TO TRAVEL IN HOPE

Saturday 6th September, London. 

20 days.

300 miles.

                                                       Who you calling a fool?

                                               Hieronymus Bosch's Ship of Fools

There can be little doubt that undertaking a big undertaking is predicated on having a hobby horse of sufficient persistence that it will not give you leave to abandon it by the roadside. The hobby horse is dressed and presented to the public and as soon as it has taken its first unhobbled step, there can be no halting until it has acquitted itself of all duties and services. This walk. Thusly.

So with no great thought and even less planning, I set out over half a month ago to offer moral support to my friend Greg Love, on a part of his traipse to Burgundy. We, being sound(ish) of wind and limb, reckoned on a total of 18 days to reach Reims Cathedral from Trafalgar Square. At no point did we factor in rest days, injury breaks or sightseeing. And yet all of these were somehow shoehorned into the adventure. It is impossible to set out from your front door with nothing but shoe-gazing and pain as inspiration. 

I have previously mentioned my rucksack. Monkey. When he and I separated yesterday back in London it was odd to see him emptied of content and all of a sudden of no purpose. He who had hugged me tightly around the waist or swung indulgently from my shoulders. He the pain, he the constant, he the comfort. Silenced, attic-bound. I have had spinal surgery in the past and yet my greatest twinge came from downing tools and being free to walk without this burden. Is this Stockholm syndrome in action?

                                                      Man without Monkey.

So what are the insights, frights and delights of such a walk? Well, just being in my own head without interruption for so many hours a day was a challenge. There is a great reconditioning that comes with being 'conscious' with your body for so long and not relying on your fingers to type your thoughts or your mouth to dictate to others their behaviour. It is your feet, your lungs, your shoulders and back that decide if you will progress on the path today, each day, every day. And more than any of these it is the hidden, bloody-minded drivenness that refuses you the rest you crave, the beer you would sell your flat for, the relief of boot-removal...because you just cannot fall below the par you have set yourself. And walking with another bloke provides the iron in the spine that ensures that whoever buckles first is a total blouse-wearer cod-pilgrim.   

                                     James the Not Quite as Serious as Sigeric. 

                                             And clearly not wearing a blouse. 

And what of inspiration along the way? Well, Kent is a staggeringly beautiful county. There are very few places on earth I have seen that are so blessed, wealthy, kempt, inspiring. Just filled with the bounty of tended care. Yet cross the blue ruin of the Channel and northern France seems like a flattened waffle of patched fields that reek of agricultural waste and offer very little relief when all a pilgrim wants is a hillock, a spinney, a thatched roof, a pub for heaven's sake. Curiously, the scenery only livened up when we skirted the northern approaches to Reims and headed up to the Montagne de Reims to seek a vinous path into the city. Suddenly, the comb-rakes of vines turn the landscape into a series of perfect green hurdles, all promising a moment of delight.

                                                       Steep breather.

The moments of inspiration:

                                    Laon: staggeringly beautiful and unexpected. 

And perspiration:

                                                 The Plight of the Bumblebee 

I reminded myself throughout the journey that whilst this grande randonnee was inspired by a desire to provide clean drinking water for as many as people as I could it was not going to be without its own transformative elements personally. Did I change or learn anything? Maybe not, but I was reminded of the benefits of slowness. Even in a dull landscape that is devoted to wheat or barley or corn, there is so much to reflect on. We, in Europe, do not live is lands devoted to massive production, devoid of settlement. And everywhere you look, people cling to villages, ways of life, ways of living that may make little commercial sense but are seasoned, watered and blooded by history. 

The greatest shock for me was heading into the Somme and visiting Thiepval where my great great uncle Harold Sinclair died on this very day 98 years ago. Blown to pieces in a rear trench at 3.30 pm by German artillery in a small stretch of woodland called Leuze Wood. He was training to become a lay priest and had only volunteered in December 1915 and been with his London Scottish unit for less than 6 weeks. Just one of 750,000.

Here's to you Harold Lawrence Sinclair.

