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| a little update |
| 02.23.06 (2:04 am) [edit] |
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I am putting this on just in case anyone is curious as to what happend after I stopped walking.
Marianne and I have an amazing little daughter named Poppy (7 months old) and are waiting for our second to pop out in about 4 months. We live on the camino to santiago and are setting up two albergues along the way. We have just bought two yurts and are getting itchy feet again. Love is magic
big hug to anyone who reads this, love james
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| November UPDATE |
| 11.14.04 (6:37 am) [edit] |
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hi there!
Its been a while since I have written one of these updates but thats because i have been walking allot :) Things are going normally, there plodding on like usual, nothing much has really changed... WAIT! hold on, do you really think nothing much would happen? Loads has happened, loads and loads :) so if you have a couple of minutes read on, if not go here http://www.justgiving.com/walkingaroundtheworld " title="http://www.justgiving.com/walkingaroundtheworld " target="_blank"http://www.justgiving.com/wal...
and make a donation to actionaid, the great charity that are looking after little kids in Africa and the world and the reason I have been walking so much lately.
So if your still with me I will go on.
Have you ever thought about how a few simple words dropped casually into conversation could alter your life forever? no? well I have, and for good reason, my mouth generally gets me into loads of trouble so I pay attention to the consequences more than most. Way back when in a little village in the north of Spain was just such a time...
I sat at a small round table like many you would find in a coffee shop or bar, wooden and dented, an ash-tray made of plastic resting in the middle, a normal table that would not make you think about it even for a second. I sat there looking at a woman i had met the day before in a pilgrims hostel. She was standing at the bar and as I looked on she ordered two coffees, waited as the man made them and then brought them over to the table. Our conversation was an animated one and yet a little unsure in places as we new hardly but a nights worth of history about each other. We talked of dreams, ideas, plans and passions as the breakfast turned into brunch and then to lunch. At one point, one split second in time, four words came out of my mouth ¨wanna come to Africa¨. There is no question mark after those words because it was not a question, more a thought released without a place to land. But land it did. The woman who received those words, who caught those words, is named Marianne.
Marianne is at this moment walking around somewhere in Seville, taking photos, dreaming, thinking about life and probably grabbing a sneaky beer in a bar. Due to those four small words I too am in Seville, writing this, dreaming, thinking about life and grabbing a sneaky burger (she is vegetarian).
Here are four more words that have come out of my mouth more recently, with a little more thought than the last though, ¨will you marry me?¨ This one has a question mark after it because I really was not sure of the answer and so it was a question that i put as a question, rather than just opening my mouth and letting stuff come out of it, if you know what i mean. It was not strictly four words either, more like sixteen, as I had to ask her to marry me four times. She did say yes (four times) but told me the way in which I had asked her was not up to scratch, hence the four times. After the fourth attempt (a pagan fire circle ceremony of eternal love which took place next to a Moroccan shipwrecked drug running speedboat and included: circles of fire carved into the sand, poetic prose, my heart being totally given, our treasured samurai swords being exchanged instead of rings, ducking down swords unsheathed behind sand dunes when the Moroccans came looking for there drugs and finally drinking sea chilled champaign under the full moon) I was redeemed and we went and told family and friends in England and Ireland of our upcoming wedding.
So four little words ¨wanna come to Africa¨ have set the pace for four more words ¨will you marry me?¨. its a funny old world when you think about it.
Now for some more news...
I am today stopping the walk to South Africa!
yep, its true, seven months after I started walking I am changing my direction in quite a way. For many reasons I feel it is best to move this adventure up into a new level that suits me and my future queen. I thought long and hard about it and decided we needed to do something that we had both started together. We both love adventure and feel very passionate about the problems that children are facing in Africa so have come up with ¨stage two¨of this interesting story. What is it I hear you cry, well, I get to be a cowboy and Marianne an indian as we ride horseback across the entire USA from San Francisco to New york via the deep south, some 8,000km´s and about a years worth of riding. Anyhow more about that in the next update.
The web site is staying up so as I can go ahead with a project I have been working on to encourage other walkers to raise money for Actionaid as they walk, something so few do and so many could. It is also going to be the place for all of the ¨ridingaroundtheworld¨ adventures to be publicised as well, so stay tuned.
