I’ve got to admit to being a bit low of late. It’s got multiple causes. First, the hoped for reconciliation with Nina came to absolutely nothing. Next, in my Blackburn apartment I’ve got an utter arsehole, who has not only got dogs in it – so a breach of contract – but he’s stopped paying …
One problem when the weather is so atrocious is that there’s no one about to talk to. They are all wisely inside, leaving me alone except for the barking hellhound is nearly every Hungarian garden. Luckily I came to my first Hungarian campsite and met Ferenc, the elderly owner, whose English was weak but still …
From 1996 until 2001 I lived in Austria. Back then it had a reputation as an expensive place, but that was because the only people who had any experience of the country had been there on skiing holidays, and everything on a skiing holiday is expensive. A small, apres-ski schnapps cost upward of one kidney. …
To find my way around the world I use an app called Maps.Me. In many ways it’s perfect. It covers the entire planet, works offline and can plot a route from one location to another. But it has one major fault: It wants me dead. The other day it said to me: “There you go, …
I’ve now walked 1,250 miles/2,000 km and in a few days’ time I will have walked 500 miles/800 km right across Germany. And very soon after that, I will have to leave the Schengen Zone. As the UK is no longer in the EU, my 90-day allowance is up. Reducing freedom of movement works in …
You know how the German language has words for concepts that we didn’t know we needed in the United Kingdom? Words like schadenfreude, kindergarten, rucksack and doppelgänger? And then we realised how they were such useful ideas, but we just couldn’t be arsed to invent our own word and so adopted the Deutsch one instead? …
Journeys like these often involve meeting people, making fleeting friendships and then instantly moving on. Others become a more permanent feature of your life. Like my old walking trainers. But today they had to be retired, God bless their soles. I’ve no idea how old they were. I found them in the back of a …
Before I started this walk it was a toss-up as to whether or not I’d take walking poles. In the end I chose not to for three reasons: first, the weight; second, I’d mostly, I believed, be walking on flat roads; and third, the impression they give. You know what I mean. When you see …
I think I’ve probably been a bit down on most of the countries I’ve visited so far on this walk. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve enjoyed nearly every single day, but having done so much travelling in the past, I know when things could be a lot better. I mean, England is *well* England. I …
So I’m back on the road and it feels great to be moving again. And properly moving, not shuffling along like an alcoholic tramp. (Oi, don’t make up your own jokes!) To begin with I felt like I’d made a mistake. I hadn’t felt a twinge of leg pain for at least a couple of …
