DAY 256 - VERDUN TO ST MENEHOULD: 24.4 MILES (48,800 STEPS)

24.4 miles (Total: 2402.2 miles) – 48,800 steps (Total: 5,101,001 steps)      

Apart from two short symbolic walks in Berlin, I had not put in a serious day of walking for ten days – the longest break of the walk so far. Coupled with this, it had been a wonderful Christmas and New Year with family and friends in Berlin and Paris and one that I will never forget. After the rigors of packing and unpacking every day and the uncertainty as to where I was going to stay every evening, it was just great to have a base. As if the Man from Upstairs was giving me a stocking filler, there was also a Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts just around the corner. I ate like a student who had been on Pot Noodles for a term having blown his grant cheque on booze and an iPhone in week 1 and then suddenly arrives at an all you can eat buffet with to find that someone else is paying!

When I said goodbye at Gare du Nord I can say that I don’t recall ever feeling so alone, forlorn even. It was a long journey back from Gare du Est to Verdun in more ways than mere time. I though that hitting the road would be the perfect antidote to the January blues, but I was wrong. Something had happened over Christmas and New Year that was much more than simply a break from the walk, it was a deep, deep desire to go home. A sense in which a job had been done, but a high price had been paid and I now questioned whether I had the desire or the resources to keep on paying.

I rose early the next morning having had a restless night on account of my shoulder and arm, which although the accident was now two months ago was still causing me great pain. I began to think that there was something seriously wrong that needed attention, but I wouldn’t be able to do that until I was back. Then another surprise – my clothes seemed to have shrunk whilst they had been in my rucksack over Christmas and I struggled to fasten the belt on my waterproof trousers whilst my thermal vest no longer covered by bulging stomach (see pic).

To add to these woes, I had lost my other arm—my Blackberry—in Berlin and for some reason that remained unknown even to O2, I couldn’t just go into the O2 store in Berlin and get a replacement phone and SIM—they had to be validated in the UK and so it would be another two weeks before I would be in a known location (Paris) long enough to have it sent out. The loss of the Blackberry was a total game changer because I relied so much on telephone calls and emails to keep the campaign ticking along; SMS messages from friends and family to keep me plodding along; Google Latitude to keep me on the right track and the notes function to record details along the way for my blog. There was also the sense of being stranded should a problem arise.

I had been here before, or had I? My response in the past was just to get moving and work it off, but from the first step out into the cold and driving rain of Verdun I began to question the received wisdom. Yes things had been tougher before with nights of sleeping rough, heat exhaustion, shin splints, and latterly a broken arm, but the reason for my questioning this time was not because things had been tough, it was instead because they had been so good. When faced with great challenges, our instinct is always to dig deep and battle on (though that may not be the right metaphor for a truce walk), but the Christmas break and the joy and fun of time again with friends and family seemed to sap my will to go on more than anything else.

It is said that we see things not as THEY are but as WE are – this I have found to be true. Because I now wanted to be at home continuing the campaign with others rather than alone on the walk, my mind started flooding with lots of good reasons why it was time to ‘draw stumps’: the campaign was petering out – there had been very little in the way of real progress on the truce despite all the emails, telephone calls, and even sending out hundreds of newsletters before Christmas. I began to think that the blessing of there being little or no interest in my walking was that there would be little or no interest if I were to stop walking. I could justify it on the basis of the shoulder injury that now meant I couldn’t carry my rucksack as well as the fact that I had now exhausted all of my money leaving me entirely dependent on the generosity of friends and family to get home. In terms of the finances, the campaign, and health I began to convince myself that I should call it a day. Nice try but I failed, that wasn’t so bad as I had failed in most tings in life, but I had given it my best shot. It wasn’t the hardship that got me, it was the goodness of time with friends and family.

Coming down the hill into Dombasle en Argonne, my iPod shuffled onto ‘I Won’t Back Down’ by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and there was a momentary lift in my spirits. I seized the lift and put it on replay/loop. It seemed to work. I began to think of the people who I had met along the journey who had been inspired by the truce and what I was seeking to do. Sure there weren’t many, but numbers shouldn’t matter; if we have the opportunity to influence one person with a sense of hope and of what is possible then that is a huge thing. Conversely, to let down even one person by giving up and going home is also a huge thing, whatever the reason.

I marched on beyond Clermont where I had planned to stop, but the one hotel was still closed and went another fifteen kilometres to Ste Menehould. I finished the day physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted. I drowned ‘some’ wine, well okay ‘a lot’ of win, but purely for medicinal reasons and fell asleep for a few hours giving thanks that I had made it through another day, albeit by the skin of my teeth.