowly over them – keep your fingers crossed.

Actually, the E8 is a bit of a swizz anyway, as it is really just supra-national labelling of, longer well-established, regional and local walking routes. These routes are great if you are a casual walker wanting to spend a Sunday afternoon, taking the most scenic route possible between A and B. Even if it means climbing a mountain and walking 20 Kilometres, to get 5 kilometres further forward as the crow flies (don't ask me why a crow – that's just they way it is). But on a walk of over 1,000 Kilometres, one gets to see a lot of great scenery and that makes gratuitously scenic diversions a bit superfluous. So the plan is to take the more direct route to goal. But don't expect us to be back any time soon– there's still a bloody long way to go.

As consequence of the change of plan, we bid farewell to the Rhine today and re-entered big rolling hills and farmland. As it turned out, it was only really the corner of the river just after Koblenz that was heavily industrialised. After that, the banks returned to gently rolling hills and greenery. Very nice but, for me, never recapturing the sheer panache of the river from Rüdeshiem to Koblenz, with it's lovely old resort towns and villages and acres and acres of vineyards. Ah I do miss that local Riesling.

It was, however, a pleasant change to return to countryside and, I feel, it is worth pointing out a couple of things about the German countryside. In contrast to the UK, German farms have massive fields with, instead of hedgerows, public rights of way that allow one to walk very easily from place to place without restriction. Also, and possibly related, Germany has a network of well used and very well-signposted bicycles paths that almost completely avoid roads. If you are an enthusiastic cyclist and value your life, you could do worse than tour Germany. Not very exciting but I thought you should be told.

Because of this, one gets to see things that one is restricted from at home. Today, Doris and I took one of her “straight-cuts” across what turned out to be a huge farm that took us nearly 2 hours to traverse. Acre after acre of pears and strawberries in particular. Our hands did wander slightly during our journey and I have to say that freshly picked strawberries, grown for flavour rather than bounce, are a thing of wonder. Here is just one field full of the marvellous things.

Which, kind of brings me to the German obsession with Spargel – the German name for Asparagus. Every village street corner seems to have a stall selling it and every restaurant has a page of its menu devoted to Spargel dishes. I promise you that I am not exaggerating. White Spargel seems to be particularly highly prized. Now I know that some people like Asparagus and I think it is kind of okay. Actually, there is a particular place in our garden in Kent where it grows like a weed. But here, it is really a national obsession. Strange.

My apologies for today's straight reportage, lacking in sparkling wit – no change there then, I hear you say – but we are both pretty tired and my feet haven't yet stopped vibrating. Mind you, they are much better than the first time that we walked 30 Km when I woke up at 1:30 in the morning and my feet were just tingling and vibrating. It was very disconcerting that first time and I was relieved the next morning to find that it had stopped.

Finally, those who have followed this blog from and early stage will know that generosity is a key theme. I will not go on about the Buddhist philosophy underlying this, or the link with Karma but suffice to say that being generous in thought and deed is a pretty groovy thing to do – or perhaps be.

(If you are interested in the Buddhist stuff then check out the very funny Reverend Kusala's podcasts at http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma9/dharmatalks.html or through iTunes – yes honest, very funny).

So at risk of embarrassing her, I want to say a public thank you to Johanne who is printing off these blogs and mailing them to my mum, so that she can read, and so she tells me, enjoy them – hello mum xxx. Thanks Johanne – your Karma is stratospheric.

The musical choice today was Doris's and is “What a difference a day makes” by Dinah Washington.

By the way, did I mention that we are convinced that are being observed by the German police, who turn up regularly in our journey, pretending not to notice us. They have employed that stealthy and clever tactic of tailing us from it front, not realising that I saw every single episode of The Sweeney and am not, therefore, taken in - “You're nicked,” I hear people of a certain age bark.

Usually, we manage to nip into the Nieberlungenweg, or similar walking path to lose them. Things got really hairy in Koblenz when we wandered into vans and vans of riot police, allegedly there to police a football match. The whole thing was, of course, staged to entrap us but we managed to evade them by donning our rain gear and ducking into an iffy pizzeria. God knows what will happen now we have nicked some strawberries.

I think that's about it – not sure when we will get online again but do keep and eye out for us – gawd bless.

Day 17 - Walked today: 19 Km – Total walked so far 369Km – Bad Breisig

2007-05-14T21:04:00.000+01:00

My turn to write a blog entry and I have to report one of my major disappointments of this journey.

We found scales in our room in Ruedesheim and I jumped on excitedly hoping to report a weight loss – my trousers had been feeling a bit looser. But I had put on 5 kg – a result I had not expected. So I asked Gary to see what happened to his weight. Blow me over – he had lost 5 kg and his little 50^th birthday pooch. We walked the same distance, ate the same things, were not particularly indulgent and he drank beer on top of that.

Life is a bitch sometimes!!! I know there might be some far fetched logical explanations like effect of Thyroid medication and muscle growth but frankly I do not care. One plus of this journey was supposed to be to loose those darn pounds that keep following me around.

So I decided to change my strategy for the evenings – no wine last night and a huge platter of salad for dinner................

This morning I felt like death warmed up when we started walking. I cannot remember that my rucksack ever felt that heavy and that putting one step in front of the other was so difficult. We got to Andernach only by virtue of my bloody determination not to stop until we got there. I spotted a Boots like supermarket and we bought some energy bars and some stuff you put in your water to make it more hydrating ( no idea how one can make water more hydrating but I did not care at that point).

Gary was a wonderful coach and my cheerleader, setting little targets for me to achieve. Let's walk to that orange house about 500 meters down the Rhein and we sit down there. I dragged myself with his help form bench to bench until the promenade like walk way along the Rhein run out into something a little more ruff and ready. The alternative would have been a hilly bicycle route which clearly was not an option today. My legs suddenly woke up on the adventure part of our walk. It was stony, grassy and slippy but somehow I found my stride and we made good time to Bad Breisig.

We found an enthusiastic employee in the local tourist information who manly tried not to be thrown by our request for a two bed room with a bath tub, quiet location and WLAN. We later realised that this resort is favoured by an older generation and there is probably not much call for on-line services. In the end we found a hotel with the help of a brochure they gave us. We managed to find a dodgy connection in the restaurant but it was enough to make Gary's little face light up.

Gary and I have always been close and we have been getting along really well since we started this walk. Today it is my song choice and it is dedicated to Gary for getting me through today. I would not want to do this walk with anybody else but him. As I am rubbish at remembering song titles and artists, here is the bit of text that matters for today (oh, and I had glass of wine or two – purely medicinal of course to keep my strength up -so we do not have a repeat of today): 'HELP'

but even I can remember that that is by the Beatles :)

Day 16 - Walked today: 23 Km – Total walked so far 350Km - Weissenthurm

2007-05-13T18:42:00.000+01:00

Happily, we both finished today free of the injury concerns that brought a premature end to yesterday's walk.

This morning's walk was a pure joy, along the grassy banks of the Rhine, away from roads and train-lines. We romped along, pausing to admire buildings such as the one below, completing the 12 Km into the middle of Koblenz by midday.

This building dates from 1566 and was extended in 1717. Although it is a particularly good example of its type, this sort of building is a common sight in every town and village that we pass through. Some villages seem to have almost more of these types of buildings than modern structures.

I am fascinated that they are so well maintained and used as homes and offices, rather than preserved as historic monuments. I am also fascinated by seeing so much structure on show. To be frank, I don't know whether some buildings such as the Gasthof where we stayed last night, below, are originals or “reproductions” but somehow it doesn't matter. There is something nice about not roping off history but having a continuous line of use into the present - living buildings rather than fossils.

Unfortunately, our camera battery went flat, so I didn't manage to capture any of Koblenz's magnificent mansions along the rivers Rhine and Mosel that usher you gently into the city, from the south. I did, however take a picture of a particularly fine Burgs (or castles) just up from where we stayed. This one dates from the 13-15^th Century and is the only hilltop Castle on the Rhine to have never been destroyed. One sees similar Burgs at regular intervals, at strategic positions, all along the Rhine – it's easy to see where Walt Disney got a lot of his inspiration for his fairytale castles.

But then for me, after Koblenz, at least for the time being, the character of the Rhine changed. The high hills, with their vineyards and forests, way above the river, gave way to less grand and less rugged proportions, with industry beginning to replace the resorts and wine merchants.

We lingered in the middle of Koblenz, debating whether to take a short train ride north, to try to skip the industry and the largely characterless towns that run into each other. In the end we decided that we would walk rather than ride, our only concession being a short bus ride to the outside of Koblenz, to avoid the pavement slogging that we both find so dispiriting.

As it turned out, most of the afternoon was pavement slogging but in slightly smaller places than Koblenz, Nonetheless, we walked almost to the point where we would have gotten off of the train, had we succumbed to the siren voices trying to tempt us away from our chosen mode of transport.

And we were pleased with ourselves that we did it. The integrity of our journey, in that we walk not ride, has become very important to us. I will, however, always reserve the right to ride rather than walk across big cities because to do otherwise is so depressing. But anyway, it should not be a problem again until Aachen.

Tomorrow, we will try to continue to pursue our journey along the Rhine, hoping that the industry does not push us too far from its reassuring banks. I have no problem with the industry as such – we are reminded constantly that this is a working river. Huge cargo barges pass each other like cars on a busy street. It will be interesting to see whether industry replaces holiday resorts for the remainder of our friendship with the Rhine, up to Bonn, but I suspect that this river is so big that trees will always be the predominant architectural feature – I'll let you know.

Today's musical choice: Bruce Springsteen's “The River”.

Day 15 - 14 km walked today- Total walked 327 – Spay

2007-05-12T18:39:00.000+01:00

We have only had one day without walking, during our 15 so far and today our bodies decided to call a halt, or at least post a warning.

When my Achilles Tendons started hurting, towards the beginning our of journey, Doris asked me to grade the pain on a scale of levels 1 to 10, where level 10 was having to stop walking. We have used this code ever since to communicate to each other the severity of the various injuries that come and go - or that we simply choose to live with rather than stop. I'll not bother to list them all, as it would be too tedious, but two have been giving us problems of late.

For the last three days, the top of my left leg has, in early afternoon, started to ache slightly around at level 2. A couple of hours after in started, on days 13 and 14, despite the pain having progressed only to level 6, the muscles around the front of my thigh tightened to a degree that reduced me to a hobble within a very short time.

Doris has continued to experience problems with her back. Usually, it stays at level 1 or 2 but now and then it spasms straight to level 10. With some stretching, it usually passes, or at least reduces to level 2 or 3, and we are on our way again.

Today, around lunchtime, Doris's back spasmed again. This time it stayed longer but after a rest, we decided to press on. Around the same time, my leg started to nag at me again. After another spasm, we had a tough choice whether to press on or find accommodation in the pretty Rhine-side village of Spay. We both felt well enough to carry on but were uncertain for how long. So after dozing off on a bench and watching the boats go by for a while, we decided to call it a day, give our bodies some minor respite and, vitally for us at that very moment, have a siesta.

Of course, a rest for us is still having walked 14 kilometers with full packs, beginning with one of the steepest climbs and descents that we have ever done. We decided to walk a path which, on the map, was slightly away from the road. We assumed that the path was just slightly higher than the river but it just kept going up and up, until we were at the point you can see in the picture below.

Having taken the picture, we had to clamber all the way back down to river level level again, along a pretty treacherous path. It was frustrating to spend nearly 2 hours, to get just a couple of Kilometres further forward but it cemented our decision to stay at river level for the rest of the day, rather than take any of the “shortcuts” offered by our map.

We are keen to get past Koblenz tomorrow, which is doable, if our bodies agree to come with us, but I suspect that we may need a complete day of rest in the not too distant future, when Koblenz is behind us.

...well that was all a little earlier and I think it appropriate to add a postscript.

Despite our disappointment at not getting further, we have had a really nice day.

I really like this part of the Rhine. It is populated by small picturesque towns and villages, along its banks, where Germans seem to come and stay for a break – socialising, eating, drinking and just relaxing next to the soothing, reassuring and fast moving lake which is the River Rhine. In a way it is similar to the coastal resorts of Southern England but without the amusement arcades and candy floss – the feel is more like the villages of Devon and Yorkshire.

So it felt so nice to stop here, have a lazy, refreshing siesta, then idling around for a bit, before going down to dinner. The Gasthof where we are staying is modest but popular, so we decided to eat here, We came up trumps, as you can see in the picture below.

