I Would Walk 1000 Miles

Another huge thank you, this time to Scott and Julie at Rhino Car Hire. They’ve opted to give a regular donation to Blue Dragon in exchange for some advertising here and I can tell you that the money will be very well spent. There are a load of excellent projects taking place right now and they always require funding.

So if you’re in the market to hire a car in the UK, Europe - or anywhere else for that matter - drop by Rhino Car Hire first and check out their prices. I’ve had a gander myself and I can tell you they’re very competitive. Look at it this way - a portion of every rental they make goes to the kids in Vietnam. How could you pick anyone else now?

If you need cheap ferry tickets to France, then I would be grateful if you take a quick trip to FerryCheap.com. They’ve just made a generous donation to Mike at Blue Dragon, in exchange for which they’ve asked for a dinky link here.

Link provided. Thank you, Chris at FerryCheap!

It’s never too late to make a donation, as CheapFerryTickets.com (SeaFrance Ferries) have just proved. A huge thank you to them for donating enough to put one of the kids through school in this new year. It’s never too late to make a donation. Please don’t think that just because the Walk is over that the cash should stop coming in. There will be a need for it - and it will be hugely appreciated - for much time to come!

The total of all donations of which I’m aware is… £1921, $US895 and SKK1000 After converting into US Dollars and not taking into account PayPal/bank transfer fees, this works out as $4970. I have a whopping bank transfer to make tomorrow. An enormous "thank you" to everyone from myself, Mike and all the kids and staff at Blue Dragon. All the kind donors of whom I am aware can be seen on the donations page. Please don’t forget that just because I’ve finished the Walk and totalled this lot up that BDCF won’t appreciate further donations. Go direct to their web page to see how you can help out.

Another one of those "thank you"s that I’m throwing around like confetti to all those who’s cash I’ve received. I’ll see some of you in the next week or so, and to the rest - can you please either send a cheque, make a bank transfer or donate your pledge direct to Blue Dragon? Current donations stand at: £1678, $US830, SKK1000. Details can be seen on the donations page. There is more to go on there as well. Helen’s fiancé has a jar at work which needs totalled up, and I have some from friends and family that needs gathered. PayPal means fees, bank transfer and cheque don’t - please get in touch for the details of those methods. We’re going to try and get as many (if not all) of the donations as possible before transferring the funds direct to Mike and the kids in Hanoi. Hopefully this will be done in the next two weeks. And, yes, I’m already thinking of other ways to raise awareness and money for Blue Dragon…

Another quick “thank you”, this time to my aunt Isabel who has been fundraising while I’ve been away. She just delivered a wodge of cash to my parents after a night she organised with raffles, pass-the-parcel and so on. The sum raised was a fantastic £480!

With luck, I should know the full amount raised within the next couple of weeks. I have a handful of donations still to collect, some people are still donating and I have to catch up with some of them to get the money.

The stage lasts till Ijmuiden, but I have made it to the Dutch capital of Amsterdam where I’m enjoying a couple of days with a very good friend of mine - Esther, who I met in Darwin, Oz. She’s recently moved here herself, originally being from Groningen - somewhere I did originally want to go on the Walk as it’s twinned with Newcastle, but it was just too far out of the way. In fact, I just checked. It’s not moved. It’s still too far. I now have my ferry booked from Ijmuiden. I will be on the 6pm boat on October 2nd, arriving at North Shields at 9am on Wednesday 3rd. Allowing for getting over seasickness, I then expect to be back in Newcastle itself outside of St James’ Park by midday. I will then ensconce myself inside The Strawberry and imbibe as many bottle of Dog as anyone cares to buy me. I won’t be "falling down at the door" (to paraphrase the song) of the woman who inspired the Walk. She’s decided to fly off to New Zealand to spend time with the guy she started dating while I was in Vietnam working for Blue Dragon. Which is nice. I would like to thank DFDS who gave me a 20% reduction on my ticket after I begged at them on the phone for a while!

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!

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?

Though how I managed it I don’t know. I have a nasty burst blister on my right foot and my feet ache but I’m just glad I made it. Later today I hope to clamber over the mountains and into Italy by 8pm.

There’ll be a more complete update when I have more time and an English keyboard! I’ve got some videos I intend to upload to YouTube as well, diary-style.

A quick thanks to Gareth from Another Chance To See and Ben from Black And White And Read All Over for their kind donations. Please keep the cash coming in, folks!