Travelogue/monologue/sleeplikealog

NB Remember to check out the previous blog, too!!!

This was written last night before I switched off the light and went to bed...

“This is our first night in France. The crossing was good even if we did get up very early and wait quite a long time to get on the boat... none of it was difficult or even taxing. In fact it was very easy. Then we arrived and strolled through quite, sunny streets until we reached the bus station where we asked for the next bus to Honfleur and were given tickets for a bus which left just a few minutes after we boarded it. The next bus was due to leave several hours later.

More good fortune, we had a good lunch and set off for the main Catholic church (which is stunningly beautiful) and could not find a priest. I pushed a reluctant Alison into coming with me to find the presbytery and rang the door bell despite her misgivings. The priest was pleased to stamp our “passports” and we managed to say that we were looking for somewhere to stay and to tell him that we were happy to sleep on a church hall floor – and he showed us great hospitality, chatted to us, offered us refreshments and phoned up parishioners who had walked the Camino before getting a lovely lady to drive us to the parish centre, which was less than 5 minutes walk from where we were, gave us the keys and bottles of water, biscuits etc and said we could come back and have showers, too!

Now, we are in one of the meeting rooms, I am writing while Alison sleeps and we are preparing ourselves for the first day’s walking in France. Goodness knows what we can expect – we have pages cut out from a road atlas and the text of a route printed out from Google maps routes (for walking) which takes you along the main roads, so we will be playing things by ear as we go (and may resort to reading sign pposts and looking things up on google maps using Alison’s blackberry – we don’t know when I will next be able to post a blog as we have no wi-fi and my dongle would cost a fortune in France.....”

Now we are in an overpriced hotel room where the restaurant is closed, the nearest place to eat is five or six miles away and there are no shops, etc open in this village until tomorrow.... but there is wifi, hot water and a soft bed so we cannot complain.

Today we walked along the edge of some major roads (see our previous post for the details) but the traffic was very light and we were not troubled with very bad walking surfaces or bad weather; in fact the weather has been hot and sunny (earlier on it was cold and sunny for a while) with a heat haze on the surface of the road. The morning began with rough edged, wide main roads then we walked on a very pretty route which steadily climbed the length of a valley for the rest of the morning. Our rest stop was on a bench behind a church with some bread and saucison then an apple washed down with water. Not sure what we will do tonight – probably the last bit of bread and sausage and some chocolate, etc.

Tomorrow we head for a larger town and hope that there will be some kind people or some very cheap accommodation (otherwise we will seek out a campsite and try out our little tent (2 berth, under 1 kilo in weight, very simple). The packs are a little heavier now (silly us) and we have had a two day break, so today was a bit heavy going, especially with the long straight hot road in the afternoon. Still, another (almost) 20 miles done and we both continue to be safe and well and are now resting comfortably!!!

No problems.....

cands 14 | Author Crossandshell | free Mobile GPS Tracking Service

cands 14 | Author Crossandshell | free Mobile GPS Tracking Service

This location shows our route on the first day in France. Look on this website and you should be able to find all of our days walked. (Days 12 and 13 were spent looking for and buying a tent and other things then going across to France.)I will try to get this onto the side feed of the blog....

I have also put the link on the facebook page so check there, too.

Blogs to follow soon as we have been out of range or not able to post them for other reasons and may not be in range again for another couple of days - who knows?!!

Toot toot went the little green car one day

Tuesday was definitely an easier day. The wind was a little too chilly even for this time of year but the sun shone all day as we walked from Woking to Hambledon.

The distance was much shorter than we had expected and the last two miles were in a car as the woman who had offered to put us up that night just happened to drive by us as we were on the last short stretch into Hambledon. I saw this car stopping and a woman wound down the window and said, “Are you Ian?” and there we were, heading for this amazingly comfortable house with a massive annex with so much space and the chance for Alison to have a bath while I took a shower!