I know what you are thinking. It's a picture of pizza and glass of white wine! Ah but you would be wrong. So very, very wrong. Firstly, it isn't pizza, it's a local specialty named “Flammkuchen – no cheese or tomato, just bacon, onions and parsley, on a a very thin pizza type base – quite delicious.

Secondly, it isn't just white wine, it's local Riesling. Now I know that I have mentioned this before but love knows no boundaries. I have always found dry white wine to be somewhat aggressive for my palate and stomach but this stuff that I keep getting served, full of peaches, strawberries and raspberries, is a total and delicious revelation. Not glugging gallons of it is a real challenge. Did I mention that I don't usually like white wine? Perhaps I did?

So being in Germany, how better to end the day than sitting in our room with a glass, watching the Baltics and Balkans battling out the Eurovision Song Contest - made tolerable by the total absence of Terry Wogan and a commentary that I can barely understand. Just and endless procession of outfits and songs that stayed sadly out of sight during the cold war. Welcome to the new Europe even if, at least musically, it is very much like the old one some 30 years ago!

Today's musical choice? Tempting to pick Lulu's timeless Eurovision classic, “Boom Bang A Bang” but I will stay with the day's overall feel and go for “Take it Easy” by Jackson Browne.

Day 14 - 21km - a total of 313km (or 7 Marathons) – Bad Salzig

2007-05-11T20:10:00.000+01:00

Last night's saga did not of course not finish at 12pm! No, the band played on for a cheering crowd, pandering to the demands of the inebriated masses with no regard for our beauty sleep. At 12.22 am Gary angrily hunts for the phone and I have to help him out by pressing the right buttons.

Somebody with no English knowledge responds and I end up with the receiver – the man has limited German knowledge too but conveys that it might be the last round of music but has no words left to my 'Not good enough'. I get passed on to the Chef (that is not the cook but the manager in Germany – reminds me of that hilarious moment from my hospitality days when in a London hotel I watched an irate, obnoxious German guest demand the 'Chef '. The staff tried to suggest that the duty manager might be able to help better but he was not having any of that, so they finally dragged one of the poor cooks out of the kitchen) anyway.....................

I did not exactly get a sympathetic response from the duty manager either and she got an exasperated 'Not good enough' from me too. They finally stopped playing around 12.30am and the crowd left singing and dancing. We probably fell asleep after 1 pm when Gary uttered the words: They are not getting a penny for tonight.

Considering that we have been falling asleep around 10pm, this was a really late night for us and it showed in the morning when we were awoken by the birds and an overcast morning (oh and somebody pushing a laundry bin over cobble stones)

When we checked out Gary made his displeasure known and was offered a bottle of wine for the inconvenience. He refused that and after checking with the Chefin (thats a female manager) the receptionist waived the charges for the night. We would have left quite happy at that point and recommended the hotel to others, just warning them of their room choice during high season.

But then the Chefin turned up alluding to the fact that we were the first ones this year who could not sleep (it is very early in the season) telling us that EVERYBODY knows that there is live music in the Drosselgasse and that it says so in the brochure. She was obviously more concerned with being right than having us leave with a good experience. She squeezed in a very unkind comment just before we were out of the door. Pity, it spoiled her start to the day more than ours.

The day before I had come up with a cunning plan to make our walking day as easy as possible. We went on the train back up the Rhein where we had stopped the day before and sneakily stayed on the train for another 6 kilometers getting off at Kaub. We had decided that we would follow the Rhein cycle route rather than E8 or the Rheinsteige (both very hilly choices). We had a pleasant and, at stages, very windy day walking on a pancake flat route along the Rhein. We stopped at a very pleasant hotel in Bad Salzig where we just had a lovely dinner and some delicious local Riesling. Tomorrow we are on our way to Koblenz which somehow in my head represents a major milestone on our journey.

Today also marks 1/4^th of our journey completed in distance and time. We are chuffed to say the least.

Because we walked past it today, today's song has to be:

The Lorelei by Heinrich Heine

I cannot explain the sadness
That's fallen on my breast.
An old, old fable haunts me,
And will not let me rest.

The air grows cool in the twilight,
And softly the Rhine flows on;
The peak of a mountain sparkles
Beneath the setting sun.

More lovely than a vision,
A girl sits high up there;
Her golden jewelry glistens,
She combs her golden hair.

With a comb of gold she combs it,
And sings an evensong;
The wonderful melody reaches
A boat, as it sails along.

The boatman hears, with an anguish
More wild than was ever known;
He's blind to the rocks around him;
His eyes are for her alone.

--At last the waves devoured
The boat, and the boatman's cry;
And this did with her singing,
The golden Lorelei.

If music be the food of...

2007-05-10T22:51:00.000+01:00

Ok, we have fallen out of love with our hotel. Last night, the live music was safely locked inside, to escape the driving rain. Tonight, it is in the quadrangle immediately below our window, entertaining a large, well-oiled and raucous crowd with eternal classics such as “Una Paloma Blanca”.

I, on the other hand, having fallen asleep last night in a pleasant alcoholic haze and having been awoken by a cacophy or birdsong at 6 this morning, was looking forward to an early night under lovely clean sheets. Doris checked with reception and the music will go on until midnight. The audience who have already demonstrated, during the musical breaks, that they are more than capable of entertaining themselves without musical accompaniment, could well go on longer.

So all of my earlier, po-faced, public, breast beating about whether to be based here another night looks pretty much wasted – as indeed I will be if I wake up at 6 again tomorrow morning. It looks as if we will be moving on. Karma, on the topic of which I may well bore you another time, seems to have taken a hand and pushed us back on the road.

No doubt, I'll pleased about this tomorrow when we turn up somewhere unknown, happy but exhausted, with our rucksacks on our backs.

Yeah – back to the “pure” vision! How about a chorus of “When the Tough Get Going” as an encore?

Day 13 – 24 Kilometres – Total 292 Kilometres – Lorch

2007-05-10T21:02:00.000+01:00

Today saw our first day walking along the Rhine (apologies for varying between German and English spellings - I'll try to be consistent from now on).

We climbed higher and higher, along the banks of the Rhine, through endless vineyards, perched in impossible locations, at impossible angles and enjoyed spectacular views all of the way.

The path narrowed sufficiently to test my poor ability to deal with heights.

The walk was all the more enjoyable for not having to carry fully laden rucksacks and, frankly, I am not sure we would have made it with them, so difficult was the climb and, at points, the path.

No rucksacks? I hear you repeat to yourself, incredulously, reading that last sentence again. Yes, we liked the hotel in Ruedesheim so much that we decided to stay another night, walking our next stage but then getting a train back to our hotel, with the intention of starting tomorrow exactly where we left off. By the way, it took us about 6 hours to walk the distance but literally 10 minutes to return on the train.

Now I do wonder, in my own mind, whether this is some kind of cheating – a betrayal of the “purity” of vision? Well, actually, it closer to my original vision of just walking and enjoying the walk. My vision was naïve, as visions of doing difficult things often are. My rose tinted picture didn't include carrying rucksacks - it just included walking. This was a pretty dumb omission but if it had been otherwise, I probably wouldn't even have mentioned this mad idea to Doris and instead dismissed it as too difficult.

That said, a good vision takes account of life's realities and I have come to enjoy achieving the physical challenge of being able to carry all that we need from one location to another. On the other hand, we have numerous injuries that come, go and stay with monotonous regularity - my latest almost preventing me from finishing today's walk. So common sense says that we need to give our bodies at least some rest now and again, even if it is just lightening the load from time time.

And that is what we will do again tomorrow, as much as I would love to press on relentlessly, or perhaps idiotically. After that, we will be back to the routine of carrying everything with us and hunting accommodation upon arrival. But if we can get some respite again in the future, albeit brief in the context of our journey, rest assured, we will take it.

Today's musical choice is “The Weight” by The Band.

Day 12 – 24 Kilometres – Total 268 Kilometres - Ruedesheim

2007-05-09T21:37:00.000+01:00

Doris has always had an eye for a bargain and a couple of days ago, prospecting our route, spotted a great deal in a very posh hotel in Ruedesheim. It is a beautiful town on a northern bank of the Rhein and marks the start of our journey north along the banks of that mighty river.

To be frank, I had never knew what a mighty river it is. We crossed it in Worms but reacquainting ourselves with it this evening, as we crossed from Bingen on the Ferry, in driving rain, I realised that it is more like a long meandering lake then what we, in England, call a river. I thought the Main was big but this is a different order of magnitude. Don't get me wrong, I love the Thames, it is in my genes, but it is a tiny stream compared to the Rhein.

The picture below is of our murky crossing.

You may note that this post is similarly meandering, as it benefits from wine of extraordinary quality and will not benefit from my usual morning editorial skills, as I will post this evening whilst we still have 'net access and I am, well...still drinking.

On that topic, you would not believe the number of vineyards that we have walked through so far! Where does all of the wine go, I wondered? Of course, the answer is very simple – the Germans drink most of it themselves. It also seems that they send us the naff stuff, as this lovely glass of local Riesling, in front of me, will testify. And I don't even like white wine that much – though I could easily change my mind in a place like this.

Anyway, back to the hotel. It is gorgeous. Our room is almost a suite, with real wooden floors, lots of open space that one could play football in and a classy black and white bathroom that is bigger than the main bedroom in my old Spitalfields flat.

Juxtaposed to this classy environment is the restaurant which comes with fully equipped “Umpha Band” and singers, belting out standards from all around the world, with that very special Umpha feel, to a large appreciative crowd. “Roll out the Barrel” is an obvious favourite but “New York, New York” was particularly interesting. Knowing the late and great Joe Strummer's love of world music, I was, after a glass or two (sic) strongly tempted to ask whether they could accompany me on a rendition of the Clash's version of the classic “I Fought The Law and the Law Won”. Doris ushered me towards the door.

There was a touching moment, for an inebriated romantic such as me, when they played Lili Marleen, a song that became popular with both sides during the second world war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Marleen). We have passed a number of, relatively low key and never grandiose, war memorials on our travels. The most recent was just before we crossed the Rhein. All through this country and it's magnificent scenery, I have often tried to imagine what it was like for those that fought and died here. Now seeing the Rhein and recognising its strategic importance (i.e the difficulty of crossing it) it is impossible not to think of the countless people that suffered and died in that awful conflict. Common in tragedy – common in a simple song. More alike than different.

But I guess I was pretty much alone in that emotion and don't think that even Doris noticed my moist eyes, probably mistaking the glassy-eyed look for simple inebriation. And that was I think best, people in the present, looking forward not back.

On the purely factual front, we walked a lot, did not escape the rain that just got heavier and heavier as the day wore on. As planned, we got a bus from the outskirts of Bingen to the ferry to Ruedesheim. Wuerzburg taught me to never want to walk across a big town again and Worms taught me that 34 Kilomteres is too far.

Musical choice? I thought about this all day, often on the theme of rivers or rain but in my current mood it has to be “Lili Marleen” and who else but the incomparable Marlene Dietrich.

Day 11 – 19 Kilometres – Total 242 Kilometres

2007-05-08T19:53:00.000+01:00

The other day, I was twittering on about the virtues of simple, basic accommodation with simple, wholesome food. At that time, I was sitting happily in the communal dining room, drinking my third Weissbier, after Doris had gone to bed.

I may have been slightly negligent in not following up on this idyllic vision, to tell you that neither of us slept a wink that night. Doris moved from bottom to top bunk because the mattress gave less spinal support than a hammock. The top bunk was marginally better but amplified ever minor movement into a cathedral filling creak. Doris spent the night awake trying to avoid making noise and I spent it awake, being woken by the noise.

Tonight's accommodation is also simple. It comes courtesy of a lovely couple who have run this Gasthof, in the middle of nowhere, for over twenty years. It is pretty basic but given that they were not open for business when we pitched up, we were grateful that they took us in at all. Heating would be a big bonus right now but we have been well, though basically, fed and I have no particular aversion to sleeping in my fleecy, socks or if, necessary, my boots.

Actually, we are lucky to have anywhere to sleep at all. We spent the day dodging rain clouds, walking through beautiful countryside, on a windy day that, for the first time, saw us resorting to our warmer clothing. Somehow, we escaped the rain but it is a selfish pleasure when so much of our journey has been through farming communities that have gone six weeks without rain. The forecast is good for them and bad for us for the next few days.

Our plan today was to walk 20 kilometres to Fuerfeld with, as usual, a stretch target to walk three or four kilometres further, to the next village, to put us within striking distance of Ruedesheim. Before we set off this morning, we tried and failed to find accommodation in Fuerfeld or any of the nearby villages. But not everything is on the 'net, so undeterred we set off, knowing that we could call the German equivalent of “Yellow Pages” when we got closer.

