I Would Walk 1000 Miles

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!

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)

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.