You can’t always get what you want

Just got back from the recording of the News Quiz at the BBC Radio Theatre – excellent panel and a very amusing evening. Thank goodness that we were both well enough to go! I have not recovered as quickly as Alison from this bug and this has caused me some difficult moments. My stomach has been rumbling like thunder moving over the plains after every (light) meal and we all know that a storm follows thunder! So, when my light lunch today heralded a new, non-celestial chorus I began to wonder if it would be wise for me to leave for the BBC.

At the very least they might have decided that my stomach was too loud for the recording studio equipment!

Happily, the storm passed and I refrained from even a snack until now (10:53pm at time of writing this bit).

I came home imagining a meal of a lovely bag of chips..... perhaps a saveloy as well, as it was too late for a bit of cod, but I decided that this would not be a wise choice for both digestive and pecuniary reasons so I sat in the kitchen wondering what to have.

It was one of those times when the kitchen seemed to have nothing available for me to eat. Admittedly, this is Thursday, and Friday is shopping day, so the cupboards were a bit lighter in available foodstuffs than usual - but that was not the real reason. It was just that when you set your heart on something it can be hard to move yourself towards a lesser alternative. Couple this with it being a bit late in the day and with hunger nagging you in an annoying way and you begin to feel that nothing will do.

Then I looked in the cupboard where we keep our various tinned goods and I saw that we had some tinned tuna and tins of chickpeas and an amusing thought occurred. Fish and chips, fish and chips, fish and chicks! Weak link, I know, but I was clutching at straws.

So I am now eating a salad of tuna and chickpeas with some onions caramelised in olive oil (from yesterday) and some left over salsa with a bit of lemon juice, white wine vinegar, pepper and Tabasco. It is a pleasing mixture.

All that this illustrates is that, as Mick Jagger tells us, you can't always get what you want, but you can get what you need (rough quote).

So, what relevance has this to the walk?

Well, firstly, it is a reference back to this idea of making do as you progress along the road – we are not always able to make do gracefully but whether we do or not, we can make life easier for ourselves if we try to focus on the possible rather than the most desired thing. Of course, even if we fail to do this we will still survive and the next day will be different.

And then there is the ongoing story of our preparations and I have been trying to find a particular type of rucksack, one made by those wonderful people at Osprey, and it seems that every store in the world has run out of the particular version I am looking for and they are not likely to get any more from Osprey for a while!

The Exos 34 is what I can't seem to get but want! It weights under a kilo and for my medium height it can pack up to 34 litres inside, it is the state of the art and when I didn't have the means to buy it I tried one on and it fitted like the proverbial glove. Bah humbug!

Tomorrow I will write to the Osprey people themselves and ask what's going on – perhaps they might even offer me some much needed help when I explain the good use it will be put to and that it will be undergoing a 1600 mile road test, to boot!

Otherwise I will just have to find another light weight sack to meet my needs.

 

 

 

 

 

Letting go

OK, this is the thing, I started off writing a blog last week on what I will miss and not miss when we actually start walking.

The piece was going to say how most things are actually easy to do without for a while and that what you do miss will surely be small compared with the gains. I was then going to talk about the real things that are hard to give up.

Interestingly, I wrote one blog and then had to go somewhere before loading it up onto the site. The next day, I reworked it then other things led me to leave it unpublished. I went back to the subject at the end of the week on my office computer rather than my netbook and re-wrote it with a bit more vigour but other things got in the way and it is still on that computer tapping its electronic fingers with growing impatience while I write this one on my netbook.

Perhaps, you might think, I am either going soft (I don't miss deadlines – ever!) or perhaps the subject was not worth writing about but both ideas would be mistakes. No, the fact is that these delays are perfect illustrations of what is going to be hardest to leave behind and probably my biggest challenge!