Another - personal - reason for my undertaking this walk was to treat it is a fare thee well love letter to the wine trade in which I have worked for almost 20 years. As mentioned I am planning to move from wine into water and starting an MBA in Sustainability at Bath in a fortnight in order to do so. I don't think man (no nor women neither) can live without either but I suspect water has to be a precondition for upgrading to wine. I am an immensely fortunate boy in that I have enjoyed some exquisite moments in life and met some of the gentlest and kindest folk in wine. What has united the best of them is an implicit sense that life is a celebration of itself...that we are rich beyond measure in ourselves, in each other. All the other stuff drives us apart. 

Lastly, and very importantly, I am overwhelmed with gratitude towards all of you who have been so supportive and kind. I set out thinking I might raise a couple of hundred quid if I bullied my family but so many of you have been unbelievably generous. I will send a note when I finally sign off to thank you (if you want anonymity, please say so). The upshot of all this, is that thousands of people will get clean water for life. And you lot done it. I just walked with a monkey. So please be assured of my immense thanks. A different world is possible.

                                                              Huge thanks.

Week 2 - In Which One Names One's Rucksack and then Addresses it in French.

This is Day 13 and we are in Bapaume. Spread across this part of France are numerous World War One battlefields, cemetries and memorials. But there is strength in contrast and so I am enclosing a gratuitous picture of a blonde woman standing on a plane's wing.

Gratuitous totty.

So nearing the end of the second week on the road has thrown up many lessons. Principally about exhaustion and the place from which determination to continue hails. Also about how the mind teeters on the brink between coherence and randomness. 

By the beginning of week two I had named my new rucksack Monkey and in the moments when he needed to be reslung on my shoulders after a break or in the morning when he had gained a few kilos from the morning's dew, I found it quite normal to speak to him in French with a mixture of threats and imprecations. Come on, monkey, get up there. Monkey, any more rocking and you end up in a hedge etc.

There are also times at the beginning of the day - the rare days - when after a sound sleep and a decent supper the monkey seems to hop on voluntarily and wraps himself optimistically around my shoulders looking forward to scanning the day's scenery. 

The scenery in northern France is, for the most part, dull. It is largely flat, predominantly agricultural and smells vile. The path is mostly tarmac.

The greatest challenge (feet a cote) has been the weather. The walk to Dover from London was bathed is sunshine and gentle cooling breezes. France by contrast has been relentlessly wet and at some points almost unwalkable. Walking along various Routes Nationales and B roads when passing lorries engulf you in muddy spray and your clothes end up sticking to you like a wet shower curtain leaves a doubt in the mind as to the purpose of it all. 

However, in a town whose name I have forgotten, we encountered a pilgrim friendly gite where there were beds, an equipped kitchen and joy of joys a washing machine and dryer. It cannot even be described the intense pleasure of dry clothes and real sheets and pillows after sodden tents and wet feet. 

The picture above is a curious one. We finally managed to regain the Via Francigena after numerous digressions and poor map reading and headed off down a grassy tunnel only to encounter this. A 30 foot heap of soil and rock deliberately placed on the path to block passage. Climbing it might have been an option but the farmer was up there with an earth mover shifting more soil so we took a mind-bendingly long diversion across Somme inspired fields of mud to arrive in a wealthy village which against all codes of humanity and surely against French law did not have a cafe. Straw, camel, back. We hitched the last few miles into Bapaume and found shelter and rather a good meal in a small hotel next to a largely derelict set of factories. 

In fairness to northern France, they do make pretty darned good beer and despite the rain, a thirst still prevails.

Tomorrow, if the rain relents, I am going to try to find the grave marker of my great great Uncle Harold Sinclair who was in the London Scottish Regiment and is buried at the cemetery at Thiepval.

                                                                 PEACE

And lastly a gigantic thanks to everyone who has made a donation to Global Angels. I am £200 away now from being able to provide an entire village with clean drinking water for life! Anyone, who stills feels able to spare a few quid will make a very big difference. James.

Embracing One's Inner Pack Animal Part Deux

What I was hoping to get a chance to discuss is how abject a figure one cuts at the end of a day's walking. Hobbling, grim determination etched on the face and the mantra of 'water for kids' humming in my mind. 

It becomes military in the sense you break camp in the morning, try to pack your stuff as tightly and drily as possible and then find a three- or five-point way to hurl a 22 kilo sack over your shoulders. 

