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 …
It was all going so well. After the leg incident a few days into France I was worried I wouldn’t be able to carry on with the walk. But then 10 days of rest at the lovely organic farm/campsite I thought I was cured. I continued into Belgium. After a few days of low mileage …
What makes a thing a thing that tourists want to see? What makes a crowd flock to this statue but not to that one? Especially when the one to which they flock is so extraordinarily crap? I ask this after yesterday’s viewing of Brussels’ Mannekin Pis, the city’s emblem, a little boy having a waz. …
Sometimes you hear about people who seem impossible. Some of them are bonkers. Take Monsieur Mangetout for example, a Frenchman who made a living out of eating weird things. I don’t mean sausage in chocolate sauce. I mean bicycles and supermarket trolleys. He once ate a tree. And he even ate a bloody Cesna, for …
A Right Pain in the…Leg So disrupted has my schedule become that I nearly forgot to write this week’s blog. The other possible reason is that I have very little to tell you. Since my birthday, on Wednesday 18th May, I have moved forward precisely 0 kilometres. The day before, a couple of miles before …
