I Would Walk 1000 Miles

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?

Just so you know where I’ve got to, I arrived in Geneva / Genéve earlier on. Posts will be updated as soon as I have rescued all 2000 or so pictures and videos off my damaged XD media card. Thank you Adam for the recovery program!

EDIT: Most of the photos seem to be recovered, though I can’t figure out how the Windows thumbnails look fine even for the ones which are corrupt full size. However, none of the videos have survived. I cannot play them in Windows, and if I upload them to YouTube, I get the first few seconds of each before they end prematurely.

Unless someone out there knows a utility that can load and repair dodgy AVI files?

I should be leaving Turin shortly. In the meantime, here is a link to all the 1000-Mile videos so far (with the exception of two which YouTube won’t encode for some reason).

Enjoy and I’ll try to get more on when I can.

Not joining me, another walked on another walk. Gosia mentioned this in the comments and I thought I’d give it a plug. A grandmother from Canberra is going to walk circuits around the Lennox Gardens over 42 days to reach a total of 1000 miles. Her cause is a charity aimed at helping the study of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, another hugely worthwhile cause.

If you’re in Oz, then perhaps pop by and give her some support and some cash! You can also donate via her website: www.1000milewalk.org.au.

Meanwhile, I’m resting my feet at Alessandro’s, not to far away from Giuliana’s for another night, perhaps two. Giuli is off to the beach with her folks from this evening and I hope their weather improves as it’s currently chucking it down. I’ll also be looking into some routes to take over the next stage of the walk as I think the one I’d banked on may be impassable.

Another quick thanks to the folks back home as well. People, your comments do help and your encouragement makes a hell of a difference. Especially to my dad for the email last night - thanks, Pop.

Finally, please recheck the older posts when you get a chance later today or tomorrow. Hopefully, I can use Alessandro’s setup here to upload some videos to YouTube…

There’s not a lot to say about the walk today, mainly as the road I followed seemed to divert around all the towns instead of through them. Also, my feet hurt more than I can describe. I hit my mileage target and - I will be honest - caught a bus into the centre of Turin. I had to walk another three miles from there to get to Giuliana’s place where I was made at home before she left to visit some friends. Now, I know what a bidet is actually for but I used it to douse my feet in cold water. Even with my boots off, they are agony. Feet up, feet down, legs crossed, uncrossed… doesn’t matter. Huge amounts of pain. On the upside I have accommodation for at least two nights in Turin should I require it - this has been sorted. On the downside, I don’t know if that will be long enough for my feet to heel up. And when they do, how long they’ll last before breaking down again. I have three blisters on my left foot and two on my right, and the arches seem to have vanished. I swear my left is swollen as well. I’ll confess that morale is very low right now. The walking is taking a physical toll and being by myself for so many miles is really messing with my head, mainly from the boredom. Any offers to join me to give me some company would be more welcome than I can put into words. So I’m a day ahead of target, but by the time I leave Turin I will be at least one day behind due to my feet.

I left Giuliana’s parents’ at 7:30am and began walking north towards Turin (or Torino as it’s known here). I was aiming to do two days’ walking in one day - a total in excess of thirty miles. Halfway, I switched from sandals back to boots as I developed a nasty blister on my left foot, but the change in footwear seemed to sort it. As I proceeded from town to town along the SR20 road, I discovered that most of the towns in this part of Italy don’t have free water fountains! Or toilets, come to that. I also discovered that once you have a blister on the sole of your foot, it’ll just keep growing if you keep walking. I reached a pleasant town called Racconigi around 6:30pm and talked to a lady in a supermarket who’d been taught English in 1985 at school. She didn’t do too badly talking to me. I’d put her English at least on a par with my French. Outside the shop, I found a quiet spot and burst the huge blister on my foot - much better. I know, I know, but I simply couldn’t walk any further with it full. I made it to Carmagnola around 8:30pm this was originally the target for day seven so I was understandably pleased. Until it seemed everywhere was closed. Eventually I found Speedy Pizza from where I had a rather delicious margherita. After a 45-minute rest there, I had to find somewhere to camp as darkness was falling. Of course, now I discovered that the entire town centre was open… Eventually, I found a spot just off the main road behind a billboard. The grass was lovely, soft and green. It was just out of sight of everything. Ideal. I didn’t even bother with the tent, just unrolled my sleeping back and crawled in, using my long-sleeved top as a pillow. I was asleep surprisingly quickly. Then I found out why the grass was so green and lush. When the two water sprinklers came on and deluged me. Bugger. I raced around and gathered my stuff before it got too wet and staggered off looking for somewhere else to sleep. Finally, shortly after 1:30, I found a shelter near some houses which looked like a market stall with nothing in it. I threw down my sleeping mats and collapsed on them. The roof came in handy when it rained at 5am.