This presents a fine picture to the outside world where you look like you are undergoing St Vitus's Dance as a result of extreme ergotism. Flinging your shoulders now one way now another, hopping to tighten the waist strap so the weight digs into the hips not the shoulders and then brutally tightening the chest strap to eliminate road wobble. 

Thus far I have abandoned two backpacks. One before departure due to unsuitability and a second (dating back to when I was 17) because it offered only a rogue sumo strap for support at the waist and two knife-like bands at the shoulder. The second is in a bin by a playground somewhere in Kent. Hence the American football shoulder pads made of cut up sponges of previous photos. 

The military element is like a forced march. The distance for the day is set, often non-negotiable and a camp site of some sort envisioned at the other end. There is no officer, no external agency to enforce discipline which is why doing it alone might be much more challenging. I know for one, I would likely see each roadside offering of fruit, veg, each village cafe, as an insurmountable temptation to stop. Go local. Be authentic etc. 

So on current form we are covering somewhere between 12 -17 miles a day.  

The main thing though is to somehow accept that the pack on your back is not going away. You cannot relieve yourself of it. It is like a family member, it will be there as you stumble, as you breach a ridge, as you find a bit of scenery that makes you sit down with an 'oompf' of inarticulate joy.

That said, I do feel that there are improvements to be made to pilgrims' travel. A horse, equipped with a suitable cot might work. See above. Or as most tourists do it, a transport that carries the baggage and let's you go from A to B at your leisure without the murder of crippling blisters and obscene nerve twinges that make you sway like John Merrick. 

Yet, being open to the road, and open to the kindness of strangers matters as much as the discipline of moving on. We were treated to a tour of the area south of Calais by the irrepressible character of Olivier Caulier, a factory worker cum bus driver whose damaged foot from a motocross accident did not stop him a) driving b) shimmying up and down stairs c) offering a motormouth guide to his corner of the world. Without him, the Pas-de-Calais would have remained what it is to most Brits when they get to France...the bit you hurtle through as you head south.

As it happened we ate well and discovered a gem of a restaurant in Ardres called L'Authentique. The single best starter platter I have had for years with exquisite hams from Spain and France, the freshest tapenade with chunks of uber fresh garlic, olive and anchovy and a novelty on me - goat cheese combined like putty around fresh herbs and attached to a kind of thick hair pin. Utterly delicious. Cracking, if limited wine list, as they have only been open a month. I will try to put something up on Tripadvisor as this place is a worthy stop and we were clapped by the cooks as brave stout pilgrims attempting the long road south who needed a decent meal to see us on our way.

The great minds behind L'Authentique. Hats off, you guys provided the best meal of the trip so far.

It seems improbable but we are still in the Pas-de-Calais and now at the nunnery of Wisques. I never imagined I would bed down in a nunnery and any Sister Act nonsense is soon dispelled. We were greeted by Soeur Lucy who has been here for 53 years and makes the most ridiculously good jams and chutneys. I am not a Christian but I am looking forward to supper tonight in the Abbey. Slightly worried there will be no wine so I am taking the precaution of visiting a local hotel in advance. As it happens there is a huge birthday party here and I have managed to insinuate myself as a shaven headed northern cousin. The road breeds necessity if nothing else. And the view is awesome from this hill looking out towards St-Omer. 

Days 3-6 : Embracing One's Inner Pack Animal Part One

90 miles on foot so far...

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

JRR Tolkien.

After 6 days on the road, we have made it to Dover in time to catch a dawn ferry to France tomorrow morning. The path so far has included suburbs, villages, woodlands, fields filled with different crops being harvested, ready to harvest or fallow. It has included pavements, tarmac, cobbles, rocky, sandy, flooded, caked dry, field and undergrowth.

The very slowed pace of walking gives the impression that the landscape hides any drama because changes take place so unobtrusively that shoe- or cloud-gazing means you miss nothing. But after a few hours on the road, subtle differences become more striking. The change in the colour of the soil. From dusty white chalk to solid impacted clay. The fields : hay, wheat, black beans, wild flowers, fallow, unknown, stubbly. The smells : fresh wheat, dank undergrowth, pig flop (especially overpowering and covers a fair part of the North Downs Way), and occasionally the sweet breath of a meadow.

