I Would Walk 1000 Miles

One thousand flipping miles. Ask my feet. Just within the city limits of Utrecht this afternoon on a moderately boring stretch of the N237, my pedometer clicked over to show three miles. Added to the 997 other it had counted its way through, this hits the magic four-digit number. I won’t stop walking, though. With just Amsterdam, Ijmuiden and Newcastle to go (roughly 45 miles altogether) it’d be daft to stop now. And besides, I want to make sure I’ve definitely done the thousand, taking into account miscalculations, inaccuracies and the like. In the meantime, I’m settled in at Andrea’s with a cute bunny, a mad cat and two friendly flatmates. Tomorrow I get to see Esther again for the first time in many months. And for the record, in case nobody else has reached this conclusion yet: I ROCK!!! (See the magic moment in all it’s YouTubey goodness here)

I’m currently sat using Margreeth’s laptop to catch up on email and stuff, when I got a message from Celeste at Idealist.org. The Podcast I recorded with her while I was stopped in Geneva has just gone online. If you can bear to listen to me waffle on about Blue Dragon again then you can listen to it here.

Thanks time again! Tamara in Arnhem, Dagmar and her girlfriend Arianne in Nijmegen, Margreeth in Zeist - thank you all for accommodation, food and company. Celeste - thank you for the publicity!

Details of what I’ve seen and done over the last couple of days will be up on the Tour Blog very shortly.

I’ve just uploaded about eight new videos to YouTube. The link to all my videos is permanently down the sidebar there –> as I can’t be bothered with their rubbish interface for the Channels and so forth.

To save you looking to the side, just this once - there all here.

That question comes up a lot when I tell people that I walk for upwards of 8 hours each day. The other question is “what is the biggest problem you have” or “what is the best / worst thing to happen”. Graham Mack never seems to tire of asking me these questions when he calls me each week for the breakfast show on TFM so I’ll try to answer them here for those who don’t live in the broadcast area.

The thinking thing varies. A lot of the time I’m thinking about blog posts, and how I can relay to you lot on here and on the tour blog how I’m doing and what it’s all like. Sometimes I’m thinking how much further I can walk in the damn rain until I reach shelter of have to unpack a waterproof. I confess that a lot of the time I do still think about “the ex” and how it all fell apart and what minuscule fraction of a percentage chance I have of getting back with her and if there is genuinely a number that close to zero as to actually exist.

I think about what I’m looking at, how far I have to go and how much my shoulders hurt. My feet don’t hurt too much any more - thanks to all who keep asking! I think about the kids in Vietnam. I know this sounds “obvious” or maybe a little soppy but they really do keep me going. That’s what the walk’s about and I do spend a few minutes here and there remembering the little blighters making a complete fool of me at football. And beating me at Jenga. And being cheeky. And tickling me.

Hey, why am I helping them again?
Right now I’m so close to my goal that I have that annoying, aching, “so far but not quite” feeling. One entire hemisphere of my brain seems to be having the same effect of a busload of 7-year-olds all screaming “are we there yet!?” behind a driver who’s taken them from Bognor Regis to Bratislava. I am so near, but still have just a little bit too far to go to feel complete relief yet. It’s almost a physical pull in the chest. Imagine that feeling you get around 3pm on a Friday afternoon when you have the best weekend in the world lined up but you can’t leave till 5:30. Now magnify.

I have also tried counting steps and comparing them to my pedometer to see if 1 mile on there really matches 1.6km on the road, but my stride and its reckoning are out. Or I lose count. But it does while away the time. If my mind wanders in unexpected directions I dig out my notebook and jot some things down. These random brain dumps often make their way into blog postings somewhere.