Unfortunately, our destination turned out to be in a valley outside mobile phone range. A kilometre from Fuerfeld, we decided to ask a the wonderfully helpful lady pictured below if she knew of anywhere.

She spent ages on the telephone, trying to find us somewhere but neither the Baker nor the Mayor could help and the priest did not answer his phone - nothing open. She then offered to drive us to a couple of local places that she knew that might be able to put us up for the night. With the weather closing in, it would have been silly to refuse.

And so we ended up here. Initial signs were not too promising. The proprietor, who arrived shortly after us, was somewhat startled to find us in his driveway. He confirmed that we could stay but advised us that he couldn't let us see any of the rooms until his wife got home from shopping. Dressed in a t-shirt and what, to me, looked like pyjama bottoms, he sat us outside the Gasthof while he fiddled with his car.

We shivered and he fiddled. We prayed that his wife would arrive soon. Eventually, she did. She went inside. He came over to chat. We shivered. He chatted. We shivered. After some time, we were invited inside and shown to a modest room but one that is, heating aside, adequate for our needs. And then she disappeared without a mention of dinner breakfast or life outside our small room. After a while Doris ventured downstairs to find out what might be possible and we dined on scrambled eggs, ham, beer and wine.

It is hard to form a firm impression of someone when one doesn't speak much of their language adequately but, given that we arrived unexpectedly, our hosts seem to be warm and friendly. They just don't feel the cold much.

Before closing this entry, I need to mention that Doris limped through most of yesterday's walk and all of today's with some back pain that, on occasion, goes into nasty spasms. Needless to say, she never complains but, as I have bleated on about my problems, thought you should know, as she is too modest and stoic to mention it.

Modesty would also prevent her from mentioning her amazing map reading skills – so good that I feel there may be something supernatural at work. Without her I would probably be in Austria by now. It is only a matter of time, I sense, before we stop in a forest and she declares something to the effect that: a 58 year, 11 stone, balding Mexican, with a short right leg, passed this way two days ago, carrying a green parrot and two iguanas, one for them pregnant with twins.

Doris didn't do a music choice for yesterday but I guess that Canned Heat's “On the Road Again” is the obvious choice.

Today's musical choice is the Barking Bard, Billy Bragg and "The Warmest Room".

Help please

2007-05-08T06:26:00.000+01:00

It has been haunting me for days now. Every morning we get up and work out which day of the journey we are on. So we would say Day 7 and the theme tune of the film Top Gun goes through my head - you know the scene where the instructor comes in and says Day whatever and gives them their mission of the day. I would really appreciate if somebody could send me the tune to our email address. It is driving me nuts and I want to share that pleasure with Gary

Day 10 - 23 km total 223km

2007-05-07T19:45:00.000+01:00

We are in Kircheimbolanden (which is a bit of a mouthful) in a delightful hotel offering free WLAN.

Today was our first day where we had a little rain and a lot of cold wind. But after our rest day yesterday it was a fairly easy and uneventful walk and have now left the Nibelungenweg which we joined way back in Wuerzburg.

We ventured into a Chinese Restaurant today and Gary had to be restrained to stop him from ordering more than two dishes. They work their system a little differnt in Germany - people seem to order one big portion of one dish rather than a choice of several little ones. Gary was nearly inconsolable when the waiter stopped him after he read out his second dish and I had to do some mediating.

We are aiming to be in beautiful Ruedesheim on Wednesday. I have already spotted a special offer on hrs.com for this lovely hotel: http://www.ruedesheimer-schloss.de/hotel/html/e-hotel.html

Day 8 - 34km - which makes it a total of 200 km!!!!!!!!

2007-05-06T10:06:00.000+01:00

It is Sunday and we have taken the day off. Yesterday we pushed ourselves to the limit by walking our furthest distance yet to reach the beautiful town of Worms. I am typing this from the Dom Hotel next to the cathedral, listening to the Sunday bells. We are both exhausted and have nothing planned for today that does not involve sleep, Internet or food. My sister Ulrike was so kind to find us accommodation that covered most of the following requirements: a bath tub rather than a shower (difficult to find in the inns of Germany but important for my tired legs), two beds (luckily most double beds in Germany consist of two seperate mattresses and a single duvet each which gives Gary and me at least a chance of s o m e sleep ) and wireless LAN. She managed to get it all!

A good nights sleep has been the biggest challenge so far – at home Gary and I are used to our own bedrooms in a blissfully quiet location. As I said in an earlier blog, we are physically tired but our minds have not had anything to do most of the day. We tend to fall asleep immediately when we go to bed and wake up 2 hours later tossing and turning to get comfortable without disturbing each other – we are not particularly successful as yet and are looking forward to today's upcoming siesta.

Back to walking....... yesterday we left behind the hills and forests of the Odenwald and Bergstrasse. We are still following the Nibelungenweg but have now also joined the E8, one of the European long distance walk ways which we will be following for the rest of our journey in Germany. Here you can see the profile of yesterdays walk: http://www.fernwege.de/d/nib/002/skizze/index.html which was thankfully pretty flat but also very boring with long straight man made walk ways through man made forests and tarmacked side roads through huge fields.

We have not met many walkers on our way but to our delight we bumped into a lovely couple yesterday who are walking from Cologne to Vienna, all 1600 km of it. They have the more difficult journey ahead because they will have to cross the alps. I hope they make it!

Whilst I am very tired today and glad that this computer is only two feet away from my bed, I am raring to carry on tomorrow. I am fueled by all the support we are getting especially from our families. My brother Juergen and my sister-in-law Luise were going to drive all the way from Erfurt to Worms to spend some time with us today. Because Gary and I were so tired we moved the meeting to a bit later in the journey. Aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben! My mother calls me every night to see how we are doing. Gary talks to his mum every night too. She is very supportive and since she has found out that we keep a diary on-line she has been wondering if she should learn using a computer. Both my sisters have been absolute stars. Danke Maedels – ihr denkt halt mit!

I know the theme songs are Gary's baby but I am sure he will not mind if I announce our current choice for overall theme song for the journey:

Crazy - Gnarls Barkley

I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that phase.
Even your emotions had an echo
In so much space

And when you're out there 
Without care,
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn't because I didn't know enough
I just knew too much

Does that make me crazy
Does that make me crazy
Does that make me crazy
Probably

And I hope that you are having the time of your life
But think twice, that's my only advice
Come on now, who do you, who do you, who do you, who do you think you are,
Ha ha ha bless your soul
You really think you're in control

Well, I think you're crazy 
I think you're crazy 
I think you're crazy
Just like me

My heroes had the heart to lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember is thinking, I want to be like them
Ever since I was little, ever since I was little it looked like fun
And it's no coincidence I've come
And I can die when I'm done

Maybe I'm crazy
Maybe you're crazy
Maybe we're crazy
Probably

Day 7 – 18 km 166km

2007-05-04T09:52:00.000+01:00

which equals 100 miles or 4 marathons. Not bad what the bald eagle and I have achieved!

Like Gary I am not thinking about anything in specific when walking but am never bored. However, I have been trying to focus my mind on a subject and I must admit that I have not gotten very far. I am musing about the analogy between what we are doing and achieving goals in business and life. So far I have only come to one important conclusion: However far Gary and I manage to walk every day, we celebrate every step we have done. I know that I and many people (female trait?) celebrate or even acknowledge their own progress way too little and beat themselves up way to much. This brings me to the subject of moving goal posts which I am a specialist in. So my second conclusion is: DON'T move the goal post until you have achieved the original goal and acknowledged it and bought yourself *a big fat chocolate cake* (insert own favourite *here*).

This morning we left Beerfurt and ended up at a delightful Naturfreundehaus which is a kind of a Youth hostel for grown ups. Gary being British had of course other ideas about the Nature in Naturfreundehaus. I let him explain:

What can I say, fellow Brits of a certain age? Imagine “Carry on Camping”, imagine “Return of the Pink Panther” where Inspector Clouseau's embarrassment was shielded only by a well positioned guitar? We are next to a mixed table of sixty-somethings and I sense it is just a matter of time before they decide to pursue “Natur”. I think I will have to get myself one of those “pouch” things – not because I have anything to hide, of course, but because it is simply not British!

Day 7

2007-05-04T09:26:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's weariness, that you may detect in yesterday's entry, seemed to evapourate today. Perhaps yesterday's malaise was due to the relentless forest, or perhaps tiredness, or perhaps our final departure from the mighty river Main, that we crossed four times, and had been our friend and comforter for so long.

Whereas yesterday was simply tough, today was tough and exhilarating. A lot of uphill stuff but, boy, was it worth it – big serious dark green, fuck off, hills with views extending beyond the range of one's eye. Beauty so staggering that is was a surprise to find ourselves alone within and on it.

If the previous day's accommodation and food was magnificent, last night was journeyman at best. I feel ungenerous saying this, as the proprietor was friendly and helpful in every way that one could want. Her Pension had seen better times but I am sure she knew it. But her warmth was sincere, even to the extent of encouraging us to take the remaining breakfast rolls and ham to make our lunch – something we have done surreptitiously in other places.

Today was another contrast. Unable to find a hotel in our chosen destination, we climbed a big hill to stay in the German equivalent of a “Youth Hostel”. Sort of ironic, as everyone else there, and there were a lot of them, seemed to be at least ten years older than us. A quick side note to say that, after Doris retired to bed early-ish, I got talking to them in my pigeon German and what a friendly and lovely bunch they are.

Anyway, my point was going to be that this basic accommodation and food has its own special joy. It does not pretend to be grand, nor aspire to it - it is simply basic accommodation, in an amazingly scenic location, with basic but good food served with warmth. It does not fall into the trap of aspiration and is better for it.

This I know, by implication, damns last night's hospitality and it makes me feel ungenerous in doing so. The notion of generosity is one that has stuck with me from my recent readings of Buddhist teaching. Though a long way from being a Buddhist, as the glass of Weissbier in front of me will testify, I take the importance of generosity seriously, especially as my instinct is quick to judge, rather than be generous, no matter how hard I try to be so.

The picture, by the way, is teh view from just outside where we stayed.

All in all, another great day, with a tricky musical choice. I am going to have to go for “You can't always get what you want” by the Stones.

Day 6 – 24 Kilometres – Total to date 148 Kilometres

2007-05-03T09:07:00.000+01:00

Today was pretty tough. More up and down than on the level and most of it very steep. A lot of the walk was in beautiful, thick forest. This is great for keeping cool when climbing hills but, for me, does not give me the sense of progress that I get from open countryside, where one can see villages on the horizon getting closer with each step.

It is also easier to get lost, as one path through trees looks much the same as another. And although it seems churlish to complain about such gorgeous countryside, I find that the forest walks can tend towards monotony because of their unchanging internal landscape.

We spend so many hours walking that I started to wonder what I think about whilst walking. After all, there is nothing to do except walk and think. My conclusion is that my mind just seems to wander as I walk, without fixing on anything significant or meaningful. Thoughts arise and dissapear without effort or concern. So far, I have not been bored nor craved the company of my iPOD which waits in eager readiness at the very top of my rucksack. I am simply content to walk and let my mind wander. Is this a form of meditation I wonder? Is is just being?

Today's journey ended after a long walk when we stumbled, exhausted, down a steep slope, into the village of Beerfurth, in search of somewhere to sleep and eat – in that order of priorities. The place that we found is modest by yesterday's standards but is good enough for needs, except for perhaps the shower. It seems to have just two heat settings: scalding and extremely scalding. The longer it ran, the hotter it seemed to get. Having lathered up, I was reduced to standing some distance from the stream of water from the shower-head, splashing water towards me with my hand, in the hope that it would cool in the distance travelled. Miraculously, it did but made the experiences somewhat less satisfying than usual.

Before going, I wanted to say that if you had written to either of us, or posted a comment on the blog, please forgive us for not getting back to you. Devoid of Internet hotspots, we have resorted to sneaking into the infrequent “Internet Cafes” with a memory stick. It takes most of our time to update the blog, leaving little or no time for replying to emails or comments. But as soon as we find a hotel with a fast wireless connection, a jacuzzi, free massage and not on a main road, we will rest up for a while and catch up with you all.

Oh, I nearly forgot today's musical choice. I think I will have to go for Paul Weller's “Wild Wood” although “The Long and Winding Road” by the Beatles ran it pretty close today.

Day 5: Perfect Day - 24 Kilometres – Total 124 Kilometres

2007-05-02T08:49:00.000+01:00

Day 5: Perfect Day - 24 Kilometres – Total 124 Kilometres

Today has been such a good day for so many reasons that it is hard to know where to begin.