What, you might ask, causes these delays and diversions? Family responsibilities, I answer. For example, this weekend saw us helping Rosalind and the girls (daughter and twin granddaughters) at various times. On Sunday and part of Monday that extended to helping Rosalind deal with two 14 month old girls suffering with the norovirus. What little tough cookies they were, too, real stars – they handled it fantastically well! I speak of this with deep experience as Alison, Rosalind and I have all, subsequently, gone through that very personal hell which is the norovirus. Phew, is that some bug! It picks you up, shakes you all about and puts you down pretty fast but it is one seriously unpleasant ride.

So, putting aside further reflections on nasty bugs, what do I conclude?

Well, I feel that can handle a variety of discomforts, especially if I know they are for a limited period; I can handle not having my own space or my own bed, I can deal with the walking, the different places, food, pains and faces, etc all for the same reason (come to think of it, it doesn't sound very bad to me at all) and especially when I can experience them while walking through three great countries (in fact it all sound pretty good, really). But my problem is how do I let go and not worry or feel like I am letting people down? No I am not Mr Indispensible, but I am a father and grandfather and it does feel like I am doing the abandoning.

This trip will see Alison and myself step out of the normal things in our lives and will give us the space and time to reflect, pray, discuss and learn.... so the things I will have to try to let go of are not those comforts, etc, but much of my responsibilities and family cares/life. I know Alison will have to do the same and will also have the burden of being the (absentee) Chief Executive of a charity (Housing Justice) to deal with, too.

Those are going to be the hardest things to let go of.

This is how it is.

Travelling really long distances

Just can’t believe that New Year is now two weeks away….

I have a question for the readers of this Blog (if there are any) but first I just need to share the following with you -

We spent a wonderful week up in the North of Scotland at a place called Nigg with a bunch of really great people. Richard and Sabine, our hosts, run a seriously good B&B there (check out http://www.niggbnb.com/) and our good friend Mike drove some of us up and back down again – was it 1500 miles? Almost as far as Alison and I will be walking!

When we were there we ate/drank/walked/danced and broke bread together, we made a student cross leg out of snow and I will never forget the walk we did leaving a long trail of our footsteps across a beautiful snow covered landscape, stopping occasionally to eat Christmas cake and drink good malt whisky or some other high octane beverages (what was that Polish liqueur called again?) while some of the group tried to make snow angels in the very deep snow.

Thank you Mike (a star for sure) and thank you everyone else for being there and to Richard and Sabine for their fantastic welcome. And thank you Susie’s mum for the stop over on the way up and to our daughter Dominique for the Durham stop over on the way back.

The weather did stop us from getting to the Dornoch New Year’s street party and put paid to the surprise visit we planned for my sister who lives in Lybster (another great B&B www.acarsaidlybster.co.uk) a further 64 miles north of Nigg. Sorry Sheena and Norman!

So enough of the thanks and the ads and all that….

I have to say that we are not just planning to walk all the way to Santiago; we also have to plan a brief interlude during the walk when we will be slipping back to Durham for a day from somewhere in Northern Spain.

I know it sounds weird but it is necessary as our middle daughter graduates from Durham University this year and the graduation ceremony is on the 29th of June. As the proud parents (and as we went to her sister’s graduation, too) we need to be there! So far, I have found an affordable flight from Biarritz to Stanstead and back. Which would mean getting a couple of buses from wherever we are (Pamplona?) to Biarritz, fly to Stanstead, train to Durham, dress smartly for the occasion (clothes stored with Dominique before we start the walk), celebrate, jump on a train and reverse the route back to the place we first though of (Pamplona?).

Of course, I will keep looking, but have you got any other ideas? Have you travelled around there and perhaps know a different route? Perhaps we are too close to it and something extremely obvious has been missed by us…

Ideas in an email please.

See, I told you we would soon be getting you to do some of the work!

The wandering minstrel sings - about planning (?)

When I was eleven I went on a day trip from my new secondary school, based in a place called Dalkeith, to the darling city of Edinburgh.

Unlike any other field trip, this one was run by a Catholic priest who was an English teacher and he was trying to instil a wonder and excitement about books into his new charges. We went to the Scottish National Library and were taught how to search for books, how to order them from the librarians and generally how to be comfortable and confident in such a special place. This came in very handy for me as I ended up spending many hours in this and a couple of other wonderful libraries when i began to habitually skip school not long after this field trip.

