I Would Walk 1000 Miles

Despite the rain deciding to belt down late in the afternoon, I made it to Vesoul relatively unscathed. Again, my thanks to Jean-Etienne for hosting me in Besançon and to Jérémie for joining us for dinner. Great guys, and hopefully I’ll see them both sometime as I do need to go back and visit the citadel.

I also got a mail today from another nutter, this one a girl from the US who’s cycling 600km round the south of France, raising money and awareness for Darfur. Another worthwhile cause, and not least because my good friend Hans has recently accepted a job over there and ships out at the end of September… Robyn’s page is at www.cyclingfordarfur.com. Pop over and give her some support. And money!

Another hard day’s walking got me to Besançon where I am being hosted by Jean-Etienne. After today’s break, I will walk to Vesoul and another couch courtesy of Philippe. It’s likely I’ll then be camping for two nights before reaching Nancy.

I chose a good day to stop. I was intending on staying here and then heading off this morning, but I didn’t wake up until almost 11am… Very unlike me, but if I was tired, then it was a worthwhile rest. Instead, I walked into town - and it’s a lovely old town - to do some sight-seeing and to meet Jèrèmie (another couchsurfer) for lunch. Then the clouds came over, thunder and lightning started up and rain deluged down. It would have been thoroughly unpleasant to be walking in that! The downside is that I did little touristing, especially not bothering to go up to the citadel as I only wanted to see the view from there. With the weather today there was no view!

So tonight we will meet up for dinner, I will have an early night and then off in the morning. It’s a long hike but I should make it there by dinner.

In other news, I had a quick call from Graham Mack at TFM this morning, so tomorrow should see a brief interview on his breakfast show. Also, a huge “thank you” to Jean-Etienne for these 2 nights and to Florent for putting up with me / putting me up in Champagnole.

There are full details of the journey including all the touristy stuff on the travel blog, but I’m posting this from Champagnole where I’ve got myself a couch for the night. There are a hot of videos available, but as YouTube’s getting annoying while they bed in the channel players, here’s a link to the page with all my videos on. Just find the ones you’ve not seen yet! Or better yet, subscribe so I don’t have to keep telling you! The next major stop will be Besançon where I have another couch and a few people waiting for me. Sponsor news is good. First of all, I’ve fixed a bug (by "fix" I mean "bodged") on the Donations page that stopped you seeing the bottom of the information on certain browsers. The same bug affected the Donations Made page. So you now have no excuse not to send your cash in and tell your friends to do the same! Please do contact me when you donate so I can keep track of how much I’m raising. A thanks in advance out to Helen who’s crafted a special pot with the BDCF logo on which she’s using to collect donations at work. Her hubby-to-be is also grabbing minimum donations of a fiver from his work colleagues. Thank you both!

Tomorrow I shall take my leave of my kind host, Daisy, wave bye-bye to the menagerie (9 dogs! I ask you…) and work my way back into France and up into Nancy, Metz and then Luxembourg. I hope to make it to Luxembourg City by this time next week. My initial plan for Stage 3 quotes 15 days to get to Metz, but I think I can knock that in half with some hard plodding.

I’ve also uploaded some new videos to YouTube, including one of the ones I couldn’t get to work before (Day 2 / Vid 2). Please note that some of the videos are cut short or slightly garbled as a result of the damaged memory card. Hopefully this won’t happen again and the most recent videos, more for the Tour Blog are fine.

Graham Mac from TFM also called again this morning and there will be more from me on the show tomorrow (Thursday 23rd) if you’re in a position to listen to it.

So… more as and when I can manage it!

I couldn’t make it up. As of right now, the donations received and pledged stand at £666 plus $445 plus 1000 Slovakian Crowns. In addition I’ve been informed that a missive I sent to Tharg the Mighty, editor of the Galaxy’s Greatest comic, 2000AD, has made Letter of the Week. I think one of the donations I received today is as a result of that, which is a great start. UPDATE: A nice person on the 2000AD mailing list scanned the letter in. You can see it here. The 42 is kind of spurious. I need to calculate how many miles I’ve done so far as it won’t be quite the total expected by now, though I hope to find it in excess of 200 miles. For safety reasons (horrendous roads, incoming bad weather), I accepted a lift over the Pass de Grand Saint Bernard between Italy and Switzerland all the way to Montreux. In a bid to increase the miles in compensation, I walked along the north shore of Lake Geneva / Lake Léman, crossed on a boat as I neared Geneva itself and walked some more on the south side. I’m fairly sure there’ll still be a shortfall, but I’ll calculate this and add some more miles elsewhere accordingly. I ain’t getting on that ferry in Holland until I have at least 993 miles under my belt! The videos from my camera seem to be kaput… I have rescued two very short none-walk-related ones and nothing else. The photos, in the main, seem to be OK but it will take me a while to go through and weed out the corrupt ones. Does anyone know of a utility for repairing partially corrupt AVI files?