I'll start with food. The picture above was, until this evening, one of the best meals I had ever eaten. Fortunately, my cooing, started sufficiently early to prompt Doris to suggest that I take a photograph.

Over the years, I have eaten my fair share of Bratwurst and Sauerkraut but this was in an entirely different league. It was served up by one of the oldest Inns in Germany, Gasthof zum Riesen, in the very old town of Miltenberg.

I have eaten in some posh nosh in my time, and enjoyed them greatly but it is the simple meals that have given me the most pleasure. My list is as follows: Pie and Mash in Kelly's in Roman Road; Salt Beef in Bloom's in Whitechapel; Sardines in Portimao in Portugal, Spaghetti Vongole in Porto san Stefano in Italy and, now, Bratwurst and Sauerkraut in Miltenberg. None of them was expensive but every single one of them made my soul soar.

And so to this evening. After walking for 24 Kilomteres, a fair amount of it uphill, we stumbled out of the forest, to encounter Gasthof Geyersmuehle nestling in the woods. We were shown a lovely spacious room facing the woods and decided to stay. It is said that quality is the gap between expectation and experience, rather than objective judgement, and perhaps this played a part but nothing prepared us for the epic quality of food and wine served up. A perfect end to a perfect day.

There were a number of other things that made today so enjoyable but one was certainly that my main physical challenges seem to be under control. In particular my Archilles tendon problem seems to be manageable. Not only did I walk through some of Europe's most magnificent scenery, along the majestic Main river, and deep into the Bavarian forests on its banks, but, for the first time, I finished the day without so much as a limp or hobble, for all the world, perambulating like a normal person.

Before we left, I pondered the challenge of “being” rather than “doing”. Interestingly, we have not turned a page of a book nor spun the wheel of our respective iPODs. We have simply walked, eaten, blogged, slept...walked, eaten, blogged, slept...and so on. Five days, not a page read, not a Podcast or record listened to. I have, frankly, had too much to drink to ponder this further without getting pompous, so I will leave it there for now.

Eagle eyed readers may have spotted that I referred to Doris's “Day 4” blog but that they couldn't find it. Alas , I fear, it is destined to be like Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, hidden from public view, attaining legendary status but not emerging until another era.

The key thing that you may have missed is that, yesterday, Gisela, Doris's sister, and her husband Toni, drove their children Felix and Juliana, 140 Kilometres with their bikes in a trailer, so that they could cycle along our route and surprise us. And then insist on carrying our rucksacks for a couple of kilometres. Amazingly generous.

Today's music? It was a close run thing, with Bob Dylan's “Temporary Like Archilles” but I'll have to go for the obvious with Lou Reed and “Perfect Day”.

Day 5 by Doris

2007-05-02T07:43:00.000+01:00

It is finally time that I contribute to this blog again. My only earlier attempt was not posted as it did not pass Gary's quality control. I was rather put out at the time but with hindsight he was right (him being right does not happen often – so savor it). I had written a 'we started here, then went there, then there and ended up here' kind of entry when I hardly could keep my eyes open.

We have found our rhythm and a daily routine very quickly. The day starts by waking up and assessing levels of pain and stiffness that remain from the previous day. I have been very lucky with little pain. Yesterday I woke up completely without, today after our first very hilly walk I have some but I know it will be gone as soon as I have warmed up. Then we have a hotel breakfast – some more varied then others but all Continental featuring at the very minimum bread rolls, German sausages, ham and cheese. I make up two sandwiches which we take along for elevenses but they usually are all we eat until dinner together with a couple of apples.

We know the distance we would like to achieve on the day and set out to achieve it. We might not be the fastest walkers but we very determined ones. Every day we have either achieved the distance we had set out to do or we added some more because we did not want to stop at 3 pm or like yesterday when Gary had his first pain free walk we took on a challenging walk leaving Miltenberg at 2 pm.

We find a hotel just before our legs go on strike, we shower and I wash what needs washing. Then we have dinner and Gary gets out his special 'tool' to measure the distance we have actually walked. It is a shoe string with a knot in it. The knot represents 21 km which has somehow become our badge of achievement and is regularly surpassed. Then we decide where and how far we are going to walk the next day.

We are tired and tend to be in bed between 9 and 10 pm – one would think we would both just pass out and sleep through the night. But whilst we are both physically tired, we have not had any mental challenge during the day and we find ourselves in a very unusual situation that makes us both sleep very fitfully with minds racing. I guess it will take time for our minds and bodies to adjust to their role reversal.

Whatever happens, I am immensely proud of our achievement so far. We have walked 1/10 of the way already, are both in good spirit and acceptable physical condition. Gary and I make a really good team. The weather has been cloudless blue skies since we have left and we have had more than our fair share of encouragement from our family and friends and many well wishers along the way.

Life is good on the road

Day 4 – 26 Kilometres : Total so far 100 Kilometres

2007-05-01T12:45:00.000+01:00

Doris has already covered most our our day and, in particular, the surprise visit of Gisela, Toni, Juliana and Felix which was a real treat.

Here are some other random thoughts on our journey so far.

Every day seems to begin and end the same way – limping. More often than not, this is due to stiffness and minor tweaks that are soon walked off. Last night at dinner, Doris commented that she “had lost control of her feet”. I wonder whether it will ever be thus? And have to admit to a certain satisfaction in this “badge of honour” of a tough day, soon shaken off.

My troublesome tendons may or may not turn out to be more serious. Doris said not to mention them but I feel that an update is necessary. As we are now only occasionally on-line, I feel like a war zone hostage or Big Brother participant, unaware of what the public at large or the tabloid press are saying about by Archilles Tendons. I feel the need to put my side of the story.

In short, today was tough. I really didn't know, this morning, whether I would be able to walk very far at all. Up and down hill is particularly difficult, so we decided to stay level. The soreness was omnipresent but so was the magnificent scenery of the wooded river Main valley – a real compensatory bonus.

I am a little surprised to have ended the day, having walked 26 Kilometres and pushed our total distance walked to 100 Kilometres – achieved a day earlier than planned! And right now, I feel no worse than yesterday but tomorrow is hilly, so we shall see. Doris, suggests a relatively short walk and some time off. Sounds sensible and quite unlike us.

I'll try not to write about this topic again but crave your indulgence so far, as it is one of the few physical things that I genuinely fear could put an end to our journey, if it gets worse. Hopefully, it will not and it will settle down to be a troublesome nuisance or dissapear altogether.

Changing tack, and if you have read this far you should perhaps consider getting out more, I have been considering whether each day should have a musical theme. So far my thoughts are:

Day 1 - “Kind and Generous” by Natalie Merchant
Day 2 - “In the City” by the Jam
Day 3 - “Feats Don't Fail Me Now” by Little Feat
Day 4 - “With a Little Help From Our Friends” by Joe Cocker and the Grease Band

If I ever get on-line again, I'll see if I can find some links to the music, on YouTube or elsewhere. In the meantime, please post your own musical suggestions if you can be arsed.

Day 3 – Feet Don't Fail Me Now - 22 Kilometres

2007-04-30T18:01:00.000+01:00

Today was a day that my feet decided to reject the rest of my body. Buoyed up by our achievements of the previous two days, we had no hesitation in taking on a walk of 22 kilometres through endless rolling countryside and lovely Franken villages, that would end in the beautiful old town of Wertheim. Unfortunately, after about 18 Kilometres, my feet felt as if they had been cooked in a deep fat fryer. Everything from my ankles down hurt like hell, all in subtlety different ways.

Top of the list were my always troublesome Archilles Tendons. I always knew, from my previous experience, that they could be my biggest physical challenge and could turn out to be...well...my Archillies Heel. After two trouble free days, they decided to remind me of their existence. With immense patience and encouragement form Doris, I managed to hobble a few Kilometres, before taking a break to have a serious think, some 4 kilometres from our destination. A rest and a change of footwear rejuvenated me but the right tendon is very sore. Hopefully, it will, tomorrow, having reminded of its existence and its need to be consulted about my plans, will fade gracefully into the background until I, again, have the temerity of challenge its authority.

By the way, if I see a little obsessed by weights and measures in these early entries then please forgive me. My only excuses is that 12 Kilograms still feels heavy and 20 Kilometres still feels a reasonably long way to carry it. Hopefully that will change as our stamina and fitness improves. Hopefully.

Day 2 – Urban Hill Climb - 30 Kilometres

2007-04-29T17:59:00.000+01:00

We are tired – really tired.

Most of this morning and early afternoon was spent negotiating our way through the urban landscape of Wuertzburg. Now, as urban landscapes go, Wuertzburg is pretty good, well beautiful actually, but when you want to get up a hill and all of the streets run across rather than up, then it can be a tad frustrating. So this morning was spent pounding pavements, with many wrong turns, mostly up hill. The early part of this afternoon was tracking dual carriageways, that even in Wuertzburg are not very pretty, to try to escape the city. Eventually we managed to hit greenery, weaving our way through hillside after hillside of vineyards.

Then, having started at 8:30 and achieved out target distance by 14:30 we had a difficult choice. The next village likely to have accommodation was nearly another 10 kilometres away - way beyond what we should be trying it achieve on our second day, in temperatures still around 30 degrees Celsius. After a long hard think, not fuelled by alcohol, we decided to press on.

Our target Gasthof turned out to have been closed for some time, so we sat down for half an hour, contemplated the options and pressed on for another 2 kilometres, limping into Uettingen at 18:45, from where I now write - 50% further than we ever intended to walk at this stage.

Did I mention that we are tired? Does it show?

Day 1 - Generosity - 22 Kilometres

2007-04-28T17:46:00.000+01:00

As we were let down by a connectivity provider, we do not have a regular connection to the Internet. We are, therefore, going to be reliant on wireless hotspots and friendly people that we meet, to be able to make future posts. Consequently, this and future posts are likely to lag behind events and be batched up, with multiple days in single posts.

We have completed our first day. We set off at 8:30, arriving at our destination of Bergtheim around 16:00, having walked 22 Kilometres on a hot cloudless day, in temperatures that nudged above 30 degrees Celsius. We are both really proud of ourselves. Self-doubt about our ability to cope has not been vanquished but it has certainly had a poke in the eye. Doing it day after day is, of course, another matter but now we know we can walk that sort of distance,on a hot day, carrying over 12 Kilograms and that was a big hurdle to clear.

It was tough but we coped well. Tomorrow may well turn out to be tougher, as we will start with the aches and pains with which we finished today. And we do have some very decent aches and pains - I will not bore you with the details.

Apart from the achievement for ourselves, the striking feature of today was other people's generosity towards us.

The generosity of my mother, Lily, who despite fighting lung cancer, being effectively housebound and seeing her only close family support disappear for two months, wished us well with genuine, warm sincerity – who said "don't worry about me" and meant it.

The generosity of Ulrike, Doris's sister, who gave us her mobile 'phone, so that we could make calls within Germany, without exorbitant cross-border charges.

The generosity of Gisela, Doris's sister, who drove a long distance with her two small children to see us off this morning, having arranged our accommodation for this evening and then put herself on standby to pick us up if we needed help.

The generosity Petra, Doris's friend, who got on her bicycle to intercept us and wish us well, a few kilometres into our journey, and then cycled ahead to the next town and back, to bring us back a much needed brunch, for which, needless to say, she would not let us pay.
And last but certainly not least, the generosity of Brigit te, our host for this evening, who has not only provided us with fine food and drink, who has not only trusted us with the run of her lovely home while she is out at a birthday party but has also given us her own bed to sleep in for the night.

Heartfelt thanks to all of them for making today a very special day.

Reality bites

2007-04-27T13:12:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow will be the first day of our walk. It arrives with two sobering pieces of reality.

The first is the weight of our fully packed rucksacks. Although Doris's is slightly smaller in terms of volume, our respective packs both come in at just over 11 Kilograms. For the Americans and older Brits, that is a shade over 24 pounds, or 1.7 Stones. Gulp!

I have to admit to mild panic when I first discovered this. Since then, I have been engaging in what I believe is known as “self-talk”, telling myself that it doesn't feel too bad, as I stride manfully between train, 'plane, escalator and car. But tomorrow there will be no train, 'plane, escalator or car – just Shanks's Pony.

Add to this, the fact that our first offered accommodation is something like 25 kilometres away - more than our average target daily of 20 kilometres. Doris has gotten royally sick of me bleating on about how we are not fit and that we need to use the early part of the journey to get fit. I am sorry to mention it again, and in public, but the distance will be a stretch for our very first day.