That brings me neatly to why I started this walk in the first place, the charity Actionaid. I felt and feel that one person here (you or I) can help one child there (Africa) its that simple. It´s the meaning of my walk and the message I have gently spread as I walked across Europe and the message I give to you now. People in Africa have a raw deal, I could have been born there or here, I know where I would chose to be born if I could and I am sure you do to. I was not born in Africa, I was born in London, and I am bloody lucky that I was just as you are bloody lucky to have been born where you were. We all know it, we are lucky.
So, to celebrate the end of one long seven month adventure, the beginning of another even longer one and to say thank you that we are lucky people I ask you to listen to four more simple words ¨please give some money¨ to the charity Actionaid today, not tomorrow not the next day but today. You will save some child's life, it is that simple, don't think it´s not.
Click here to make your donation:
http://www.justgiving.com/walkingaroundtheworld " title="http://www.justgiving.com/walkingaroundtheworld " target="_blank"http://www.justgiving.com/wal...
much love, James
xxx
I would Like to say a big thanks to the following:
To my mum!
She has supported me financially, emotionally and spiritually through the whole thing. Without you mum it would not have been possible. I am very sorry you did not get a mention in the newspapers, next time you will. I love you lots mum.
To Marianne´s friends and family that donated so much on the sponsored walk in Tara!
You made me cry with joy that you all cared and supported Marianne and I so much, Thank you very much.
And a big thanks to:
Scott and Vivienne Potterton
Caroline Potterton
Amanda Zolper
Samir Patel
Krystle Lai
James Bittel
Katharine Blakemore
Robin Dawson
Eric the walking biker
Catherine Jones
Phil Elderton
Nathalie VanHoorne-Salin
Deirdre slevin
And to all the other kind and cool people that made donations, thank you
Let me know how you are, i get all the emails on my phone now so can write back nice and quick.
bye
james@walkingaroundthewor ld.com
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| here we go |
| 09.26.04 (2:23 am) [edit] |
I awoke and looked at the map of Spain the other day. It´s a big book of a map, wrinkled and ripped in all the pages I have walked across and fresh and crisp in the pages to walk next. I normally don't look at the pages to come, not since the port town of dover anyhow. Dover was where I was shown the plastic globe of the world that gave me an idea of just how big my journey really was. Since then I hate maps, just to think of how many pages I will have to look at and examine to get to my final destination makes me exhausted. So I refrain from looking at maps and just take one day at a time. The other day was different though.
It was early, my eyes still filled with dry sleep I sat hypnotised as my clothes tumbled slowly round in the stainless steel machine. I wondered if they would still smell of socks after they had gone through the long process of washing and drying like they did when I hand washed them. Hand washing in streams and village fountains had become the norm for me, so this machine I sat staring at held a kind of beauty only the callused handed stream washer could understand.
The luxury I was enjoying was due to a new found concern of mine, the need of being clean. Before, before it all happened, I never minded that the seat of my shorts was the same shade of brown as that of the dirt is so frequently sat upon to rest. The fact of socks that had to be hit violently against a near rock just as to soften them up enough to pull them on never caused me a moments worry. My cowboy hat so fine and grand with a brim so sweaty as to be able to taste it at twenty paces just made it easier to find in the dark and then there was my tent so small and damp smelling that a rat would have gone running crazy eyed into a burning fire if locked in it for more than a minute, but was to me, a home from home. Things have changed though, in many ways.
I have a new pair of shorts quite nice and smart, if a little boring on the eye. I find myself wearing my socks for one day not three. My hat has been replaced with an easily washable bandanna, black and simple. My tent, oh my new tent, so large, so new, so clean as to have a family of rats eat quite happily off the floor. These and many more things have changed. And so I find myself in this laundry mat, the first for many months. I wanted to have clean clothes, I mean really clean clothes and nice smelling like those you can imagine on the television ads for lemon fresh powder. I wanted to have them ready in an hour, because in an hour she would return, and i wanted to be clean for her, for Marianne.
