DAY 229 - BERG TO SARREGUEMINES: 21.4 MILES (42,800 STEPS)

8 December, 2011

21.4  miles (Total: 2241.1 miles)–42,800 (Total: 4,791,201 steps)

Brothers are often different. I am sure this is merely a function of competing for attention. If the first child is wild then the second is often compliant and if the first child is compliant then the second child is wild. Perhaps for this reason Rob Parsons at CARE for the Family instructs that if you have a compliant first child then whatever you do, don’t have a second. David was the first child and was compliant, scholarly, popular, spiritual, organised and a natural leader, which didn’t exactly leave me an awful lot of room to grow into.

I recall being contacted by my former Headteacher at Heathfield Senior High, Mr Fearon after I was elected as an MP—he was in search of another ‘old boy’ to offer as role model to offer to students alongside Paul Gascoigne (aka Gazza) and clearly thought he had landed on the right one. I was introduced before the school assembly as a “distinguished former student of the school who had been Head Boy, a leading organiser of extra-curricular groups such as the British Association of Young Scientists, Young Ornithologist Club and the Christian Union and had an exemplary academic record which had secured him a place at Northumbria University before beginning his career in politics.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was actually the other guy for whom the only remarkable thing about his five ‘O’ level results was that they spelt F-U-D-G-E and that the only time I ever met him was a rather painful encounter for me after I had forged my father’s signature on an absence note—with my typical luck Mr Fearon insured his car with my father and was able to show his actual handwriting on a Renewal Notice he had just received.

I was always very proud to have such a wonderful big brother and still am. Today David still has all the qualities which he displayed in his youth and they are being used to tremendous effect in West Oxfordshire amongst voluntary organisations—if David Cameron was ever looking to re-launch the ‘Big Society’ then he should simply present David, explain what he does and say, “go ye therefore and do likewise.”

Why did I go off on that tangent?  Well to explain a difference of approach which was to be influential on the days walking; I had spotted a possible route which would shave a few miles off the walk by avoiding Sarre Union and veering off on farms roads at Rimsdorf. David had suggested we got some more detailed maps or perhaps even drove the route, but that sounded too much like ‘preparation’ for me, so I headed off with a tourist map of the area. I took the farm track, which I thought the map was referring to, and before long I was climbing fences and trying to trek across muddy fields. I could see the road I needed to be on in the distance, but made a complete hash of getting there so it actually took longer. Still when you don’t have the mindset to prepare, you must learn through experience or the ‘School of hard knocks’, as some have put it. This I did and realised that the line referred not to a farm track, but to a forest track and from then on I made good progress on a very pleasant walk through the working forest to Herbitzheim. David was waiting for me at the railway station in Sarreguemines and offered to take me to the Tourist Information to get some more detailed maps for the next day—this time I agreed.