I Would Walk 1000 Miles

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.

I have made it to Metz in northern France. Even with the lift I got in Italy / Switzerland to clear the dangerous roads, I am over the 500 miles mark. In fact, I think I’m further past it than first intended as my routes have not followed the major roads which I plotted. Instead I’ve taken a lot of back country roads which wind a lot, so I’d almost say I’m back on course!

Still, half way is half way and I’ve still got five countries (including Blighty) to go. I should be in Luxembourg… and back out of it… soon, then on to Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

A huge thank you again to all the folk on couchsurfing.com who have made my life a lot easier, cheaper and more interesting!

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!