So I sat on the red plastic chair eyes following a pair of woollen grey socks dancing in amongst the greens and blacks of my well worn clothes until the machine slowed and the dancing socks came to a graceful stop. Opening the heavy door of the silver machine I piled my clothes into the poncho laying on the floor and placed them in the dryer. Searching for the start button, pressing many it finally starts. Not being able to see inside I was forced to find alternative entertainment to pass the time. I wrote in my journal, I looked at new photos, I paced, I smoked, I pressed the buttons on all the empty machines, but time was passing slowly that morning. something was on my mind. I knew Marianne was planning to walk to the south of Spain with me, which when in the North of Spain seemed like an eternity of time together, but now we had walked far and I could feel every day tick by till she would return to Ireland.
I could not resist the urge to look at the map. Grabbing it from the depths of may buggy I calculated on a page of my journal how long we would have together before we reached the point where I would cross to North Africa and say goodbye. My heart sank as I realised we only had twenty six days left before Africa. At first I was in mild panic that my practise walk though england, France, Portugal and Spain was nearly over. Less than a month before I would start the two year walk through Africa. going into denial mode I climbed over the panic and the thought of Marianne leaving filled my head. Stomach churning I sat and stared at the floor until the dryer pinged its completion. Before meeting Marianne I could never have imagined walking with any one to S.A, now I cannot imagine walking without her. The quickly stolen kisses along the side of the road, making her coffee in the dark before she wakes, that smile she saves just for me, seeing her dance with her arms as she walks in front of me listening to ear-phoned CD´s, watching her turn a slab of concrete left abandoned by the side of the path into a piece of art with just a few words of poetry written in blue upon it, her hysterical laughter when she walks to far, so many things.
In a daze I took the clothes from the dryer not noticing the sweet smell of clean washing as I placed them rolled up like Marianne showed me into my buggy. I looked at the map lying open on the floor, the page displayed was Morocco, shit! shit! shit!
My panic was interrupted by the sound of her feet coming down the street. I know her walk with my eyes closed and so had time to stuff the map away and wipe the smidgen of a tear away form my face before she came bursting full of life and purpose into the room.
¨I´ve booked my ticket to Ireland, I leave on the 23rd¨ she said with a big smile that made me crumble inside. And then with a smile so big across her face you could see all her beautiful teeth in perfect glory she said ¨would you like me to come and walk through Morocco with you?¨ I think I said ¨shit¨ a few times and I think I stumbled out the word ¨cool¨at one point but I was and am very happy.
So in about 30 days from now this strange and unique journey starts it´s main stretch, Africa. I am stronger both physically and mentally than ever before in my life. My heart is so full of happiness I have pains in my cheeks from smiling so much and the pain in my body is trivial in comparison to your kind words of encouragement in your e-mails and text messages. My thanks go out to all who have donated money to the charity actionaid and hope more of you will do the same as they really need all the help we can give. Also to the people who have joined the mailing list a big ¨hello¨ and sorry I cant update the blog so often, I kind of have my hands full at the moment. To Kim Komando I thank for the mention on her radio show, I had so many nice e-mails from your listeners I had to spend 2 days budget reading them all. To Yahoo for listing the Web site on ¨site of the day¨ thank you very much. To all the great journalist in Spain for writing kindly about this journey, you made the walk so much nicer through all the city´s, towns and villages throughout Spain.
I have to end this now as M wants to walk 49km´s today, don't tell her but I just want to go to the pub.
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| asking for help |
| 09.24.04 (3:58 am) [edit] |
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It´s real hard to find internet cafes out here, and it´s only going to get harder. If any one would like to come forward and help with the site it would help me to make this work much better and raise more money for the charity. I could use the old snail mail once a week and perhaps you could take the time to write it into the blog for me.
If you could help please let me know?. thanks
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| hmmm |
| 09.24.04 (3:53 am) [edit] |
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falling in love, walking, sleeping (just), walking, falling in love.
as you can imagine not much time to update my blog, sorry
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| camino to santiago |
| 08.08.04 (8:03 am) [edit] |
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I really do not know how to begin to write what has happened on the last period of my journey to south Africa. So much in so short a time, I feel just a few words can not do it justice, but I will try.
I have been following an ancient pilgrim route that runs the north of spain known as the ¨Camino to Santiago¨. Its beginning, so the story goes, is at the front door of your house and leads all the way to the city of Santiago in the north west of spain. The city of Santiago is said to hold the remains of the apostle saint james, and in times gone by millions of people from all over the world paid homage to the saint by walking what can only be called the greatest pilgramige of all time.
