I can't count!!

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.