We do have the option of a lift if we come up short. I, however, fear that if we do so, we may not start at the exact point that we left off. This, in my unreasonable and purist mind, feels like cheating. This despite the fact that we will have to take a detour when we restart that is equivalent of the distance “skipped”. I am trying to re-frame - honest!

In actual fact, we both know that our mutual stubbornness, when it comes to goals, will drive us to want to complete the full distance. But now comes the second sobering piece of reality. Tomorrow, it will 30 degrees centigrade and sunny. Double gulp! But there is worse to come. It is forecast to stay at around that level until Tuesday when the rain comes.

I think this makes it appropriate mention our pact. We have agreed that if either of us keels over and dies of a heart attack, the survivor will not carry on in memory of the other. He or she will recognise what a stupid idea it was and travel home first class. This, obviously, started as a joke but now prompts me to ask that, if you have a god, then please offer up a prayer to him, her or them – I think we may need it.

Last night at home

2007-04-25T23:13:00.000+01:00

and I have done everything I was able to think of. The rest will just have to sort itself out.

Gary already mentioned my pretty laid back attitude to packing. So it comes quite as a surprise to me that I am packed and ready to go. No more last minute panic tomorrow - how will I cope?? But I must say that I am not the master in leaving the packing to the last minute. That honour goes to an old friend of mine. She took that endorphin producing last minute rush to new heights when she realised around midnight, whilst packing, that she could not find her passport. She was booked on a morning flight to Japan and amazingly she did go on that flight - with an emergency passport that was issued by the mayor of her town in the middle of the night. The mayor was called out of bed by her very resourceful and persuasive husband. He opened the office and issued her with the desired travel documents. Do not try this in any large city or anywhere in the UK!

I am still in awe - anybody can pack last minute, but a new passport less than 12 hours before departure? So you see, me being worried about being packed the night before is completely valid. It's a slippery slope. What ever next I ask!

Our lives for the next two months...more or less...or is that more?

2007-04-24T21:14:00.000+01:00

We will be departing the day after tomorrow and today Doris, true to her usual relaxed approach to travel, bought her rucksack and most of her clothes for the trip. I, true to my usual uptight approach, purchased everything a couple of months ago. The completion of our “kit out” provided a great opportunity, so I thought, to line up all of our stuff, give or take a few items, in front of our respective rucksacks, thus demonstrating the meagre possessions that will be our lives for the next two months.

The blue rucksack is mine and the red one belongs to Doris. As you may be able to see, and much to Doris's amusement, the pile of stuff in front of the blue rucksack is a little (sic) larger than that in front of the red one. This is made a smidgen more embarrassing by the fact that I berated Doris for buying a smaller rucksack than she advised me to buy because she preferred the colour of the smaller one.

Now I know that I usually take too much when we go away, “just in case”, but I really did think that this time, with my rapier-like purchases of ultra-light, ultra-compact and ultra-expensive walking gear, I had got it down to the absolute minimum – obviously not.

I will have to reconsider. And that includes my copy of the new translation of Don Quixote, specially purchased to last the trip at close to 1,000 pages but unfortunately weighing in at just under a kilogram.

I will be staying with my mum tomorrow night, so tonight will be my last night at home, in my own bed, for a couple of months. Hardly going off to war but a little bit emotional nonetheless for a hopeless romantic like me.

Medication Time

2007-04-23T12:07:00.000+01:00

Jo send us this card which totally cracks us up:

every morning and evening I form an orderly cue and Gary counts out the pills. We just collated all the pills we need to take on the trip and it is quite a pile.

Gary takes a cocktail of drugs for his fibrillation ‘troubles’ (he never fails to mention that Tony Blair was a fellow sufferer) and I for a hyperactive thyroid and associated symptoms. I am really resenting the fact that within months we went from nothing to both of us having to take medication every day and especially that we have to drag them along on our trip.

Luckily it is likely that both our symptoms will disappear and we will be able to discontinue the drugs in a year or so.

Major Donation

2007-04-23T00:40:00.000+01:00

On Thursday I met back up with a group of lovely people I used to get up for at 6 am every Thursday morning for about three years. We were a networking group and for some reason this group had good karma from the very beginning. I made some great connections and feel all warm and fuzzy about all of them. Hi guys, I had a lovely evening and I understand Warren is going to host the next get together in his beautiful garden.

Over the years we also managed to accumulate quite a bit of surplus in the group's bank account. Of that a (surprisingly) modest amount went on our dinner and the rest is going to be shared between two charities. One is Medicines sans Frontiers and we are proud to add about £ 1200 to our sponsorship - that is £ 1 for every kilometer we are going to walk. Gary and I are very grateful!!

Elaine, please hit the 'donate now' button just up and to the right, follow the instructions (I know that is a challenge, but do try) and make us look really impressive please.

After all we have not walked a mile yet and we have already had some very faithful and trusting souls donate so much money. You bullies - more reasons so we can't chicken out.

Anybody else who feels like piling the pressure on us? Hit the button that says:

D O N A T E N O W

Bring it on.......................................

Our preparation

2007-04-20T11:07:00.000+01:00

In my last blog entry, I said I had realised that I had prepared for walking but that I had not prepared for not walking. Doing versus being. As a consequence, a lot of people have asked me what we have done to prepare. My confident answer is that I have bought a rucksack, over-priced walking clothing, two heavy books to read and a relatively lightweight notebook PC.

Doris is slightly less well prepared, having purchased maps for the German part of our journey and publicised our journey to her network of friends and contacts but not yet having purchased a rucksack or walking gear. And, oh yes, we did three walks of about seven and one half miles where we shared the load of a single weighted rucksack.

If you know me rather than Doris, you probably think I am being flippant and have omitted the rigorous training regime and day by day plan, with accommodation all pre-booked. Unfortunately, that is not the case and we may be setting out on the most ill-prepared expedition since Captain Scott took on the Antarctic (See “The Last Place" on Earth by Rolan Huntford).

I know I should be concerned by this but, actually, I am rather pleased. We have rationalised it thus: had we considered what we are taking on and tried to fully prepare in advance, we would never have contemplated doing it. In truth, I wish I was more physically prepared but apart from that, the principle of just starting to walk; doing so day after day, accepting and enjoying what comes along, is aligned with the idea of just being.

Much like, as my good friend Stephen pointed out, the character Caine in the 1970's TV show “Kung Fu”, with David Carradine, improbably cast as a Chinese Shaolin monk (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068823/). Except, of course, we'll have our PC, iPODs and being staying in nice comfy beds (we hope) in hotels, hostels and with friends. And I doubt that Caine got himself kitted out at The North Face from the looks of things.

Closed for business

2007-04-19T09:49:00.000+01:00

I wrote my last invoice last week and now have nothing ahead of me for the next two months other than our journey.

None of my famous projects on the go in their various stages of 'incompleteness', nobody to talk to about future collaboration, no networking meetings, I said good bye to my Master mind group, no long ~~‘To Do’ lists~~ actually they are supposed to be ‘Next Action’ lists (if I ever reach the for me seemingly unobtainable heights of GTD - Get Things Done heaven), no more telephone conferences booked……….

When the phone rings it is either somebody persistent from an Indian call centre (there has been a plethora of those lately – what is going on??) or it is a friend or family members making helpful statements like:

‘Not long now’

‘Do you now wish you had organise a luxurious beach holiday for Gary’s 50^th birthday’

‘Wow, that is quite a distance’

‘How is the training going?’

So like Gary said in his previous blog and my good friend Jo reiterated. This walk is not about ‘doing’, it is about ‘being’. Western education and life style leaves me ill prepared for just ‘being’. So we craftily build in some ‘doing’ things – like committing to keeping the blog up to date on this gorgeous thing of beauty:

And I am going to ponder the question how I can combine the things I love to do like craft & art, messing around with words, group coaching & training into one business that not only makes me happy but also turns a good profit. Is pondering ‘being’ or ‘doing’?????

The relativity of time

2007-04-12T23:51:00.000+01:00

Our journey has been months in the future for so long that it came as shock to realise that we fly to Germany in just two weeks today. It feels as if there is still so much more preparation to do but I am just not quite sure what it is!

A couple of days after we leave, we will start our walk and life will be very different. We will be forever accompanied by our rucksacks, blisters and sore joints. We will have minimal changes of clothes and have no home comforts, such as a comfy chair in front of the television, a familiar bed with clean sheets and on-tap broadband. Food choices will be limited to meals in restaurants, bars, cafes and hotels, or to meals that we can assemble from cold ingredients such as bread, cheese and cold cuts of meat. An exception will be those occasions when someone offers us hospitality – no many so far. This will be our lives for two months.

Apart from the food choices, it is a liberating thought. All that we will need will be on our backs. Our lives stripped down to the bare essentials.

That includes, I am forced to admit, a new shiny red notebook pc, weighing just over one kilogram, purchased with the sole purpose of maintaining this blog. Well, OK, it will also allow me to play poker when we have a decent connection within range. And yes it will be useful to allow us to synchronise our iPODs, so that we can get all of those essential Podcasts. Did I mention that our iPODs are part of the bare essentials that we have stripped down to? But the laptop and the iPODs are the only real gadgets. The digitial camera is obviously an essential to document our trip and post pictures on the blog. And, after all, I did deprive myself of the lovely GPS, map on your wrist gizmo, in favour of the greater integrity of a protractor compass and maps. As I said, stripped down to the bare essentials.

Something I do not yet know is how we will spend our time when we are not walking. Our aim is to walk twenty Kilometres, or about fifteen miles, per day. This should take us about five to six hours which is a lot of walking day in, day out. But on the other hand, six hours is not a big chunk out of a day. If we started at, say 09:00 and broke for an hour at lunch, we would be finished walking by around 16:00. Then what? There is only such much reading one can do and only so many books that one can carry – the latest copy of Don Quixote is bloody heavy I can tell you. Buying replacement reading material in Germany will be easier for Doris than for I.

That reminds me of all the things I haven't prepared such getting the material together so that I can turn my novel into a screenplay, rather than carry the book that tells you how to write a screenplay! I now see that I have prepared for walking but not for not walking!

But hang on a minute isn't this, dare I say, a very Western attitude? The need to be doing things? The idea of a pilgrimage had its origins in Eastern, or more specifically Indian, traditions. In those traditions, doing nothing, except contemplating, is considered a very good way to spend time: simply being rather than doing. Being, in the present, is the whole point of this journey. And if I can find a way of embracing that idea and being at ease with it, this will be much more than a journey and its influence on us will live well past our journey's end.

Arty farty

2007-04-10T12:21:00.000+01:00

Since I turned 40 I started exploring my artistic side. In the beginning I proceeded very tenderly because I was ‘unkind art teacher damaged’ but I am gaining confidence and started an arty business. The business has yet to gain the right momentum. One day I am going to truly believe that I can make it. But in the mean time I have horded quite a stack of toys and papers ‘and stuff’. I have got a beautifully light studio space which I AM GOING TO MISS. I just love messing around with new techniques and ideas and my latest love is something called Artist Trading Cards (ATC’s) Here you can find more details about it: http://www.artist-trading-cards.ch/

Here are examples of my efforts:

I will take some empty cards along and a pen and maybe I find a talent for drawing something others will be able to recognise.

Grateful

2007-04-01T21:26:00.000+01:00

I was talking to my mother yesterday and she said she has to practise walking because she is going on a sight seeing tour in May. We joked about us both having to practise walking.

My mother has two knee replacements and 20 months ago she stumbled, fell and broke her leg badly which knocked her confidence. Since then she has fallen several times, thankfully not breaking anything but due to the artificial knee joints it is difficult for her to get up again on her own (which really bugs her). Her pride will not allow her to use a walking stick but neither will she ever give up. I admire her tenacity and grit greatly. She has always had it. Whether it was combining five children with a pristine house and garden or never staying down for long when she struggled with excruciatingly painful kidney infections and eventually losing one kidney. She turned 70 last year and has done an amazing job creating a new life for herself since my father died eight years ago.

My father died from a lung disease and in his last months he had to carry a rucksack with a supply of oxygen to be able to go anywhere. He knew his disease was progressive and incurable but he made the best of his life without drama. Not once did I hear him lament his fate. I am not sure I would be able to live out my life so dignified if I was in his situation.

And then there is Gary’s mum who is now practically housebound because she simply has not got enough breath to walk any distance. She is not a giver upper either and you rarely hear her complain.

Both our parents are good working class people. My father was a labourer in a factory, Gary's a labourer at the docks in London. They never had the choices they enabled us to have.