Back on the subject of hospitality, Louise and Simon (our hosts for Tuesday) had agreed to let us stay on the night of the 14th (which is actually Wednesday, but that was because I had miscalculated the dates for the walk!

I had not realised this until Monday so we emailed Louise asking if it was OK to be with her a day earlier. Despite a very hectic day with lots of things happening within the family, she said yes, no problem and we were made welcome at incredibly short notice!

Then, on Wednesday night our hosts have been Gerry and Ligia who agreed to put us up with not much more than a day’s notice. Gerry had been on Student Cross for the first time this year (his son went on Midland Leg last year). He picked us up from our walk and brought us home to his lovely house, we have been fed and pampered royally and are about to have breakfast before being driven back to start today’s walk.

Hospitality is an experience that is at the heart of what being human is. It demonstrates something about our nature that modern society seems eager to deny – don’t ask me why!

I will write about our walk next but just feel very grateful and seriously amazed and reassured by people’s generosity and need to think about this more and explore it while I can.... what do you think?

Frostbite becomes you; just let those extremities go

Just a few notes as this place is freezing and we will need to settle down for the night and try to get warm.

Take note, the itinerary is newly updated.... and now....


You know I have been talking about hospitality and related things? Today we have been experiencing all sorts of variations on a theme.

For example, we planned a route which took us across St George’s Hill which is famous for being the place where the diggers placed themselves and where they were brutally dealt with. Not only is the irony seated in the fact that this very same hill is now THE most expensive and exclusive place to live in the London suburbs, it is also where it is so exclusive the local authority information panels referring to the Diggers and pointing out places of interest excludes that very location in order to avoid any riff raff from walking around looking at how this site has been so desecrated by the extremely wealthy. Worse than this is the fact that you are not even allowed to walk through this stupid estate!

You heard/read me correctly. This is a location where they police the place/video and scan the place and excise any unwelcome organisms from the very air of the estate – you have to live there or be some sort of work person going about your allowed duties to enter the place. Yes, this is Britain in the tewnty first century and people still think that they can get away with that!!!! I will be joining the ramblers when I come back and we will do some neat stuff regarding this.....

This route deflection alone caused us an extra almost 2 miles!

We walked through what looked like a set of ante-tank emplacements which I had presumed meant that the road was about to be excavated, and entered the estate. Within a few minutes a guard in a van arrived and asked us if we were residents. As we are plainly not residents we had to leave asap. At least the guy who told us to go was polite, didn’t ask us to retrace our steps and gave us advice on how to circumnavigate the place. Despite his role, he was quite hosipitable!

In contrast, last night our two daughters provided us with wine and food which were wonderful, their company, which was even better and as a bonus we spent time with our very bright and beautiful little grand-daughters – we will have to wait until after the walk to enjoy the company of our beloved grandson and my darling son Ewan again.... But hospitality was alive and flourishing hugely last night!

Other hospitality wiggles today include the fact that we waited for quite a while to get into the church hall – which was only difficult because we didn’t know what was happening and it was cold – but we also had a lovely priest who drove us up to the centre of town so we could do our shopping for food,and then the hall was cold (VERY cold)and sadly the priest couldn't do anything about it – we have to sleep here all night but, of course, we are weird walking pilgrim people who can cope with this??!

Despite the frustrations, we are very grateful to be able to sleep here.


Any way, end of rant reached and so let’s say toodle looo!

Oh, by the way, we walked very close to Dominique’s 6th form school and today we skirted past both Kirsty and Rosalind’s 6th form colleges...

Whow, too cold to write any more – even for me!!!

Check out the revised itinerary now!!

Simple hospitality is never simple...

Well, here we are in a church hall in Barnet – basic toilets, a small side room to sleep in and keep relatively warm, a kitchen with hot water, kettle, fridge and a cooker. We have access to lots of cutlery and plates – yeh!

