I Would Walk 1000 Miles

Well, I assume it’s the final lot. BBC Radio Newcastle gave me about 3 mins on their drivetime show yesterday, but the Chronicle went further than I could have hoped and gave me the entire of page 3! A shame they forgot to put a link in to the blog or Blue Dragon’s website… A slightly abridged online version of the article has a nice big picture of me which I pinched (hope that’s OK, folks!). To make up for that small act of larceny, if you want to buy copies of that photo (or any of the others they have available), pop to the icNewcastle Photo Order page and do a search for "Purdie". I have a feeling my mum will end up with the whole set. On canvas. Signed. The mention on NUFC.com has generated at least one donation that I’m aware of, and an email conversation with someone I used to go to school with. All good stuff. I doubt there’ll be more publicity unless someone else wants to give another organisation a kick. I’m off up to Perth to steal *cough* borrow my mum’s car then off down to the Big Smoke next week. I’ll post all my "thanks" stuff shortly, and hopefully have the final steps of the walk on YouTube tomorrow.

Roughly 1030 miles, 9 countries, just over 2 months, one pair of (very smelly) shoes…

I landed at North Shields around 9am this morning where I was greated by a photographer from the Evening Chronicle, two excitable dogs, a father and a tearful mother. The parents and the dogs were a surprise! After hugs and so forth were exchanged (not with the photographer), some pictures were taken for tomorrow night’s edition and then I began my hike into town - only 2 or so hours away.

I’ve got a ton of footage to upload to YouTube which I’ll try to do tomorrow. The walk in was pleasant, the weather just right. By way of a small detour onto the Tyne Bridge (habit, superstition, call it what you will), I made it to The Strawberry, where the staff very kindly laid on two bottles of Newcastle Brown… in a wine bucket with ice! They’d also hassled the Chronicle to ensure I got some attention and another photographer was there waiting for me (with my folks and two good friends, Tony and June) to take some more snaps, this time around St James’ Park.

After my liquid lunch, my parents had to head back to Perth (the original one, not the one I was in more recently in Oz) and I was driven down to Durham were I’ll be staying for a couple of days. BBC Radio Newcastle gave me 2 minutes on their drive-in show and Tyne Tees Television I think are wanting to do something tomorrow. NUFC.com and Black And White And Read All Over have both featured me on their pages as well. It all helps!

What can I say? There is more info to come (mainly on the Tour Blog and most of what I have left is a huge list of “thank you”s. I’ll add these to the Acknowledgements and Thanks page shortly. Well, tomorrow. Briefly, though, as well as those mentioned just from today - everyone I’ve couchsurfed with. You’ll all get a mention somewhere! And to all those who donated, the biggest thanks of the lot. If you haven’t then please do!

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.

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

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.

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?

Nervous? Yes. Panicking? Yes. Organised? Hell, no. We just checked the post this morning and the tent which Viv kindly shipped express/very fast/urgent/should be there in 2-3 days from the UK still hasn’t arrived. According to the Royal Mail tracking system it’s "in France". Which helps. Not. The post arrives here "sometime before midday" which means it’s highly unlikely to arrive before I have to set off in the morning. Therefore I have options:

1. Buy another tent - expensive as the lightest one-person one here is almost three times the cost of the one Viv’s sent
2. Borrow Delphine’s 2-person one - this weighs three times as much as the one I’m waiting for and takes up at least twice the space in my rucksack
3. Set off without one and hope it turns up and Delphine can drive it to Sospel for me… or I end up staying at (and paying for) a Gîte for the night. And possibly many more nights after that

I’m not having a go at Viv - far from it. She’s an angel and a sweetheart. But I’ve had problems with postal services all over, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the French one’s one a par with everyone else’s! And as usual, the Law of Sod comes into account as well. The worst possible item for them to delay at the worst possible time. Oh, and the NUFC shirt I’m waiting for via ParcelForce hasn’t shown up either. Grr. Regardless. Still got a million things to do, and half a day to get through them all. Including an interview for the Evening Chronicle - will someone please get me a copy once I know what issue it’ll be in? Thanks! I just got off the phone to a nice lady at TFM who’s taken a short statement for their news as well. Hopefully the interest will raise some more cash. As far as the route goes, I will definitely have to make some changes. The roads I intended to go along are potentially too dangerous, but fortunately there are some well-mapped hiking trails which follow the same general direction. I will be using the pedometer that Sheilah got for me, so I’ll be able to calculate any shortfall in mileage as it occurs and make it up later on. 1000 miles I said, and 1000 miles I’ll do! I’ve also been making full use of the hospitality of the Couchsurfing community and have accommodation sorted in a handful of places up to and including Turin and Geneva. In fact, I have more offers than I can accept in some places! Here’s hoping this will result in a few get-togethers for some people who live near each other. I’ll try and get at least one more post up here before I set off. Wish me luck. I obviously need more of it than I anticipated!

Many thanks to Graham Mack, a North East DJ who’s been in touch to grab a few words from me. I recorded a brief interview this morning for broadcast on tomorrow’s (July 31st) breakfast show on TFM, available across the Tees Valley and surrounding area. I used to be able to get it as far afield as North Yorkshire. Of course, you can also listen online as well. Graham will be calling me every couple of days for updates as well, so keep listening to the show if you want to hear - verbally - how much my feet ache as the walk progresses. Please listen to the show and ring the guy to tell him how amazing you think I am - even if you don’t! The more feedback he gets, I’m sure the more coverage I’ll get in return which - hopefully - means more cash for the Blue Dragon!

Last night I sent somewhere around 350 emails, all to people I know or who I’ve met while travelling. I also dropped messages to every local newspaper and radio station back in the North East that I could think of.

So far I’ve had some nice responses from one donation already sent, to some ideas of where else to contact. Scaryduck (not safe for those with a nervous disposition to four letter words and bowel-shaking humour) has promised me a dedicated post on his rather popular blog at the weekend. A few of you mentioned using JustGiving.com but I can’t - BDCF is registered in Vietnam, not the UK. I have already looked into that. A shame as it would make things so much easier!

For those who’ve come to the page because of the email - thanks for clicking on the link and please do tell everyone. And open your purses, wallets, savings account, jam jars full of twenties you hide from the taxman, spouses’ wallets, kids’ piggy-banks and so on. Every penny that PayPal doesn’t filch in transaction fees will go towards helping some incredibly hard-working and deserving kids.

I’m off hiking for three days as of 5pm today (French time) and won’t be back until Sunday night but please do mail if you want. I’ll get back to everyone on Sun/Mon/Tue before I kick off from Monaco on Wednesday.