Whilst walking through France I had on occasions met with people who had told me stories of this ancient route and the amazing people who risked their lives to walk it. Every year people broke their mind, body and spirit crossing the dangerous rugged terrain hoping to show their faith and become stronger in their souls by doing so. The stories gave me hope that my personal walk might succed and I took great pleasure in listening to any one who could recall them, but payed little concern to them more than that of a camp fire fables. How I came to walk this route is nothing less than extraordinary as it is in the wrong direction for south Africa by over 1000´kms. But walk it I have.
More than 2 months ago I arrived at the city most known for the impressive running of the bulls, Pamplona . I walked into the small but beautiful city in the early hours of the morning, my plans to stay for a day and then walk south towards Madrid the following morning were soon to be greatly changed. As I strolled peacefully in the dawn light the streets seemed to ring with the past sounds of the excitement that had filled the very cobbles I stepped upon, but then something happened. I can feel the utter astonishment to this very day at the sight that came before me when I turned the corner of a street of which name I cant remember. If I had seen 12 dancing elephants in pink tutus I could not have been more surprised. At first I thought I was dreaming back in my tent, perhaps the stream I drank from the day before was tainted and I was ill with delusion. I sat down and counted more than one hundred people dressed in all manner of clothing pass me by before I could stand and ask one of them what was happening. ¨We are walking the Camino to Santiago¨ a man dressed in brown robes replied. As he carried on down the road I looked on at him, he was wearing not a robe but a cloak, he carried a wooden staff with a large clam shell attached at the top and he was a strange character if I have ever seen one, and I have seen a few. I could not believe my eyes, this small road that had carried the souls of millions of pilgrims past was alive to this day and flowed with people that walked like I, they walked with a purpose. For two days I sat and talked to these people who passed the city of Pamplona not looking for bulls and beer but for yellow arrows painted on walls and cobbled streets that pointed in the direction of Santiago. Their reasons for walking more than eight hundred kilometres were as varied as their accents; religion, freedom, spirit, sport were but a few, but there were many more I cannot list here. I was and am touched by their zest for life and on the third day in that city I became one with them on their journey to Santiago and decided to walk in the wrong direction for a little bit.
Two months later and today my journey on the pilgrimage to Santiago is now over. It has been filled with wonder beyond my imagining and I am a changed man in so many respects that as I sit here at the base of the cathedral here in Santiago, the cathedral holding the remains of saint James I am lost for words.
Tomorrow morning I restart the walk south towards Africa, two things are different; firstly I am now filled with the courage of the hundreds of people I have met who battled against the injury and pain of walking so far, old and young every one of them was alive and I take pride in saying that I have known people such as them. Secondly, and somewhat more surprisingly I sit here waiting for a friend to return. Her name is Marianna, she is an artist from Ireland and at the moment is currently buying a baby stroller not unlike mine. We share many passions and even more dreams and have decided to walk towards Africa together. How far we will travel is unknown, but every footstep I take with her makes me smile, for I am falling in love.
Sometimes I guess its better to take a little detour in life.
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| back again |
| 07.05.04 (7:46 am) [edit] |
Back on the road again. Still on the path to Santiago in the north of spain and loving every minute of it!
Am going to try to go slow and make it there for the celebrations of st james on the 25th of july.
everything is working o.k exzcept for my feet, which are complaining every day, good job the wine is dirt cheap as its a great pain killer.
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| Denial is not just a river in Egypt |
| 06.15.04 (3:02 am) [edit] |
France, it’s a big old country when you think about it, isn’t it? Nah.
I don’t really recall much about walking from the North to the South of it, not much at all.
I mean I remember the roads, the people, the snow and the fact that I walked across it, but that’s about all. I believe the word for it is denial. Denial is my friend; it keeps me company when all the other things are having a holiday, things such as common sense for example. I mean, if I really thought about what I was doing, walking from London to Cape Town that is, I would probably sit down and have a fag and never get up again until the day I died. But I don’t think about it, I just kind of do it.
That’s how I walked over 2000 kilometres and don’t really remember how I did it.
I have a journal; I write in it most days, most days but not all. In here I remember what happened, the amazing people, the near death experiences, the pain, the fear and the truly exciting feeling of freedom, but up in my brain, well on a good day maybe I could remember what I had for breakfast, maybe, maybe that is if I had breakfast.