What are my problems? One is the above - thinking about Louise far too often. Well, you asked. Another is how sick I’m getting of camping. From now on it is reserved purely for festivals! I may relax this rule should I ever get or have to look after kids. That could be fun. But I’ll have an inflatable mattress if I ever camp again. I’m sure I’ve permanently bruised my hip bone. My feet are as fine as can be expected after the agony and disfigurement around Turin. They ache a bit and I sometimes get blisters (I think the pair of socks I wear actually makes a difference) but nothing serious. My shoulders also aren’t as bad as they were, but are still the most frequent excuse for me to stop for a break.

As for the “best / worst” things… Tough. The worst was the pain when I got to Turin, or perhaps losing a load of pictures and video when my camera’s memory card fritzed. The best was probably getting to the top of the mountain pass in the Gran Paradiso two hours behind schedule and not dying. Or meeting and being hosted by such amazing people. None of them knew me from that guy in chapter one of the Bible. You know, the one with the apple fetish. Yet every one opened their doors, fold-down sofas and larders to the mad Englishman with the smelly feet.

If you’ve yet to host me and I’m heading your way, please ignore the bit about smelly feet.

I hope that answers some of your questions. Like I said, those are the most common ones. If you have any more, click on the comments button and ask, ask, ask!

This is the most common question at the moment. How far have I walked? Well, I spent some time this evening going over this. I’ve checked my readings from the pedometer and compared them against Google Maps as closely as I can follow the route I walked. Allowing for differences, averages, skipped corners, map inaccuracies, pedometer inaccuracies and so forth… 962.29 miles. This means I should pass the 1000 mile mark by the time I reach Utrecht!

Here we go. The last country. One more horizontal trek and I hit the big wet space surrounding old Blighty. I can almost taste the salty air! Or maybe that’s the remains of the KFC I scoffed…

Gelsenkirchen was my scheduled stop here, but I couldn’t get accommodation in this actual borough. Instead I walked through to Gladbeck. A huge thank you to Antjé, Jana and Niko for their hospitality here. These folk aren’t even couchsurfers - they only knew to expect me as Manfred from Röetgen called them and told them I was a friend stuck for somewhere to stay in the area. I had to explain about my walk (that got some open mouths and slack jaws) and about the whole couchsurfing thing. They thought I’d met him in England when he was working there a couple of years ago!

Despite all this, I was treated like one of the family. Folks - thank you so much.

I was hoping to get a shot of me with a “twinned with Newcastle” sign on the way into Gelsenkirchen but I suppose they can’t have them on every road. Annoyingly I passed about three on the way into Gladbeck, but I’m not too fussed about a sign that says “twinned with Enfield”.

While in the area I did get to see the amazing Veltins Arena, home to FCShalke04. The guided tour was all in German, but a beautiful young local (Kathleen) kindly translated everything for me so I didn’t miss out. unfortunately getting a ticket for the game wasn’t a possibility as the few remaining seats were far too expensive. I settled for seeing the game in a bar with some of the locals. Shalke won 3-0 so it was a good day for everyone!

Again, I was irked by the lack of signs as I wanted a “Welcome to Holland” one for my collection (of photos - I’m not carrying road signs home) but at length I did enter the Netherlands and my first city stop within the country of Arnhem. There I was met by Tamara who would be my host for a couple of nights while I did the tourist thing. First stop was the local KFC where I indulged in a Mexican Wrap. This is a foodstuff, not Latino gangsta music. But I kind of like that idea. I feel a novelty number one hit coming on…

I spent the rest of the evening fixing her PC so no evil nasties (like Norton Internet Security *spit*) remained on it.

Apologies for the delays and missing posts. As you can see, things look different here and that’s a major reason for the slackness. I didn’t want to add new posts in mid-conversion to a new system. Hence when I did get the time to get on a PC, I was working on this and answering all your emails!

Oh, and if you’ve come here because your feed is broken that’s due to the way Wordpress works. And because of how I have it configured (i.e. all by the people who host my webspace) I can’t change that. Hence I couldn’t “replace” or swap the feeds. Please re-subscribe to the new one. Sorry - I know how to fix it, I just can’t with the permissions I have.