I was up, packed and on my way by 8:00. I packed my boots and wore sandals to give my sore heels a much-needed rest. The tourist map I got in Tende showed some of the road north towards Cùneo which I was taking, and the first town on the way was Vernante. Sadly, it’s not on my AA map as the scale’s too big. If you’re ever in the area, check it out for breakfast (I did) or lunch.

It’s a one-street town that in the 1960’s decided it needed to drag in the tourists outside of the snowy season as well. Someone decided on Pinocchio as the focus of the tourism aims and murals were painted everywhere. Souvenir shops sell little wooden puppets. There’s a statue on the way out of town. There is no connection at all between Vernante and the stories or creator of Pinocchio. But it’s cool! Judging by the many murals, there’s a lot more to Pinocchio than the Disney film, but that’s not surprising. In addition, the town has a huge fireworks display in mid-August which I’m reliably informed is not to be missed.

I picked up breakfast there, as I said, but searched in vain for a public toilet. This lasted the entire walk to Cùneo where Giuliana - a fellow Couchsurfer - met me and escorted me to her parents’ flat. After a shower and change I got the whistle-stop tour of Cùneo followed by a rather delicious ice cream - before dinner! This was some great pasta and wine which I was forced to eat lots of (it wasn’t difficult to force me). Giuliana describes her parents as her own personal sit-com and I can see why. Even when you don’t understand a word of their language, they’re funny people! I just hope I ate enough and drank enough to make them happy.

I finished Harry Potter (thank you for the kind gift, Gosia) which I’ve left with Giuliana. If she doesn’t read it, she can pass it on to another couchsurfer. Bad news, though, was that as I’d run ahead of schedule (well, managed to get back to the original one after the late start) my planned hostess in Turin can no longer accommodate me as she has other surfers visiting. If I can blast three days’ walking into two, I could make Turin by the 7th and Giuliana may be able to host me there as well… But I need to stay in Turin for a couple of nights to give Irene (yet another couchsurfer) the time to get there and join me as she wants to do some of the walk.

Oh, how I love scheduling stuff.

Breakfast at 8am was jam and bread with a huge bowl of hot chocolate. Afterwards I walked into town to see the tourist information people who were incredibly kind, giving me a decent map and some good directions all the way to Limone Piemonte. I stopped by a mountain store to get a new water bottle, but decided against it when the owner told me there was a water source about halfway up. He lied, I discovered later. Grr.

I decided not to stay an extra night in Tende and instead pressed onwards and upwards so as to stay on schedule. After a decent lunch, I packed and set off up to Col de Tende. This is another 1km climb, but along a fair horizontal distance so not as punishing as the previous day.

I was rather heartened when I made it to the highest point (Fort Tabourde) almost an hour ahead of schedule. From there I walked to Col de Tende itself in around ninety minutes and had a quick look around the old fort there before searching for the path down the other side that was clearly marked on my map but not in real life. Eventually I found it was was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of marmots on the way down.

At Limonetto, I bore right towards my target, Limone Piemonte. Another 45 minutes later - around 8:30 - I was sat in an Irish bar, watching footie on TV, eating a delicious hamburger and using free internet. My only problem… nowhere to camp. The lights on the roads stop at the town’s edge so I couldn’t safely walk into the country.

Eventually I ended up "hiding in plain sight" in front of a building / monument / thing up a hill in front of the town. I hoisted my tent right between two upward-pointing lights. Between them and the slope of the hill I was quite well hidden from public view.

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!