Of course, we popped to Waitrose just before it closed and bought a few things to eat and a bottle of wine. We are now tired but better for the food and wine, and are reflecting on the day. The morning was a pleasant jaunt through the countryside for about nine or so miles, then lunch was OK.... but the afternoon was much harder with 16 miles done without a stop (5 hours with lots and lots of hills of the steep variety) so we were more than a little foot sore on our arrival.

So what were we reflecting on? That enduring little nugget of an idea – hospitality – was the consideration of the day.

We were reflecting on the way that being a community, or part of one, inevitably involves making each other welcome and requires that you spend time together sharing food and conversation. We have been treated to a wide range of different types of hospitality so, in a short week, with very heavy physical demands being placed on us, we have had our hospitality radar raised to its highest sensitivity ratings and have found out some amazing things.

Firstly, receiving hospitality is a very nice thing to experience. It almost does not matter what the level is, the effects are still good. So, we have enjoyed professional hospitality from a country pub and a slightly run down hotel in a small town. In both cases the people who have extended their hospitality have made efforts to greet us and treat us as guests. Probably most impressive were the hotel people because, unlike the pub who were the owners/providers of hospitality, the hotel people were all straight employees, but they were very keen to make the best of what they had to offer... So, hospitality is in some measure about what you as a person are personally prepared to extend as part of the offer of hospitality.

Then there is the generosity beyond what is required and without restrictions – the couple who put us up in Downham were asked in the morning and by the evening we were being fed and treated to comfy beds, hot baths/showers and so on ... open house to complete strangers on trust.

So it is also about unconditional service to strangers. That is not an easy thing to be able to do. Not easy at all.

Then there are the family and friend offerings of hospitality that were exceedingly generous and seriously comfortable experiences. Again, unconditional hospitality but this time with love and an honest sense of generosity that stems form that love. Through a mixture of knowledge and empathy this generosity takes us into another aspect of hospitality where the familiar allows for greater degrees of comfort and where there are unspoken understandings/expectations that make everything so much easier.

So it can also be about being able to provide a space for rest and recuperation which goes beyond the simple provision of space and comforts - helping to make it a space that is more individually shaped to your needs.

All of this is just the beginnings of a view of what might be regarded as hospitality and where it might fit into the scheme of things but it does lead on from the rambling load of tittle tattle I posted yesterday..... it is part of that question of what makes you or I people fashioned in the likeness of God. What are our God like aspects or facets? What do our God-like bits look like?

Well, perhaps hospitality has something to do with all of this. Perhaps hospitality is part of the outcome of us beginning to act as people who have been created in God’s image?

Just one early idea in the collection of thoughts we might have or might explore.

Toodle oooo!

Confusion and fatigue from sleepy head himself

You learn a lot on something like this.... how kind people can be, how hard it can be on the road, how difficult it is to talk to your walking companion when the weather is bad and you are trudging down a major A road on seriously uneven ground, that the way to avoid the A road into Barkway entails a long few miles hike up a quiet road and an extra couple or so miles on quaintly undulating (hilly, actually) little road, that my new “walkers trousers” chafe in the most unpleasant places after ten or so miles (and I’ve walked in them for over forty miles, and that 14 year old Oban malt whisky is actually rather nice.
You also learn that you can take liberties with sentences and have them rather elongated....
Yes, it has been a fantastic week and sorry we have not been able to write much during that time. We have stayed in a lovely pub (Dappling Duck, Great Massingham) with parishioners in Downham Market (Pam and Mike put us up with only a few hours notice), with friends (Joe and Juliette and family rescued us from a homeless Ely and pampered us in Huntingdon) and relatives (well one, but he is lovely and so is his partner, Linda) who pampered us beautifully in Newmarket ad ferried us back to our starting place today.
This Friday gave us lovely weather and hard walking but led us to Puckeridge where we had nowhere to stay and where the B&B’s and hotels had all dissolved into the ether. St Edmund’s College could not accommodate us but we did not know that until we were half way there so we sought out a hotel that was, like so many extinct things, still marked on our map and we ended up at a petrol station. A man ran it from a little booth in the midst of the petrol pumps and so we chatted to him about possibilities and he gave us a number for a taxi and a directory with some possible places to stay. Which lead us to a lovely lady taxi driver who drove us here and my first taste of Oban Malt, which is now sadly just a lovely memory. The clothes are drying on a noisy radiator which is making the room rather warm and I am thinking that the blister I have had on the side of my heel since half way through Student Cross is more of a nuisance than I had ever thought it would be but I’m damned if I will let it get the better of me.
Which brings me to where I am now.....
It is remarkably peaceful here. The double glazing is cutting out the sound of any traffic, the TV/radio is off and the noisy radiator has suddenly stopped vibrating and rumbling. Alison is drifting off at her note book as the heat reaches tropical island levels (especially with the evaporation from our damp clothes) and I am wondering if I will write the other things I want to write tonight or just leave them for another time.