So where was I? Ah, yes. Liege. A lovely old city with some of the best hosts yet. Thank you tremendously Sonia, Jacqueline, Clara and Abo as well as the other people I met in passing. I had a great time and I very much hope to come back soon.

After that I passed through Roetgen and stayed with Manfred and his lovely family. I was their first surfer and can’t recommend them highly enough. His wife cooks a cracking curry, the kids are a shining example and their dog is just lovely. Manfred even bought the beers as Germany beat Romania in a friendly! In addition he rang some relatives in Gelsenkirchen and told them when to expect me, thus solving my accommodation problems there as well. What a guy!

Roetgen is right on the Belgian / German border but there are absolutely no “Welcome To…” signs which is a shame as I really wanted a picture with one. The area round there is beautiful, though, if you like forests. A very pleasant walk.

From there across the hills and downs to Bonn where I was supposed to stay with Elisa, but ended up crashing with Christoph as my “welcome to Bonn” night on went on rather longer than anticipated! I met a great group of people, partly Couchsurfers / partly visiting American students. The beer was good, but served in glasses that are too small for an Englishman, and I got to meet up with some of then again in Cologne a couple of nights later.

There I stayed with Ira who gave me the keys and didn’t mind if I got back stupidly late. Which is good as I returned from partying at 6am… Also in Cologne I went to a very posh spa / sauna place, the Claudius Therme. Ulf was a great host there as he goes regularly and he showed Heydi and I around everything. We got special discount overnight tickets and made the most of several different traditional saunas, the bathing areas and - as a treat from Ulf - were covered head to toe in quality chocolate before sweating it all off! Bizarre, but it really does make your skin feel good afterwards. And no, no photos - sorry!

From Cologne up the side of the Rhine to Dusseldorf where I spent a couple of nights with Chris ( and ended stage 6). Another great host who first drove me then walked me around parts of the city. Then tried to poison me with chili schnapps in a very old-fashioned boozer. I even got to catch most of the Newcastle match on the Monday night. Of course, we lost. Grr.

And finally up to Essen where I’m sat writing this on one of Yorn’s many spare PCs. I can’t upload any YouTube videos as there’s no editing software on here which is a shame as I have a couple to post. I guess you’ll all just have to wait! I have around 7-8 more hosts to visit as I make my way to Amsterdam, so I could be in luck with one of them.

So there you go. Up to date. Tomorrow I make my way to Gelsenkirchen where I will stay with Manfred’s relatives. I hope to visit the football stadium there and a couchsurfer has agreed to meet me to watch the match in a bar. All the tickets are gone unless I fancy paying eBay prices! Now I’m off to update the Tour Blog with some more details and hopefully a handful of pictures.

Luxembourg - TICK. Belgium - TICK. Next stop, Germany.

I don’t have too much time online so I’ll have to keep it brief, but thanks as ever go to all the folk on Couchsurfing who I’ve met and stayed with. Max, Sonia, Jacqueline and Clara in the last few days alone!

Over the next couple of weeks, I have a host in every major city I’m passing through as well as a couple of smaller towns. Gelsenkirchen is the only one where I’m struggling.

Luxembourg was very pretty (around 40% forest, I believe) and fairly flat aside from some uphill roads. Compared to the alps, these were pretty easy! Also, it’s not a bad country to walk through as most of the minor roads - best for walking along - run parallel to or meander around the more major ones. This makes navigation pretty easy when you’re walking without a map like *ahem* me.

Belgium is as nice as ever though the area around Liege seems to have a different “feel” to that near Brussels and Mons. Maybe it’s the weather or something. I’m looking forward to Germany, though I might pick up a small phrasebook before I get there as I simply don’t know the language. I’m glad to say I’ve gotten by with my limited French pretty well through the last three countries but I don’t think it’ll serve me well in Deutchland!

There should be another snippet from me on TFM in northern England tomorrow (5th) sometime on the Graham Mack Breakfast Show.