Just so you know where I’ve got to, I arrived in Geneva / Genéve earlier on. Posts will be updated as soon as I have rescued all 2000 or so pictures and videos off my damaged XD media card. Thank you Adam for the recovery program!

EDIT: Most of the photos seem to be recovered, though I can’t figure out how the Windows thumbnails look fine even for the ones which are corrupt full size. However, none of the videos have survived. I cannot play them in Windows, and if I upload them to YouTube, I get the first few seconds of each before they end prematurely.

Unless someone out there knows a utility that can load and repair dodgy AVI files?

I should be leaving Turin shortly. In the meantime, here is a link to all the 1000-Mile videos so far (with the exception of two which YouTube won’t encode for some reason).

Enjoy and I’ll try to get more on when I can.

Not joining me, another walked on another walk. Gosia mentioned this in the comments and I thought I’d give it a plug. A grandmother from Canberra is going to walk circuits around the Lennox Gardens over 42 days to reach a total of 1000 miles. Her cause is a charity aimed at helping the study of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, another hugely worthwhile cause.

If you’re in Oz, then perhaps pop by and give her some support and some cash! You can also donate via her website: www.1000milewalk.org.au.

Meanwhile, I’m resting my feet at Alessandro’s, not to far away from Giuliana’s for another night, perhaps two. Giuli is off to the beach with her folks from this evening and I hope their weather improves as it’s currently chucking it down. I’ll also be looking into some routes to take over the next stage of the walk as I think the one I’d banked on may be impassable.

Another quick thanks to the folks back home as well. People, your comments do help and your encouragement makes a hell of a difference. Especially to my dad for the email last night - thanks, Pop.

Finally, please recheck the older posts when you get a chance later today or tomorrow. Hopefully, I can use Alessandro’s setup here to upload some videos to YouTube…

There’s not a lot to say about the walk today, mainly as the road I followed seemed to divert around all the towns instead of through them. Also, my feet hurt more than I can describe. I hit my mileage target and - I will be honest - caught a bus into the centre of Turin. I had to walk another three miles from there to get to Giuliana’s place where I was made at home before she left to visit some friends. Now, I know what a bidet is actually for but I used it to douse my feet in cold water. Even with my boots off, they are agony. Feet up, feet down, legs crossed, uncrossed… doesn’t matter. Huge amounts of pain. On the upside I have accommodation for at least two nights in Turin should I require it - this has been sorted. On the downside, I don’t know if that will be long enough for my feet to heel up. And when they do, how long they’ll last before breaking down again. I have three blisters on my left foot and two on my right, and the arches seem to have vanished. I swear my left is swollen as well. I’ll confess that morale is very low right now. The walking is taking a physical toll and being by myself for so many miles is really messing with my head, mainly from the boredom. Any offers to join me to give me some company would be more welcome than I can put into words. So I’m a day ahead of target, but by the time I leave Turin I will be at least one day behind due to my feet.

I left Giuliana’s parents’ at 7:30am and began walking north towards Turin (or Torino as it’s known here). I was aiming to do two days’ walking in one day - a total in excess of thirty miles. Halfway, I switched from sandals back to boots as I developed a nasty blister on my left foot, but the change in footwear seemed to sort it. As I proceeded from town to town along the SR20 road, I discovered that most of the towns in this part of Italy don’t have free water fountains! Or toilets, come to that. I also discovered that once you have a blister on the sole of your foot, it’ll just keep growing if you keep walking. I reached a pleasant town called Racconigi around 6:30pm and talked to a lady in a supermarket who’d been taught English in 1985 at school. She didn’t do too badly talking to me. I’d put her English at least on a par with my French. Outside the shop, I found a quiet spot and burst the huge blister on my foot - much better. I know, I know, but I simply couldn’t walk any further with it full. I made it to Carmagnola around 8:30pm this was originally the target for day seven so I was understandably pleased. Until it seemed everywhere was closed. Eventually I found Speedy Pizza from where I had a rather delicious margherita. After a 45-minute rest there, I had to find somewhere to camp as darkness was falling. Of course, now I discovered that the entire town centre was open… Eventually, I found a spot just off the main road behind a billboard. The grass was lovely, soft and green. It was just out of sight of everything. Ideal. I didn’t even bother with the tent, just unrolled my sleeping back and crawled in, using my long-sleeved top as a pillow. I was asleep surprisingly quickly. Then I found out why the grass was so green and lush. When the two water sprinklers came on and deluged me. Bugger. I raced around and gathered my stuff before it got too wet and staggered off looking for somewhere else to sleep. Finally, shortly after 1:30, I found a shelter near some houses which looked like a market stall with nothing in it. I threw down my sleeping mats and collapsed on them. The roof came in handy when it rained at 5am.