Today I have been reflecting on how the landscape we have been walking through all week has been so completely changed by human activity over the years.

It has been stripped of forests, drained of water, turned from diverse environments into mono-cultures, built on, stripped of its natural resources, redeveloped to be more bio diverse, turned into playgrounds and worksites, homes and wastelands, shunned and cherished and so much more besides. And we have repeated these things over and over again until we eventually began to walk through this lovely land and remark on how nice it is.

Perhaps we are so pleased with what we have made sometimes that we don’t realise what we are thinking.

I asked someone during Student Cross the following question – “If God made you in God’s image, what do you think are your God like qualities? What defines you as someone who has been made in God’s image?”

He didn’t want to answer me and was wary of the suggestions that I made for him to agree/disagree with.

Do you think that being able to muck around with our environment makes us God like? Does being able to destroy our environment make use more like God? Perhaps it is only when we start to repair the damage that we have done that we start to show our “God-like-qualities”? Hmmmm is this more about a foray into good and evil? Nope – let’s get focused here!.

Of course, everything is relative. One of my less God-like tendencies today is that I am starting to drift off to sleep, but I do encourage mass contemplation on this big question regarding what makes you like God (in often quite small but deeply significant ways as well as in the more exceptional, big things). How will any discovery help shape the way you are living your life? Yes, such a decision could redirect you... or, at least, make a good talking point for you in odd situations.

Or, perhaps I am just rambling. We have walked well over a hundred miles in the last five days and it does seem to be having some sort of effect on me. Sleep is more seductive – my tendency to stay awake half the night seems to be disappearing!

Tomorrow we walk to Barnet where we think we have a hall to sleep in! Let’s do it!!

Winding down for the night

Sitting here after a good day’s walking I feel a little bit drowsy. Admittedly, we did have an interesting walk. We had a lovely send off from our three daughters and two granddaughters as well as a small handful of friends – Dougald and Betty, Mike Lagrue and (Fr) Ray Lyons. I know others would have loved to have been there to send us off, too, but that’s the way it goes. As it was, Ray blessed us and we all hugged before Alison and I set off via the old railway line.

It rained throughout the morning and the wind was very strong and persistent.

We stopped at Sculthorpe Mill for a cup of coffee and a toilet break then headed for Helhaughton where we thought we could have lunch in the pub – the pub is now two houses poised on a road junction.... so we walked to West Raynham where the pub has disappeared without a trace!

So we ended up walking all the way to our night stop without a break or any lunch! It was a long day in terms of distance (19 miles) made shorter by the absence of any stops after the first one (about 5 miles in).

Interesting contrast with the previous week where we had a wonderful and particularly enjoyable pilgrimage with Kettering Leg of Student Cross – and where we didn’t need to worry about where we would be fed or stay the night.

The contrast serves as a pointer to the quality of the leg we walked.....

The quality of the people on the leg was fantastic and the walking/stops/buzz all added to this quality.

I am too tired to really do Kettering Leg justice so I am going to leave the blog for now and tell all about our Student Cross at a later date.

Peace to you all!