Gary and I often talk about how grateful and lucky we are and this year how privileged we are to be able to do attempt this walk (hey, a bit of caution is ok I think). Part of this is to find pleasure in simple experiences, special moments and making connections with other people rather than accumulating expensive stuff or chasing after the acknowledgement and praise from other people.

Walking through Kent in the sunshine last week for example. We walked for hours without seeing anybody – amazing as we were only 12 miles away from London city centre and there were some breathtaking views! And we were talking about love, life and the universe all the way. What better way to spend a Wednesday lunch!!

Blister 101

2007-03-31T10:12:00.000+01:00

Having worked from home for nearly 10 years I have developed rather tender feet which are more used to comfy slippers than outdoor shoes. Any court shoe will sooner or later rip open the skin on the back of my heel/ankle. Any high heeled shoe makes the soles of my feet burn. It all sounds rather dainty but I wear a size 8 so they are not exactly what one would call cute.

Regrettably my 15 year old beloved walking boots are falling to pieces. So I am dutifully walking in my new walking boots and blisters are on my mind!

Here is the science bit:

A blister or bulla is a defence mechanism of the human body. When the outer (epidermis) layer of the skin separates from the fibre layer (dermis), a pool of lymph and other bodily fluids collect between these layers while the skin re-grows from underneath. Blisters can be caused by heat, frostbite, or friction.

What you can do to reduce the chance of ending up with blisters (who are they trying to kid):

- Good fitting shoes, walk new shoes in

- Keep your feet dry and clean, a seam or even a bit of fluff can aggravate the skin if it is rubbing against the foot for long enough

- Wear walking socks and some even suggest two layers of socks.

- Cover vulnarable areas in Vaseline (sounds messy)

- Cut your toe nails nice and round

- Use a precautionary plaster or better (I am wondering if it really makes a difference):

- a Hydrocure-Plaster which was specifically developed to avoid blisters in hot spots and is available in German pharmacies

And here are some of the more ‘out there’ suggestions:

- Superglue

Glue loose top layer of skin back on with superglue (suggested by our friendly sales assistant at the North Face shop)

- Stag fat or Hirschtalg

If Vaseline seems too straight forward…………………

What you should do when you do have a blister:

Wherever you look you get two opinions: To lance or not to lance that is the question.

I am in the lancing camp. A sewing needle sterilised by the flame of a lighter and in you go. Dap with antiseptic and put a plaster on when the top layer of skin starts flapping but do not remove until absolutely necesssary.

A new obsession

2007-03-27T21:08:00.000+01:00

Some people might have noticed my slight obsession with the exact number of kilometres we are going to walk (I like measurable goals). But now I have a new one – WEIGHT. Not my weight, that is an old obsession and a different blog……………… the weight of our rucksacks.

Naively or wisely we have never walked anywhere with a big hiking rucksack on our backs – EVER. I am sticking with ‘wisely’ because having experienced our first outing with a slightly weighted rucksack makes it insignificant if we walk 100 kilometres less or more. Even though our first outing went well, our journey has just gotten a whole lot more challenging in my head.

Luckily Gary and I can be very determined and we have also told way too many people about our plans so we can’t chicken out anymore. However, I still have a slight niggling worry in the back of my head that I will end up with egg on my face because I can not last the distance. So I have to remind myself that for me this walk is a lot about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. When the going gets tuff I can become totally single minded with tunnel vision. This trait has served me well in the past and I am sure will kick in when needed. It is also comforting to know that Gary is one of the most mentally strong people I have ever met. So unless our bodies fall apart we have a pretty good chance of making it.

But I digress, back to the weight issue. I am now wondering about how much five pairs of knickers weigh and will I really need hair conditioner or will walking without its weight make up for my hair looking and feeling like a scrubber. I have never been much into make up so that will not be a problem. Overall it is of course not about one individual item – it is the accumulation of them which adds the pounds (great metaphor, I should write a diet book). In particular it is our current need to have some home comforts with us, like two I pods, a diary, two books, mobile, camera, deck of cards…………….. a laptop ...................plus all the power cables and chargers for the electronic gadgets.

You can purchase pretty light yet amazingly powerful laptops these days. Rule of thumb, the smaller the more expensive. Our current one is out of the question as it is weighing in at 5 kg plus a very heavy power lead. We have seen a good range in funky colours weighing about 1.5 kg and then there is a more expensive one weighing about 1 kg. Gary and I are talking ourselves into a purchasing decision by collecting arguments ‘for’ and ignoring the only one ‘against’ which is that it has to be carried all the way.

There are also all the maps we need to bring along because we decided against a GPS system which was just one gadget too far. Electric toothbrushes have already been ruled out and Gary is looking for an acceptable alternative for his electric razor. Just listing all these items makes me aware of how many electronic appliances we rely on.

Anyway, if any of the things we will take along get in the way of achieving our goal, there is always a post office nearby where we can post all the surplus stuff home. Oh we are soooooooo skilled at talking ourselves into stuff.

It's all part of the cunning master plan

Uebernachtungs update

2007-03-22T23:32:00.000Z

Wir suchen Uebernachtungen hier (in pink haben wir schon)

29.04 in der Naehe von Kuernach / Rimpar Danke!!

30.04 in der Gegend von Helmstadt Danke!!!

01.05 in der Gegend von Wertheim Die Jugendherberge schaut dort ganz gut aus

02.05 in der Gegend von Buergstadt

03.05 in der Gegend von Vielbrunn

04.05 in der Gegend von Oberostern

Bis wir wissen wie schnell wir voran kommen wird es schwierig sein genaue Daten durchzugeben wann wir wo sein werden. Aber legt ganz einfach eine 'bookmark' fuer diese Seite an (wie heisst das denn in Deutsch?) und kommt regelmaessig um zu hoeren wie es uns denn so geht. Ueber Kommentare freuen wir uns natuerlich immer.

Und dann gibt es da noch die Moeglichkeit uns eine Aufgabe zu stellen die wir waehrend unserer Wanderung gegen grosszuegige Spenden erledigen koennen. Wir sind einer guten Herausforderung immer offen - Gary liebt nichts besser als zu gewinnen.

Lily's Opium Den

2007-03-22T12:20:00.001Z

My mum has been prescribed morphine to help her get over the effects of her radiotherapy.

Unfortunately, for reasons that I don't need to go into, it didn't arrive until a few days after the treatment and is taken in a manner that my mum pronounced “ridiculous”. And, having visited her last night, I have to agree. Suffice to say it involves a hard to fit stopper, an inverted bottle of liquid, a syringe with tiny measurements and a manoeuvre to the inside of the cheek. It was a challenge for the visiting district nurse, let alone a woman of close to eighty.

Rational, scientific, out-of-the box-thinking person that I am, I came up with a radical alternative. Pour the appropriate dose into a spoon and slurp it down. So last night we gave it a go. Mum was delighted with the new method, as it was so much easier and she would actually take it, rather than, as I suspect, simply not take it because it was all way too difficult.

The only slight problem was that mum filled the spoon a little more than required. As she had obviously not been taking it anyway, I thought there was no harm in taking a “catch up” dosage. As it approached her usual going to bed time, I decided to wake her.

She awoke, very smiley and contented. We joked about the effects of the morphine and the dangers of addiction for a woman of her age, fighting cancer. Was she a bit giggly or did I imagine it? She went up to bed, where she normally reads and listens to the radio for a while but, on this occasion, went straight off to sleep. This morning she was still more smiley and cheerful than usual.

It is clearly pretty good stuff. She has three bottles of it and I will look forward to our conversations over the next few days with great interest.

Wise words

2007-03-19T09:08:00.000Z

'There is more to life than making it go faster'
Ghandi

I am still thinking about what will be challenging for me during the walk - apart from my feet and the rest of my body taking turns in hurting. I like my own space for example and great ingredients cooked simply. But one of the things that will require the biggest adjustment is our inability to get anywhere fast when we have to walk every step of the way. I am one of the fast brigade; when I have decided on something, it has to happen there and then and I will not stop until it has. I will search for the fastest connection of trains, research at length (!) the shortest routes, drive speedily, get wound up when others slow me down and lately even lament the fact that my broadband connection is a little sluggish.

Anyway, I will have to adjust on the walk and slooooooooooooooooooooooow dooooooown. I am looking forward (in a gently dreading kind of way) to the perspective change that will take place. When trains were first introduced people were sick on a regular basis because their vision could not adjust to the 'fast' motion. I know how they must have felt when we sat on the Shinkansen train from Tokyo to Kyoto - I could only look straight ahead and even then I felt slight sick.

Gary and I recently tried to judge the time it would take us to walk across a gently sloping valley and up the hill on the other site. We were miles apart in our estimates and probably both wrong. At the end of the walk we will be pros in guess the distance!

I am not the only one thinking about the speeding up of information and time. The very resourceful Elisa send me this very interesting slide show (don't bother with the head set - the music is quite annoying). She is wondering if the shift will take us to discover "values, trust & best communication practises". To help ponder that question I can suggest a read of the Tao Te Ching. Here is one with several translations on the same page or read a clever version summarising the Tao's message in todays language.

I was just talking to my sister Ulrike who is preparing a talk about the need to change views around time management. I see how much more information my niece and nephew have to cope with. Felix who is 6 worked out by observation that all information he will ever require is available to him through google. He pronounces this practice goggling - great word!

We are going on a walk - how will you slow down?

The Slob

2007-03-16T10:17:00.001Z

“Why have you become a slob?”, asked my mum, who was spending the weekend with us.

I tried to stutter a response but no words came out, as there were so many implications in that one short, loaded, sentence.

It had been preceded by, “I have been thinking about something and it's been bothering me.” This is the sort of sentence that, when I was a teenager, used to precede the discovery of pornographic magazines, condoms or other things far too embarrassing to reveal here. It is said with a particular tone of inquisitiveness that makes my stomach flip.

On this occasion, I had expected it to be about our journey. The previous day, I had finally gathered the courage to tell her about it. But no, it was about me being a slob – and the reasons for it!

Pressed on the subject of my new found status, she responded that I had been designated a slob because I, “go around in my pajamas all day”. Interestingly, after many years of somnolent nakedness and t-shirts, I was now the proud owner of not one but two pairs of pajamas - birthday presents from Doris. And, I had been in the habit, not being at work, of enjoying the decadence of wearing them until 09:00 on many days and, as I proudly but now mistakenly told my mum, all day on my birthday. Was mum exaggerating for effect, as she is prone to do?

“Hang on, it's 8:15 and I am dressed,” I said tetchily, relieved that, on this day, I was out of my pajamas earlier than usual.

“You're in your pajamas,” she said, pointing at my ultra-comfy, extended belly accommodating, grey check jeans from The Gap.

“These are jeans from The Gap – what did you think when I went out wearing them yesterday to buy your newspaper?”

“Well, I thought that was a bit strange.”

To be fair, she immediately apologised but, alas, with the grace of someone who felt that the facts had temporarily let her down but not undermined the essential assumption.

It is an ungenerous thought but, unfortunately, as she gets older and more ill, she becomes more cranky. Perhaps that happens to all of us as we get older and our dignity is stripped away? Always fiercely independent and proud of her hair, she now finds both compromised. It must be frustrating and dispiriting.

Sadly, her breathing difficulties do appear to be due to the encroachment of her cancer rather than a chest infection. The doctor, therefore, prescribed radiotherapy treatment which she had this week. It will be between four to six weeks before we know whether it will make a significant improvement.

Despite all of this, her morale seems high and, outwardly at least, unfazed by our trip. We shall see.

Fuer unsere Deutschen Freunde..........

2007-03-07T16:20:00.000Z

mal was auf Deutsch!

Gestern haben wir Garys 50. Geburtstag in Stil gefeiert. Garys Geschenk ist unsere Wanderung aber er hat natuerlich auch ein paar andere Sachen bekommen. Vielen Dank an meine Geschwister und Anhang die sich so viel Muehe gemacht haben.

Je naeher der Tag rueckt, desto animierter sprechen wir ueber unsere Reise und was dort passieren wird. Wir haben schon ein paar Leute die einen Teil des Weges mit uns laufen werden und freuen uns sehr darauf Zeit fuer lange Gespraeche zu haben.

So eine lange Strecke zu Fuss zu gehen ist fast unvorstellbar, vor drei Wochen sind wir von Deutschland nach London geflogen und haben die Strecke zwischen Grafenrheinfeld und unserem Haus kurz ausserhalb von London in 7 Stunden abgedeckt. Wir werden um die zwei Monate brauchen, die selbe Strecke zu laufen und Zeit wird ein anderes Mass annehmen. Ich bin ganz gespannt darauf ob es mir auf die Nerven geht das alles so langsam voran geht oder ob sich unsere Koerper darauf einstellen und wir einen anderen Blickwinkel in unser Leben bekommen. Auf jeden Fall werde ich es geniessen mehr zu sehen. Schilder, Plakate, Menschen, Natur ....... alles kann genauer angeschaut werden wenn man laeuft.