The French speak French; did you know that? I did, but it didn’t help me.
The day I arrived there was a day I cursed not paying more attention in Ms Smith’s French class at school. She was a fine teacher, a fine buxom teacher if I remember correctly. Those two qualities kept me in her class more than any other, but I still couldn’t speak French on the day I arrived in Calais. I find it truly sad that with all that time in her class I remember her bosoms more than how to say “where is the toilet” in this beautiful language, hormones, you gotta love em.
So I sat there, in France that is, searching my brain for words that I knew I knew but could not remember. This lasted for an hour or so, just sitting there, looking at my very small and hence light enough to carry, phrase book, thinking of ways to communicate with this vast country of French speaking people and having no luck at it. Coffee, that’s what got me up, the idea of a hot cup of real French coffee, I say French but Italian or American would have done just fine, I wasn’t feeling fussy.
After the coffee idea got hold of me and moved my legs I got up and walked, and soon after spied a café. I parked my three-wheel baby stroller (I call it a stroller because it makes me feel cooler than calling it a pram) outside the little avocado green café I found, I looked in the big window. It was 6 am and the light shone from inside. Tables, chairs, a bar, it all seemed normal so I went in. He was large, very large and a face of more of France than I could of ever wished to have seen. It was a round, weathered and very jovial face to look at and I was welcome there without a doubt. An English face cannot do that, welcome you that is, but a French face can, not sure how, but it can, and I was very grateful for it.
I brushed and shook the snow form my shoulders as he wished me good morning, at least that is what I presume he wished me, and in freshly rehearsed French I ordered a small black coffee. He smiled and prepared the hot black liquid as my mouth began to wake up in anticipation. I must have sat there for 3 hours, just staring at all that was there to stair at, the patrons; happy to be alive and helped to work with the short of brandy that accompanied their coffee, the small dog who scurried around the tables and barked when wishing to be let out to do what dogs do when their let out, the snow falling lightly outside in the greying morning. I found a million things to stair at, maybe even two million.
I was scared. Scared of a country I had travelled to on more than a dozen occasions in the past. Its not the same you see, being somewhere on holiday or business is completely different than being there on foot. Its like you have been caught up in a movie where you have been shrunk by a mad professor to the size of an ant, everything is so much bigger. You feel very vulnerable to all around you, the elements are a real threat, snow, snow a thing if you knew me you would realise how much I love, but now, I hate it. It’s not pretty or fun anymore, it’s deadly. It was minus 4 and snowing and I was sleeping in a tent with a summer sleeping bag. That morning my hands froze so much I had to warm them with cold water just to be able to untie the loops on my tent. So I stayed in this warm café finding many things to do but leave, writing, reading maps, going to the toilet four times (trying to work out how to flush it), checking my camera and finally when all was checked and rechecked just staring into space and feeling fear spread through my body and mind. Finally, with the aid of a shot of brandy, I got up and left this safe haven of French hospitality into the snow-covered streets of Calais and started walking south.
People say to me when we meet “aren’t you scared of travelling through Africa alone?” I generally try and look humble and cool all at the same time and reply “nah, not really”, when the truth is I’m petrified just travelling through the north of bloody France with all it’s civilisation, buses, maps and shops protecting me, the idea of Africa, the size of Africa, the danger of Africa, the insanity of Africa, the reality of Africa, is clouded densely by my companion Denial, for whom without his support I would surely now still be sitting in that little avocado green café back in Calais speaking French to a level of Ms Smiths approval and drinking brandy with the jovial bartender.
Somewhere along the way through France though, I can’t remember where or when, I found a new friend.
Hope.
