DAY 64 - DURRES TO TIRANA: 24 MILES (47,976 STEPS)

June 26, 2011

Durres 24 miles (Total: 716) 47,976 (Total: 1,365,091)

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford

This is the reality of writing a travel blog: I am supposed to be updating the blog every day—you know, that idyllic picture of arriving at your charming guest house at 5PM after a gentle stroll through a strange land; having a warm shower, supper and then rattling off four hundred words of incredible insight and observation before turning in. Well for the benefit of my master’s back home—it ain’t like that.

Firstly, I cannot just write off the cuff; I can answer emails and texts in that way, but not writing 400-500 words. To write a blog piece, I need to be in the right frame of mind and in the right place. Secondly, when/if I find somewhere to stay, I often arrive late at night and just collapse into the bed—yes that means I didn’t have a shower, probably because there wasn’t a shower. Then at other times there are meetings/interviews/conversations, because the purpose of the walk is not to write a travel blog but to promote the Olympic Truce. Then let’s say you find that great cafe with Internet access you were dreaming about and just as you are about to start the phone rings and then a few more emails arrive; before you know where the time has gone, it is lunchtime and the waiter is hovering wondering whether you are really going to make that espresso last for eight hours. Then it dawns on you that you haven’t posted an update for nearly ten days and you pour through your notes trying to find interesting things to write.

That brings me to 7^th July, 2011 and I am to be found in the Conference Room at the British Ambassador’s Residence in Tirana, which has been generously made available to me for six hours to try and catch up on my blogs…I am fed up…I am behind with my walk, the phone keeps going with great potential meetings in Tirana—some of which I just can’t resist—such as with the Albanian Olympic Committee and a group of parliamentarians who want to initiate a project on the truce, but I must keep my head down and grind out the blog pieces in order to record some of the amazing encounters which I have been privileged to have had over the past two weeks. It is a bit like writing a dissertation—the fieldwork may be fantastic, but you only get the marks for writing it up.

I look at the clock, it is 11:22am—I have had two meetings this morning, answered emails, phone calls, but I haven’t produced a single blog entry. Silvana, the Ambassador’s wonderful housekeeper comes by to ask if I want a coffee (it’s now 11:35am). Christine Costantini, the Ambassador’s PA, who introduced me to her cousin who had walked through Albania, calls by to say hello (it’s now 11:50am). I recall Ambassador Fiona Mcilwham saying she would call back at 12 noon to see how I am doing … I start to panic.

I get a flashback to Breckenbed’s Secondary Modern School, Gateshead and Mr Burton is walking between the line of desks…I can hear his heavy footsteps and the creaking of his leather shoes, but there is not one word written on the page of my text book…I pray for the bell to go and in return promise God that I will not daydream in any more lessons, but will be assiduous (or ‘work my butt off’ as I would have said before I got my Grade II, CSE in English). It’s no good, God has heard it all before. It’s not as if I hadn’t been warned. Mr Burton arrives and his enormous hairy hands pick up my text book as, slightly for effect, he turns every page to see if there is anything written–he knew fine well there wasn’t. He then displays my effort to the rest of the class; shouts a few words the gist of which were that he appreciated the contribution I had made to his class in recent weeks and would like to spend an additional hour after school that day getting to know me a little bit better if that was okay with me.

The flash back works……I hear the gates of the Residence creek open, it is 12 noon precisely,  and the tyres of the official Range Rover crunch the gravel path, sounding like a drum roll before the axe falls.

I have an adrenalin rush…..

I begin…

Having spent 61 of 64 days walking alone, it was great to be back in a team for the walk from Durres to Tirana. Pastor Akil Pano, Gesi Hysenaj are new friends and wonderful hosts from Tirana, and Michael Green and Anthony Cordle who are ‘old’ friends from London joined me also. We set off from Hotel Skampa at 6AM and arrived out our hotel, Qendra Stephen, at 8PM which made for a long day, but the time went very quick because of the conversation along the way. Pastor Akil told us how his mother was required to do a hard march along this road under the Communist times to teach discipline—by the end of the day I kind of knew how she felt. Along the way I did an ‘in depth’ interview for News 24 TV at Ndroq and we were hosted to a fabulous tea by the Peza family beside Lalm. At night we were taken out for dinner at the impressive rooftop Xheko Impreial Restaurant.

“How are you doing?” enquires Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the esteemed Republic of Kosova

“Very well…just finishing off another piece now.”

Fortunately she hasn’t been fully briefed by Mr Burton, is dashing straight into another important meeting and so doesn’t stop to scroll through Microsoft Word to test the veracity of that claim…

“Phew….that was close. 1 down 9 to go!”

God shakes his head in disbelief.