Hier ist unsere Route und wir moechten viele Menschen kennenlernen. Wir suchen nette Leute,Hotels und Herbergen die uns unterbringen koennen. Fuer jede kostenlose Uebernachtung die wir auf unserer Wanderung erhalten werden Gary und ich 50 Euro fuer unseren guten Zweck spenden und ihnen ein herzliches 'Danke Schoen' in unserem bis dahin sehr gut besuchten Blog schicken. Fuer den Anfang der Reise habe ich schon genaue Daten und Orte:

Wir suchen Uebernachtungen hier:

29.04 in der Naehe von Kuernach / Rimpar

30.04 in der Gegend von Helmstadt

01.05 in der Gegend von Wertheim

02.05 in der Gegend von Buergstadt

03.05 in der Gegend von Vielbrunn

04.05 in der Gegend von Oberostern

Danach wird es alles etwas weniger klar. Vielleicht koennen wir mehr Kilometer am Tag abdecken, vielleicht muessen wir manchmal langsamer machen - wir wissen also nicht so genau wann wir wo sein werden. Falls ihr Leute kennt die in der Naehe unserer Route wohnt waeren wir Euch dankbar wenn ihr Sie auf unser Blog aufmerksam macht. Vielleicht ist ja jemand dabei der Lust darauf hat uns kennenzulernen.

Andere Wege unseren guten Zweck 'Aerzte ohne Grenzen' zu unterstuetzen waere zum Beispiel wenn viele Leute uns einen Cent fuer jeden kilometer den wir laufen werden geben. Nur 12 Euro oder wer sich reicher fuehlt darf uns natuerlich auch 10 Cent fuer jeden Kilometer sponsern. Man muss nur auf den Knopf 'donate now' auf dieser Seite hier links druecken. Nimmt leider nur £ als Waehrung im Moment, vielleicht koennen wir daran noch was aendern aber ist ja nicht so schwierig einen Eurobetrag in Pfund umzurechnen.

Hinterlasst uns doch eine kleine Nachricht das ihr unseren Blog gesehen habt und was ihr von unserer Reise haltet. Wir freuen uns darauf!!

Only 8 weeks to go

2007-03-02T16:46:00.000Z

That IS a scary thought. We are both amazingly laid back in our preparations but something little is happening all the time. The route is done, we have got house sitters, we have a list of all the stuff we want to bring (and need to purchase). A couple of days ago I even found a 20 week training plan for people who want to complete a walking marathon............. spot the problem??

I just ignore the fact that we are planning to walk a half marathon every day for 60 days and hope the tips on how to avoid and later deal with the inevitable blisters are good. We will report back.

Here is Gary during one of his finely tuned workouts:

Gary and I have a ‘thing’ for stationary. We both LOVE nice stationary shops and my best present this Christmas was a beautiful ink pen and lots of ink in the most beautiful colours. Anyway – he thinks he found the walkers equivalent. A Northface shop in town! My intuition tells me that we will be spending lots of money there. Wellllllll it is his 50^th birthday on Tuesday next week…………. a little indulgence or ten are called for.

Mum

2007-02-28T10:47:00.000Z

My comments, in my last entry, saying that I had no fears about my mum's physical well-being, may have been premature.

She has just returned home, having spent the last three days in hospital. She was admitted after I became concerned that her breathing was more laboured than usual. I feared that it might get worse and her GP, who came out an emergency call, concurred. This was on top of the dryness of her scalp turning into something very nasty and leading to her having to stop taking the anti-cancer drug, at least for the time being.

Antibiotics seem to have improved things a little but the next few weeks will determine whether the breathing difficulty was due to a treatable infection or a permanent change in her condition. There is also, obviously, a concern that the cancer could start to spread further, now that she is no longer taking the drug. We are currently exploring additional care, to allow her to remain in her home, which is what she wants to do. Hopefully, this will be just until she returns to normal but we are all, including my mum, conscious that it could be longer term.

Right now, I am remaining optimistic and assuming that our journey will go ahead in May and June, hoping that she will either recover, or be sufficiently independent to enable us to go with a clear conscious. If the change in her situation is more permanent then we will be facing changes that will affect much more than our journey. A key check point will be a week on Friday when she is scheduled for her next appointment at the lung cancer clinic.

All of this prompted me, the night before last, to contemplate a future without her. I have done so before but, restlessly laying in bed, realised that I have always distracted myself with practical things. For the first time, I found myself imagining a future without someone who has loved me unconditionally for fifty years. It is almost exactly twenty-one years since my dad died. Before that, we had what I assume to be a typical son and mother relationship – or perhaps I should saw son and Jewish mother relationship. The difference between a pit-bull terrier and a Jewish mother, goes the old joke, is that the pit-bull eventually lets go. Since my dad died, as an only son and only really close family, I have gotten to know her very well. It is difficult, and scary, to imagine her not being there.

My biggest concern

2007-02-12T11:12:00.000Z

One of our challenges, both before and during our journey, will be managing my mum. She will be seventy-nine this year, lives on her own, and I am the only person really close to her. I visit once per week, staying overnight, and telephone every day. When I am away, I still telephone every day but it is usual for her to tell me that she has missed me when I return. I guess there must be something about knowing that loving support is only thirty minutes away.

Telling her that we will be away for two months is made more difficult, at the moment, because her morale is under attack from the side-effects of the drug she is taking to fight lung cancer. The beneficial effect of drug has been such that I no fears about her physical well-being while we are away and luckily her mind is still as sharp as a tack. I am, however, concerned whether I will, from a distance, be able to help her to maintain the positive frame of mind which she has had for so long but that has lapsed more frequently in recent times.

But maintaining her morale during the journey is actually a lesser concern that over the months preceding, as fear of what might happen is so often worse that what does. There is no question that she will, once she knows, be keen for us to do the journey. But she is, she will readily admit, a worrier, who has been known to keep herself awake at night fretting about: if's, but's and maybe's. I fear that she will cope less well with the anticipation of us being away for two months than she will when we are gone and we are, together, dealing with the reality.

To avoid the anticipation problem, we had resolved to delay telling her until much closer to the start of our journey. But as our planning has picked up steam and we are publicising our journey to our friends, it seems only fair to tell her sooner rather than later and, frankly, avoid treating her like a child. We are about to go away for week and plan to tell her when she returns.

As I said earlier, I know she will be very supportive of our endeavour but will obviously have mixed feelings. I know it will be tough for her but this journey is something that has become very important to me and, to be brutal, the timing with respect to my mum's health can only get worse rather than better.

Challenges

2007-02-08T10:19:00.000Z

Yes, we would like to raise a lot of money for Medecins Sans Frontiers because we think they are a really worthwhile charity. We would be thrilled if lots of people would donate a penny or cent for every kilometre we have walked or maybe 10p per kilometre if you are feeling flush!

Gary and I will donate 50 Euros every time we are given a free bed to stay overnight on our walk. You can help by having a look at our route. If you know anybody who lives close, perhaps you could contact them and put them in touch with us.

For an extra donation we invite you to be creative and set us challenges to complete on our walk - we will consider anything as long as Gary keeps his clothes on!! The larger the donation, the more we will consider.

Another way to raise money could be through a company who wants to promote their product across Europe. If you can think of any, let us know. We are open to having our clothes and rucksack merchandised, road test a new product or any other reasonable scheme somebody comes up with. There must be a marketing manager out there who is interested. Put them in touch with us please.

House sitters

2007-02-02T19:58:00.000Z

I am very happy to say that we now have secured house (and garden and fish) sitters for the period we are away. Jenny and Curtis come highly recommended and I really hope they will enjoy their time here.

Of course the length of our route has changed again - thankfully it went down. So at present we are talking round about 1200 km a little over 800 miles and you can have a look at it here . I am sure experienced walkers have a very organised and much more scientific approach to preparing for a long distance walk . But it is quite fun to make it up as we go along (an approach which probably suits me more than Gary!) it makes it more ours somehow.

Do you know what I am looking forward to most? To post the exact distance when we have completed the walk and are back home. That is how I am motivating myself as well as through the response we are getting from everybody we tell about our plans. It is really uplifting to have so much positiveness and support. Thank you guys you are going to keep us going on rainy days up steep hills.

I can't count!!

2007-01-18T11:29:00.000Z

After putting the route together I thought it wise to add up the miles. I was confident that I would not be out by much from my original estimate of 900 km (600 miles) which is the mileage I clocked up when driving from London to Schweinfurt and our walking route looks fairly straight.

How wrong could I be? Well about 50% underestimated. I am now estimating our walk to be 1377 km (860 miles) long. My 15 km average a day over 60 days is out of the window and it all looks a bit more of a challenge now. Somehow I could compute my original estimate, it did not seem too bad. I have not yet got my head around the new distance.

Our average day has just gone up to 25 km, that is five hours walking on flat terrain and about 8 hours through hilly (hey, we are not 21 any more!). I am gingerly starting to think about what I will need / am able to carry with me as bare essentials and am hoping that my idea of having some pre arranged check in points will make it easier. I will send what we need for every two weeks ahead. That includes some spare clothes, the maps we need for the next leg, medicine etc. All the used stuff will go into the parcel and send home. The rest can be purchased ‘en route’.

I am looking for some kind people around Ruedesheim and Aachen to be our check points in Germany, Gent (Ghent) in Belgium and Dover in the UK. This brings me to another point – we will set ourselves a yet to be determined daily budget which has to cover all our expenses. Every penny we do not spend we will donate to our charity. So we are looking for more kind souls who live on our path to put us up for the night – it will be their way of donating to our charity just by letting us have a bed.

My heart through my navel

2007-01-14T20:56:00.000Z

Over the last few months, I came to seriously doubt whether our journey would be possible. In September, I alluded to the health problems that had arisen for each of us. I am pleased to report that Doris's problem was resolved. Either it wasn't frozen shoulder after all, or Doris came up with a miracle cure, aided by a TENS unit and an excess of determination.

Unfortunately, mine turned out to be more serious and longer lasting. After years of Cardiophobia, and a health regime designed to forestall the onset of heart problems, it turned out that the cause of my problems is s a heart arrhythmia. As this blog was intended to be about my pilgrimage to Bavaria, rather than a journey through my health, I decided not to write until I knew whether I would be able to undertake the journey.

I know now that although my arthymia will make the journey more challenging, there is every reason to go ahead. I have now joined the ranks of those who have to remember to take regular medication and can refer grandly to “my Cardiologist”. And, my Cardiologist sees no reason why I should not attempt to walk 600 miles, so there you have it – the pilgrimage is on and we intend to start in May 2007. In the meantime, I have been turning down freelance work and playing poker to pay the mortgage but more of that, perhaps, another time.

On the journey front, we need to firm up on our route. A key aspect of the pilgrimage is to meet people along the way. I want, therefore, to get cracking and publicise our chosen route and this blog. One reason for this is because Doris has always wanted to use the journey as a way of raising money for a charity by getting people to sponsor us. This has lead me to wonder whether we can combine the two. Perhaps if we select a charity, they might publicise our journey to their supporters and we can meet some of them along the way. I am also considering writing to Satish Kumar, to see whether he might publicise our journey to readers of Resurgence, the magazine that he edits. But to do any of that, we need to decide on a route.

Which brings me to Doris's decision that she would prefer not to walk to Bavaria at all! She wants to do it the other way around and walk from Bavaria. She would also prefer to walk to our home in Kent which, I have to admit, would be considerably more scenic than two days walking through the mostly urban landscape along the Thames Estuary. This is very tempting, as we would also be able to take in much of the historic pilgrim's way – albeit backwards. She also tells me that, rather than our currently planned route through Belgium, a route through France might be more uplifting!

She has left the decision to me but the good news is that I am now focusing on that question, rather than navel gazing on my heart, so to speak.

Every journey starts with a single step!

2006-11-02T13:48:00.000Z

We are just not sure where exactly that first step is going to take place. The orginal idea was to walk from birth place to birth place - London to Schweinfurt. That would mean starting in Cable Street in East London and walking nearly two days out of London which is not the most attractive thought. Where we live here in Kent, we are just a hop and a skip away from the North Downs Way which leads us all the way to Dover. Lovely country side from the word go.