She is not as strong as denial, not as easy to get along with, more delicate and fragile, but on the few occasions we have met, far more rewarding to pass the time with. The people I have met introduced her to me at different times along the way. For example the lady I met in Bordeaux, standing behind a bar pouring patrons drinks, quietly looking very beautiful and normal which for me would normally be plenty reason to strike up a conversation with her, but turns out also to have spent her gap year working in Uganda, or then there was the man whom I met, when, on an early morning walk he caught me in the embarrassing situation of sniffing the air surrounding a cookie factory and slavering at the fine smell. With fun and laughter at my situation (the cookies and my journey) we started a friendship in which one thing I learnt was that he spends his free time in remote conflict ridden villages around the world putting his skill as a nurse to great use, then there was the old lady, sweet as can be with her grey hair and little dog, but whom you would not think twice about looking at if passing in the street, that, after an hour or two chatting about the village we were in, confided to me that she runs charity days to raise money for a little orphanage in a place you or I have never heard of somewhere in the depths of Africa. These people have Hope as a friend, and she guides their hand in what must seem to them, at times, the insurmountable tasks which they wish to fulfil.
I don’t have hope as a true friend yet, but I know I like her, very much, and I think her friends are very nice and I salute them in their endeavours. Just don’t tell Denial I said it, he might get jealous.
www.walkingaroundtheworld.com
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| The Road |
| 06.13.04 (7:28 pm) [edit] |
Time passes as you walk on the road in a quite a different way than normal. Some days it seams I have just awoken but a few minutes ago and yet it's time to lay my head down to sleep. This is the sign of a good day, a day with no pain, no obstacles of insurmountable design a day where your mind has not been tested by events created to shatter the very core of you. I like these days that pass so quickly. There are many.
My beard, a healthy beard of dark brown before I left, turned grey within three weeks of leaving London. This change did not happen from these happy days though, it happened from days of pain, sweat and more importantly fear. Don’t get me wrong, its not totally grey, more speckled with a hint of age, that befits a man of thirty, or so I tell myself.
Have you ever been dreaming contently whilst on your way to some engagement? Your thoughts meandering around your mind as you head towards your destination only to be jolted violently back to the reality of where you are by a loud blaring of a car horn intertwined with the more distant follow up of screeching tyres on tarmac? Those milliseconds of time split and spread to an eternity as, jolted from your world you see the car, the face within in it, the whites of their eyes as they try so hard not to run over you terminating your existence. Most often your left standing like a deer in full headlight, your heart pounds until you remember to breathe, frozen to the spot as your very being races to catch up with what has just happened. Do you remember how that feels? I do.
How do you get from one city to another by foot? You walk on the roads. Day after day of motorways, the ever-present memory of the French joke "how long is the average journey on the motorway, if you walk? Twenty minutes" flitting from subconscious to conscious after another dozing trucker swerves to avoid splattering you into yet another statistic of road death. The BBC had a series of shows named “Road Death around the world” as I started out on my journey. It wasn’t enough to live it every day I had to hear it every night and dream it always.
Three weeks of this and a quick glance at a mirror in the bathroom of a motorway service station and my beard had gone to pot. I thought it could have been the sun bleaching it, but it had only snowed and rained back then. I thought it could have been my diet of cous cous and cheese, but it wasn’t. I hoped I had walked through a paint factory when I wasn’t paying attention, but I hadn’t. It was fear. The fear of walking for eight hours a day in the opposite direction of traffic down never ending motorways, a thousand hundred trucks the size of dinosaurs passing inches from my face, all the time knowing that just one had to close his eyes from fatigue for just a second or pick up his mobile phone from his cheating wife for my life to be squished.
I am now very good at jumping as well as walking, for I have practised it many times.
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| Just got another passport! |
| 05.26.04 (8:19 am) [edit] |
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gunna be another quick one. sitting in a pilgrims house somewhere in spain. Had to buy a passport to prove i am walking! the blisters on my feet would not cut it with them, but she asked for the money with a knowing grin so I said nothing and now i am the proud owner of a Pilgims Passport. what and where it will get me i have no idea, but will be fun to show it when crossing borders in africa :) I am in spain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! gotta love the fact that i am still alive after walking all this way, still enjoying myself. love ya if ya read this, will love ya even more if you donate some money to the charity i am doing this for, just go to www.justgiving.com/walkingaroundtheworld register who you are and little kids in africa will have a better day than yesterday. cheers james
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| whats it all about |
| 04.20.04 (7:39 am) [edit] |
A BIG hello form France!
