DAY 187 - PREMOSELLO-CHIOVENDA TO DOMODOSSOLA: 11.8 MILES (23,600 STEPS)

26 October, 2011

11.8 miles (Total 1824.8 miles) 23,600 steps (Total: 3,953,201 steps)

The added benefit of taking the train from Premosello to Domodossola the previous day was that I arrived to the hotel, which was conveniently located just across the road from the station, in time for a scheduled phone interview with North East legend, Pam Royle and Ian Payne of ITV’s North East Tonightprogramme which had been set up the producer Mary Wimpress. I wanted ensure I had a good line to them as Mary goes to a lot of effort to do these regular updates using pics from my Flikr site to illustrate the interview. I didn’t want the call ‘watered down’ by the spray of trucks whilst sheltering under a tree at the roadside, so being able to speak from a quiet hotel room on a good quality line was a bonus. I do get a shiver down my spine when Pam says “This is Pam and Ian in Gateshead, can you hear us.”

My hometown, Gateshead! I think of how much I miss it. The welcome as you enter from the Angel of the North, our first home in Beechwood Avenue, Low Fell, Saltwell Park, where I would push Matt and Alex around in their push chairs and where in a few years it will be their turn to return the compliment, Chowdene Chapel, the Sage concert hall, Kell’s Lane School, my father and uncle’s insurance office where I had my first job, the Metro Centre which I had the honour of along with John Hall escorting Margaret Thatcher around when she came up to support me in my first General Election campaign in 1987, Emmanuel City Technology College which was conceived during that visit in 1987 and delivered three years later by Peter Vardy—both of these buildings, less than a mile apart, separated by the Gateshead Garden Festival site (another Conservative policy idea),  were to transform the economic prospects of the town by showing that through vision, self-belief, excellence and enterprise wastelands can be transformed into lush meadows of commerce and fertile minds in which the seeds of learning could be planted and flourish.  Gateshead continues to shape my vision of the purpose and power of politics.

The photo is of what I thought was the Matterhorn, but was mistaken…..still, impressive.