I also now have a rough idea of our route when we are on 'Le Continent'

5 A-Z "Heuvels en rivieren"
De Panne - Menen - Ronse - Ronse - Geraardsbergen – Aalst

128-O Vlaanderenroute / Oost
Aalst - Leuven - Zoutleeuw - Tongeren - Maastricht - Aachen (293km)

And last but not least we will join the E8 Long distance path
Aachen – Bonn – Koblenz – Oberwesel – Donnersberg – Worms (option: Speyer – Heidelberg) – Wertheim – Tauberbischofsheim

towards the end of this part of the route we will drop off the E8 and are on the home straight.

I am refusing to think of the pain that we will have to put ourselves through to walk 900 km in two months. I am just thinking about how we will feel when we have achieved it.

Making plans

2006-09-16T12:14:00.000+01:00

Where Gary wants to get away from reminiscing and talk about the present – I am at the other end. I always think about the future, all those possibilities out there and come up with a string of ideas the could keep many an entrepreneur busy for years.

Of course I am also thinking in that way about our journey and its possibilities and options. I am already planning a route and am buying maps on eBay. Looking at a world map, London and Grafenrheinfeld (our destination in Germany) are nearly on the same height (does that makes sense geographically?)

I would like Gary to decide on a charity we can raise money for. Our friends, family and benefactors can set us challenges during trip and they will pay up if we achieve or people can just plain pay us anything between a penny or a pound per mile we have walked.

Perhaps we should get some sponsors to add to the money raised?? I am not fussy about logos on my back if that means dosh for a cause we are passionate about.

We have already decided that we are going to be technologically enabled pilgrims. We both love gadgets, so we are talking satellite navigation system, mobile phone, internet access, Ipods and camera with the least amount of chargers possible.

We will not be thwarted

2006-09-14T14:44:00.000+01:00

We haven’t set a date for our journey but Doris suggested that next May might a good time of year – not too hot and not too cold. It is about 600 miles, so if we stay fit and average of 20 miles each day, it will take us about 30 days. Unfortunately, staying fit currently seems like a bigger challenge than we might have thought, with problems coming in areas we did not expect.

Since the late Summer Bank Holiday, I have felt generally tired and have had occasional spells of light-headedness. I will not bore you with the description but suffice to say that one or two were sustained and, to me, vary scary. The doctor took some blood tests but could find nothing wrong. His sage advice was that “it will pass”.

Unfortunately, yesterday afternoon, on the same day I got my blood test results, I had another brief spell of light-headedness. That made me doubt the morning’s hope that I am recovering and lead me to ponder whether there is something, less obvious, at play. I am trying to put that to the back of my mind, however, because, in my book, less obvious equals scarier.

Doris has been suffering in a different way. After a few days of discomfort, a pain in her shoulder became agony. Doris is very stoical when it comes to illness and pain, so to hear her frequently crying out in pain meant that it had to be very bad. A visit to a physiotherapist didn’t help and with no imminently available GP appointment, she succumbed to my urging and went to “Accident and Emergency” at the local hospital.

They diagnosed frozen shoulder, a debilitating condition that can, apparently take as much as thirty months to pass! (http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=168)

Typically, Doris is refusing to be beaten and exploring ways of dealing with it. Also, I guess, we are both hoping that the initial diagnosis, in a hectic A&E department, turns out to be wrong and it is something less severe. If not, there is a specialist clinic in London that has pioneered a treatment that, while it doesn’t promise to work miracles, does claim that their treatment works within weeks rather than months.

So hopefully we will both be fit enough to do our journey, come May, and I can get on with worrying about more mundane matters such as why my Achilles tendons feel so sore every morning and how they will fair on a 600 mile walk.

The challenge of having generous thoughts

2006-09-12T14:12:00.000+01:00

Having ended my previous entry with a generous spirit, I have been meaning to post for while, to own up to the fact that I was not always able to follow through on my generous intention.This has taught me a couple of things.

First, and practically, blogging may work best when it is contemporaneous rather than reflective. This may be the value of the medium: the ability to capture emotions as they happen, in relatively small sized bites. So things that I thought were interesting at the time look less so at this distance. Of course, it could be simply be that distance brings perspective and the thoughts were not all that interesting in the first place. Nevertheless, I will try to be more contemporary with future entries. If they turn out to be drivel, I can always delete them.

The second thing that I learned was that keeping ungenerous thoughts at bay is easier in theory than in practice. This is something that troubles me. It doesn’t trouble me in that it keeps me awake at night but I am a bit frustrated by it. I am not very proud of the fact that I can be quick to criticise and judge people.

Most of the time, I restrain myself from saying something ungenerous. Most of the time. But now and again, I hear the words just after they have left my lips, regretting it instantly. So, since the blog is devoted to my nascent spirituality, a big question for me here is: how do I stop thinking ungenerous thoughts? Because I would like to. Honest!

But before you go getting, the wrong idea, the visit from emissaries was fine and, for the most part, enjoyable. It was just that, at times, I wished there was a volume control. I think I behaved generously – most of the time.

Actually, we ended up with even more house guests, to add to the emissaries. My uncle died after a long illness and my cousin came down from Scotland for his funeral. We put up her eleven year old son or a few days, while my cousin sorted things out. She then, I am delighted to say, came to stay for a few days after the funeral. It was great to see her, despite the sad circumstances. She is a very special person and I love her dearly. She and her son only overlapped with our emissaries for a few days but then my Mum came to stay for the weekend, overlapping with my cousin and her son.

Then, on the Monday, everyone was gone. Everyone except Doris, of course - my wonderful much-loved and adored free spirit. How did I ever manage to get her to marry me? I am so very lucky.

Another voice

2006-08-17T10:09:00.000+01:00

I finally managed to join this blog!!
We were in Germany when Gary started speaking about his pilgrimage for the first time and it immediately caught my imagination. I have been attracted to the idea of covering very long distances by foot for some time and joined the Long Distance Walking Association beginning of the year. So far it has only been an attractive idea. Our combined experience of longer walks consists of a walking holiday in Spain and a couple of ad-hoc walks in the local area.
If we want to be successful we need to put some training in as the distance we want to cover in a month is: 565 miles / 910 km (YIKES!!!!!)

My training plan is to cover the distance by Christmas this year on my treadmill and join some organised long distance walks from the end of the year onwards.

..........................900km to go

Doris

Emissaries

2006-08-15T15:23:00.000+01:00

I mentioned that there were two things that occurred in the last two days. The second of these was the imminent arrival of Doris’s sister, husband and their too small children, to stay with us for ten days.

They are really lovely people who are always generous with their time and friendship when we visit them. Our house is, however, relatively small and, not having children, we are used to having it to ourselves. I think I find these visits a bit more of a strain than Doris, as I am an only child, whereas Doris has two sisters and two brothers.

The children are delightful but the fact is that I am not used to being around children – except when I was one! I just don’t know how to engage and participate in the games. I am not embarrassed or stuffy about it but, for me, it is a bit like looking at a car engine that isn’t working. I would like it to work but simply don’t know what to do to make it happen. I have tried, with a little success, but it is tough, especially as my German is lousy. Doris is, of course, brilliant with them.

So although I am genuinely happy to see them, but as their visit comes hard on the heels of four-day visit to Germany, I have to be honest and say that I would have preferred some time to ourselves. Ten days feels like a long time. And then this morning, I managed to reframe it and am greatly looking forward to their stay with us.

Before I go on, let me say that despite talking about spirituality in my first post, I am not a very touchy-feeling person. My Myers Briggs personality type profile (http://keirsey.com/personality/nt.html) describes me as “a Rational”. I am one of those myopic people who value truth above feelings. It is not a trait I admire in myself or others. Clearly, people are more important that an ephemeral notion of truth which, in any event, is in the eye of the beholder anyway.

Self-knowledge is great thing and I have worked hard to compensate. I still find myself, however, in situations saying, “no that is wrong” or more usually, “that film/book/programme is rubbish” without thinking about the effect of my words on the person I am speaking to – even if they are the most important person in my nlife. In short, I can seem to be a real non-caring areshole.

Disclaimer out of the way, I can now recount my reframing. What, I asked myself, if I regarded the visitors as emissaries from the place that is the destination of my pilgrimage? Should I not put aside my selfish discomfort to the welcome these….er Kings of the East? Should I not, getting biblical, wash their feet? With apologies to Satish, that one will have to be metaphorical for me.

Like a lot of reframing - mine at least – it sounded, at first, a bit ridiculous. But playing with the idea and pretending that it were true did change my attitude. What a strange thing is the human brain that it falls so easily for such trickery. But to my delight, it worked! I am now genuinely sorry that I will be away tomorrow night and will restrict my trip away next week to one rather than the usual two nights, so that I don’t miss out on seeing them.

How nice it is to have visitors – we should do it more often!

Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip

2006-08-15T09:46:00.000+01:00

I am surprised to find myself back here already. We have not yet fixed a date for our journey but it is likely to be in the Spring of 2007, after my birthday in March, when the weather in Europe is likely to be kinder to our journey.

It is, therefore, very early to be starting this blog. I guess that it has something to do with making a public commitment to do the journey, together with the gift of some unexpected free time. So, having started, I expected that there would be some very long gaps between posts. I still think that this is still likely to be the case, unless I cannot restrain myself from commenting on the dire state of world affairs. Two things, however, occurred in the last two days, relating to our journey, about which I feel compelled to post.

Work is a little quiet at the moment because of holidays, sickness and a head butt outside a pub. This gave me the time yesterday to begin the blog. It also allowed me to leave work a little earlier than is my usual habit. In the spirit of our journey, I decided to walk to London Bridge station, rather than get a tube part of the way, as I usually do.

Half way there, I called Doris on my mobile to tell her that I would be home early. As I made to cross the road, gleefully leaving a message on our voicemail saying that I would be home early and I had started training, my ankle turned as I stepped off of the curb and my other calf muscle snapped like an overstretched elastic band. My two beat yelps and subsequent anguish were caught in full colour. I hobbled the rest of the to London Bridge and Doris kindly collected me at our local station.

Never can there have been a less auspicious start to a journey not even yet started.

PS I should have mentioned before that this is a joint blog of me and Doris

Rational cynic gets spiritual - shock horror!

2006-08-14T16:57:00.000+01:00

It started in Germany and it will end in Germany. Maybe.

Together with my wife, I am going to walk from my birthplace, in the East End of London, to her birthplace in the north west of Bavaria. It will be my pilgrimage.

Now I know that this may not sound like a very religious pilgrimage but I am a secular kind of guy and it will be a spiritual journey for reasons I hope to explain. But first, let me tell you how it came about.

Earlier this year, my wife, who will henceforth be referred to as Doris, was listening to the radio while doing creative things in her studio. As I wandered through, I was stopped in my tracks by a mellifluous voice. It turned out to be Satish Kumar (http://www.resurgence.org/satish/index.htm).

Something about what he said made me realise that spirituality need not be equated with religion, or new age fads, as I had always done. And it made me realise that I had never given any real attention to the spiritual aspect of my life. This was quite a revelation to a secular person like me, raised at the altar of science and fact. One who always skipped the spirituality section of those life planning sessions that one is forced to endure on “executive” training programmes.

Although I only caught the end of the interview with Satish, there was enough to make me to want know more. So I bought his autobiography, No Destination, which I am in the process of reading. It is a beautiful book by a remarkable man. It is the sort of book that I enjoy reading now and again to get an injection of, dare I say, spiritual beauty.

Last week, visiting Doris’s family in Germany, I was reading the book. Satish explained that in Indian culture, it was a tradition to complete a pilgrimage before the end, I think, of one’s fiftieth year. He went on to describe his own pilgrimage, at that age, from Devon to Iona, visiting the holy places of Britain - an Indian former Jain monk on a spiritual journey around other people’s religious sites!

What really struck me about Satish’s description of that journey was that the much spirituality came not from the religious sites, often no more than museums, but from the people he met and the nature around him. (At this point, I have to hurriedly add that this is my own interpretation of what he wrote, filtered through my own lense. If I have misrepresented him, I offer him my profound apologies.)

Reading this, with my fiftieth birthday approaching next March, my subconscious began to contemplate the idea of a pilgrimage. By the time that I told Doris about it, I knew that it was something I wanted to do. Doris being Doris, the most open-minded free spirit I have ever met, was completely supportive. The only question was where to? And indeed, where from?

To cut a long story short, as my mum would say, but never does, we decided to walk from where I was born to where Doris was born – some six hundred miles. No cars, no buses, no planes – just a boat across the channel.

So yes, it may be a relatively secular pilgrimage but I know it will be good for my spirit. And it is after all, a journey to the birthplace of my Goddess.