This is just a little overview of how this adventure is unravelling and taking hold in my heart. On the 28th of February me and a little baby's pushchair from mothercare set off to walk from London to South Africa. I know that I am more surprised to be writing this than you are reading it for I truly did not believe I could find my way out of London without getting lost, never mind walk half way to Paris by now. But walk I have, more than 250 kilometres, and 8 of those through "Le 7 valley" loosely translated as "7 bloody big hills for me to crawl up" Walking through England was an experience in itself. People, though unsure at first of what I am doing, could not have been kinder. By the second day I had a sign on the front of the buggy stating my mission "London to South Africa walking all the way!" and people beeped and flashed their lights as they drove by, either perplexed expressions or smiles on their faces that seemed to shine through their windscreens encouraging me on. The real fun started whenever I stopped in villages, towns or even roadside cafe's. Whenever people spoke to me, and speak they have, they asked questions for which I had no answers: "how far is it" "where do you sleep" "WHY". The how far is most interesting. Now I have never been one for geography (I know, if I had I wouldn't be doing this) but when a South African couple took pity on me and invited me to stay for the night I got a quick lesson. My host presented me with a globe of the world, a small one thankfully or I think I would have fainted. While pointing out different places I could die and the different manner it can happen my eyes glazed over and I had the a feeling of complete panic at the size of Africa. Taking all things into account I think I handled myself quite well. if I remember correctly I mumbled something like "my, Africa is big isn't it?" just as he pointed to a speck on the globe which i thought was dust and said "see that?, you can fit England 4 times in there". The enormity of my journey finally hit home, I didn't say much after that, just went quietly to bed and dreamt of spiders that slither and snakes that jump. Travelling in this fashion, frugally that is, means that the luxury of hotels is not within my reach. Some places I have stayed in to date are a ditch by the side of a motorway, a hostel in Dover, a car park (thanks men of Kent pub), a beautiful forest in Hesdin, an abandoned house in ... I don't remember but it was welcome relief from the rain, and last night by a river under a tree in the town of Abbeville, France. I walk, I get tired, I sleep where I fall, thats where I stay. A journalist stopped me just into France and among her questions was the "WHY". My answer was "for charity, liberty and the time to learn". my reply was confident although somewhat out of breath whilst giving it, but when I think about it not altogether true. Those are things I gain from this journey, not the reason why, the simple truth is I had an epiphany one night in London that this is just what I am supposed to do, the answers will come as I travel and I'm sure more questions too.
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| French Keyboards |
| 03.11.04 (6:43 am) [edit] |
o.k this will be real short. why did someone not tell me french keyboards are not the same as english ones!
i cant bloody type anything. taken me 20 minutes to work out how to get the @ sign to come out.
i'm in france and am pissed off, I could type loads of words a minute now about 4, goodbye
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| Dover black and white |
| 03.08.04 (3:49 am) [edit] |
O.K I just found out I have some more time, so here is an excerpt from the journal I am keeping.
The young, old, down and out and the ugly are the only people out on a wet and windy Sunday afternoon in the centre of Dover.
Last night I was in a beautiful village by the name of 'River' named aptly due to the cascading one that runs through its entirety.
Woken by the smell of bacon eggs I chatted with my hosts, a lovely South African couple who offered me a place to stay and good company for the night.
I felt the first real doubt of undertaking this journey. Their kindness reminded me of the fact that I was leaving England.
Today I walked the few remaining paces into the town of Dover.
I have had to take a bed in the local YHA so as to take care of correspondence and attend to practical matters.
This place is a shit hole!
The buildings, of which 80% have been built since the war are greyed and unfriendly, by the sea wind or the morose people that seem to inhabit them I do not know, but hazard a guess that both play a part.
Gulls caw all around, something which the residents seem to dislike, but brings me great comfort, perhaps because the sea seems to scream through their cries calling my name to move on.
As I sit here, writing in the hostel conservatory my head bobs up from time to time seeing if the clouds are breaking allowing the sun to shine and me to explore, but it is just wishful thinking, the clouds remain and so do I.
Tomorrow I Sharl cross the channel to France.
more at www.walkingaroundtheworld.com
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| Leaving England! |
| 03.08.04 (3:14 am) [edit] |
Well blow me I got to Dover!
You all must know I had realised that this is a crazy thing to do within the first day of walking. Now sitting here in a library in Dover I understand that walking through the Congo might have me deader than a rhinos dream of being a ballet dancer and I am truly mad for even walking outside my house in the first place.
