DAY 201 - AIGLE TO MONTREUX: 9.8 MILES (19,600 STEPS)

9 November, 2011

9.8 miles (Total: 1967.3 miles) 19,600 steps (Total: 4,239,201 steps)

A shorter walk today reflecting the fact that I had meant to finish the previous day at Bex, but had just missed the train to Montreux and so strode on a further 10km to Aigle. It worked out well as this was Xuelin’s (pic) last day of her visit on behalf of the Support Team back in London and there was so much paperwork to do – it is one of the hidden aspects of the walk that I am still a serving, albeit unpaid, member of the House of Lords and have lots of correspondence to respond to and forms to fill in.

I have never been a very good delegator of work and I am a hopeless manager of people so, although I have some wonderful support available to me, I tend to do things myself rather than take the time to explain to someone else. There is something in me which recoils from asking people to do any of my work whereas I am more than willing to undertake any number of tasks for others. This is one of the reasons why I am unsuited to leadership roles, but have tended to perform well as a support act to others. This weakness is made all the more obvious when I am physically limited as I am at the moment, but it is difficult to change a lifelong failing even when there is an acute need.

One of the more urgent pieces of paperwork were the forms for my claim for medical insurance to cover the £3,500 cost of my 24 hour stay in hospital. Filling in the forms, I realise how absolutely privileged we are to have our National Health Service and are therefore spared the experience of having to search through our luggage overseen by an administrator to find a credit card with sufficient available credit in order for payment to be secured before treatment is commenced. As I have said before, the treatment I received was exceptional but I do think the NHS is one of the most civilising and humane institutions of our culture, and the more I see of the alternatives, the more I am convinced of its value.

We take a walk along the beautiful lakeside on our way to the railway station, Xuelin bound for Geneva airport and myself bound for Aigle. As we walk, we come across a statue to Freddie Mercury – I must admit that I had not realised that he was Asian, born in Zanzibar he was a Parsi from Gujarat. His family fled London following the revolution in Zanzibar and that is where his interest and extraordinary talent for music began to flourish. Freddie Mercury had a home and built a recording studio on the hills above Montreux and there is now an official ‘Freddie Mercury Memorial Day’ on the 1^st June each year in Montreux. Last year, the tributes were led by the Bearpark and Esh Colliery brass band from Durham – small world, great entertainer.