He also took us to a cafe and bought us a simple meal, but before this we trawled the wondrous range of second hand book shops that used to grace that lovely city. I didn’t have any money to buy books then, but it did not stop me from looking, falling in love with and promising myself that I would, some day, possess such riches as these.

This was all at the later stages of the first term in my first year at secondary school. It was a bitterly cold, snowy/slushy day and I was not adequately dressed to keep myself properly protected from the weather – but this did not stop me from remembering the day fondly.

This weird priest also organised trips to the annual D’Oyly Cart productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the Kings Theatre (well, I think it was that theatre). None of his pupils could escape the preparations he would make for these trips and everyone, regardless, was subjected to the libretto, the songs, the recordings, etc so that when we attended (or not) we would be familiar with the whole thing. This was a great thing to do as we were then able to enjoy a lot of the games that the cast regularly played as they did their performances - giving off topical references and messing around with the edges of the script. The Gondoliers I vaguely remember and the Mikado I remember quite vividly.

When something is good you will enjoy it no matter how well prepared you are for it. If it is special, preparing for it will not take the mystery, or any of its unique quality away from it. Rather, it will only add to what is already special; give you more to appreciate at the time and more to ponder on when you have the chance to look back.

And, there are times when the planning and envisioning are pleasures, too.

So, when Alison and I are sitting pouring over maps and arguing about which road to take don’t look on us with pity. The path is already in our eyes and our feet are beginning to march to the tune of the beckoning road. Join in the game; offer ideas and advice; add your own harmony to the song!

Planning is an odd thing. It stops you from wishing your life away by allowing you to focus on the future .... while living in the present(?)!

......Sorry, getting a bit carried away, but I have to find some solace when Christmas is all around!

Have a happy Christmas and enjoy the coming year!

And, yes, I promise to actually write about the route in more detail in the next few blogs!

Walsingham to Santiago

Alison and Ian will be walking from Walsingham in North Norfolk, England, to Santiago de Compostella in North West Spain (over 1500 miles) starting on Easter Monday, 5th April 2010. They will be walking via Vezelay in the Burgundy region of France.

This blog will be one of the ways you will be able to keep up to date with where they are, what they are doing and so on.

There are three logos displayed on this site and they, along with the title "The cross and the shell" need a little explanation:

The bird is the Housing Justice logo - Alison is the Chief Executive of Housing Justice, which is the Christian voice for the homeless and badly housed in England and Wales (see their website at http://www.housingjustice.org.uk/). We will be raising money for Housing Justice through our walk.

The cross represents Student Cross (and the other pilgrimages that have grown from Student Cross) - Student Cross is a cross carrying pilgrimage which started after WW2 and involves pilgrims walking during Holy Week, carrying a large wooden cross. Several groups walk from different parts of England to Walsingham where they then celebrate Easter together. This pilgrimage has its roots in a cross carrying march for peace which happened immediately after WW2 and ended up in Vezelay, which is one of our major stopping points en route to Santiago (see http://www.studentcross.org.uk/, http://www.northerncross.org.uk/ and http://www.scottishcross.org.uk/ for the other pilgrimage details).

The shell represents the Camino, or pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostella - the best known route is probably the section through Northern Spain from St Jean Pied de Port. We will join that after walking across part of England and through the length of France but our whole journey will be a pilgrimage very much in the traditional style - on foot, carrying all our belongings with us, etc...

So, "the cross and the shell" is our way of saying that we plan to link the three ancient pilgrimage sites of Walsingham, Vezelay and Santiago by establishing a new pilgrimage route between them.

Of course, we plan to keep you up to date on our planning through this blog and perhaps we will even get some feedback with ideas and advice from you!

We will soon have a facebook page and at the end of January we will have a website with a just giving facility and some mapping links so that, when we get going, you will be able to track our progress each day! So you will have ample opportunities to find out what is happening as we wear out the shoe leather across Europe.