Every day people are telling me stories of what I shall face on this trip, none are too pretty, and most are off putting.
Shall I carry on?
Knowing that me, James, walking the Sahara without a clue where it is, even on a map, shall be the only idiot doing it, yeah, I guess I shall.
People are the reason I want to carry on. Since Sunday I have met the nicest of nice (and a twat with a pit bull) walking from town to town, to stop now would be sensible, but... boring,
enough for now, have to go and leave the country.
passport...check
tent?...check
buggy?...check
sanity?...checked it out and forgot to pick it up at customs
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| Day 1 to 3 |
| 03.02.04 (1:57 am) [edit] |
Bloody hell I made it through the snow!
As I started off in London I really was in denial about really doing this, it all happened so fast.
On the first day walking through the streets of London, pushing my life in a baby stroller, quite surreal to say the least. I came up on Westminster bridge just before midday, and just as Big Ben struck 12, three Harri Krishna's danced by singing what i heard as 'Haribo' 'Haribo' Isn't that some American sweet name? I wondered if they were taking the piss out of the world and secretly laughing at us laughing at them.
Anyhow, note to Tony Blair: lam beth roads suck big time! but on a good note, the maps in bus stops got me all the way out of London. People really don't understand how to give directions, when you ask "which way to blah blah blah" they answer "take the bus to so and so" or "drive down the m25" so know I just ask which way to France and that seems to work.
Its helped that I now have a sign on the front of the buggy saying what I'm doing and why.
The people I've met are truly wonderful, big thanks to all who have donated so far, and double big thanks to Sandy in the states, and Wendy in the abbey wood campsite.
Your messages are making my day seem much less random and far away, so thanks to all who have texted and e-mailed, I will do my best to write back to everyone as fast as I can.
Got to go and carry on walking now, write more at the next stop
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| STroller |
| 02.28.04 (8:45 am) [edit] |
Got a chunky stroller thing! james is a happy bunny now.
Starting off on Sunday due to no reason but sense :)
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| last day in a bed! |
| 02.27.04 (11:56 pm) [edit] |
As i sit here in my nice warm kitchen having a cup of coffee, I look out the window and instead of seeing all the amazing things that could happen on this trip I see... SNOW!
I'm smiling, but it looks really cold.
In a few hours I set off, I'm so not ready but here I go.
I decided to get some flyers printed up to hand out on the way, they look cheap, but, well they were :) so if you got one and are reading this, remember how many i have to get printed to get all the way to South Africa, thats why there cheap and black and white :)
Grrrr..... its cold, seeya
p.s my backpack is really heavy, so if anyone wants to donate one of those chunky looking strollers, do!
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| a moment of relief |
| 02.26.04 (4:46 am) [edit] |
Since i started this crazed idea I have had to fit alot into a few days. I have never set up a website before and have spent the last 3 days learning how so that I could get more donations online for my trip.
I have just uploaded it and "walking around the world" www.walkingaroundtheworld.com is up and running!
Its not the best, but it will do for now.
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| tequila party |
| 02.25.04 (9:14 am) [edit] |
3 days to go, shit! it is finnaly sinking in.
I have read a few sites of people who have started a similar journey to me, it seems like a lonely road.
Well I guess im not them and I can spice up the walka round the world biz with some tequila partys thrown in.
I wonder how much tequila is in france, hope its cheaper than london
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| motherly optimism |
| 02.24.04 (1:37 am) [edit] |
Just having breakfast with my mum, she's not that flustered by my insanity of walking around the world due to, in her words 'the first time you went off you took a towel, toothpaste and a toilet roll. You were gone for an hour and a half and you were 9'
My mum is a motherly optimist, she freaks, screams, plans, then has a drink and laughs.
By the way it just started snowing, oh well
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| Walking around the world |
| 02.23.04 (1:51 pm) [edit] |
As I sit here i am wondering how it all hapened. Last week I had a job fundraising for a charity, I had a warm place to stay, a bath, access to Starbucks and mind which worked! Now, I am going on a long walk.
You might think walking is not a big thing, and you would be right.
Last week I had an idea, an idea which im sure I will curse in the months to come, but one that makes complete sense to me now...my idea is to walk around the world raising money for ActionAid and having a look at some of the different aspects of religion.
So this saturday im setting off...
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