From Otford on Day 3 we headed due East with Cuxton as our destination for the day. The going was very hard and after 17 miles of ups and downs, towards late afternoon in the driving rain - but having made the official Cuxton border - we downed tools and flagged a local to take us into town. Over a restorative pint we realised we would be unable to cover the 30 plus miles during our 'training' week before hitting Canterbury and then joining the official Via Francigena down to Dover to catch our ferry. 

So logic compounded agony and we caught a train from Rochester to Canterbury in order to put us back on track. 

                                                         Bunch of jokers.

                                                         Bunch of fishers.

After a visit to the Crypt beneath the Cathedral and a blessing with other pilgrims (an Italian couple and a girl from Bath) we camped outside the city and the following afternoon (after laundry and resolving technical issues with computers, cameras etc) we set off with a view to reaching Shepherds Well. In the event after 16 miles we spied a campsite in the unusually named Womenswold. 

The camp owner Jackie helped us out and pointed us to Woolage Green for supper at a fantastic little boozer called the Two Sawyers.

                                 Guac-a-Mole on the Post Box at Womenswold.

                                                      James in Womenswold.

Day 2: Beyond the M25

16.8 miles

On the morning of our second day we left the leafy environs and Blackheath and headed south east past Chislehurst and followed a Roman 'slog' road which was straight and rose inexorably if gently for mile after mile until passing over the M25 and a final swoop down into Otford. 

By some act of good grace Greg my walking companion went into a local church and a guy there gave us a lift up the forbidding slope to the ridge above the village where in the grounds of Lord Lyle (from Tate & Lyle sacharine fame) had built his manse, known locally as Treacle Towers. 

In the grounds was a walled camping ground where fellow campers hearing our tale fed us goulash and hot chocolate. And with the last mouthful, came the challenge of pitching tents. Half an hour later and having restrained from turning the air shocking blue, collapse.

Day One: Central London to the suburbs

15 Miles.

Midday, pork pie in hand from Paxton & Whitfield on Jermyn Street, and stood beneath the statue of Charles I in Trafalgar Square, the journey officially begins.

                  The famous statue of Charles the First cast by Hubert Le Sueur c. 1633

                                                         And on 16th August 2014

Saturday was very sunny, a little breezy, some scudding clouds and a Teutonic Forest of tourists thronging central London. Our route took us past Charing Cross, Waterloo, Southwark Cathedral and past the Southbank.

                                   
                                     Anything goes at the Southbank Festival of Love.

Crossing Tower Bridge, the route led us past unrecognisably gentrified Wapping and felt obliged to stop for a pint at The Prospect of Whitby, allegedly the oldest pub in London dated back to 1520. 

The Thames Path then leads past the stench of money at Canary Wharf down to the bottom of the testicular shaped Isle of Dogs, under the Thames to pop up in the shadow of the Cutty Sark tea clipper. 

           The other Cutty Sark and one I have visited more than the boat over the years.

The final stretch for the day was up the steep hill onto Blackheath and down again to Lee.

Lesson for the day: a 25 kilo rucksack is stupidly heavy.

Sunday sees the pilgrims leave the suburbs and aim to be out past the M25 to join the North Downs Way at Otford in Kent.

So begins the journey...

In just over a week's time, I will step out of my front door and begin a 250 mile journey that - barring injury or accident - should lead me to the doors of Reims Cathedral in sunny Champagne.

The route, known as the Via Francigena - Canterbury to Rome - was first walked in 990 AD by the Archbishop of Canterbury. A religious type called Sigeric the Serious. I am not quite as serious as he was so I will halt in champagne for a well deserved beaker or two of bubbly. At some future date, I may continue the journey from where I leave off.

The official departure point is not Lee in south London where I will be leaving from and following the North Downs way to Canterbury but is instead Canterbury Cathedral. Above is a picture of the remarkable fan vault ceiling. 

Why am I doing this? Well I am not religious but I suspect this is a path that has been trodden since Neolithic times and I wanted to go for a decent walk. Coincidentally I will be raising money for Global Angels http://www.globalangels.org/

The charity provides long-term sustainable support for families so that they have access to safe drinking water, education, health services and food. Unlike many charities every penny you give goes to the end recipient with nary a 4x4 or swish office in Shoreditch in sight.

I have set up an account with Givey.com if anyone feels like supporting Global Angels (and me) in their good works. 100% of any money donated goes to Global Angels of which 100% goes to those in need.