DAY 236 - LUXEMBOURG TO LONGWY: 19.3 MILES (36,600 STEPS)

15 December, 2011

19.3 miles (Total: 2336.6 miles) –36,600 (Total: 5,018,201 steps)

I was enjoying myself too much and feeling too much at home, so I knew I had to get moving or I would not reach Verdun by Christmas. The compromise in my mind was that I would walk to Longwy and from there catch the train back to Luxembourg where we had been invited to see the premier of a new British theatre production and join the after show reception.

As I prepared to set off from breakfast in the kitchen, suddenly everyone decided they were going to come along for the first part of the walk too, and that included Dido (pic)—so with great excitement everyone assembled and off we went in search of Rue de Longwy. We found it soon enough and most people went off in their required directions, but Pete Smith joined me all the way to Dippach.

Even though I had only been a house guest for a few days, I felt part of the family—the night before we had all gathered to decorate the Christmas tree with a steady supply wine, food and great humour. I hadn’t experienced this since I had been with the Marusic family in Split, Croatia and now as then I didn’t want to leave. Setting out for Longwy was my first step…….

The walk was unremarkable except for the fact that I started off walking in Luxembourg, walked briefly through Belgium and then ended up in France again, bringing home to me the close knitted community of continental Europe.

In the afternoon the weather turned very bad again, so bad that I needed to make a couple of unscheduled stops at a KFC in Baschange, which was next to an InterSport where there was a closing down sale and I managed to get a pair of Gortex gloves with 30% off. So delirious was I with the bargain on the gloves and the KFC, that I took the wrong road into Longwy – adding an unappreciated hour to my journey.  This also meant that I was not now going to make it back in time for the theatre.

When I eventually arrived back at the Residence, some of the guests were already arriving back from the theatre where the production had received mixed reviews and even the brief frisson caused by male and female nudity did not fully seem to compensate. As the theatre goers began to arrive back, so the house was filling up with UK Trade & Investment team members for the Benelux Conference, which would take place the next day, again at the Residence.

I turned in fairly early as I was still freezing cold and the fires in the residence could not be lit because they were waiting for a health and safety check and a chimney sweep before they were certified. 

DAY 234 - LUXEMBOURG

13 December, 2011

2317.3 miles–4,981,601 steps

After an early visit to the Embassy to meet the excellent team there, I came back to the Residence for the press conference and meeting with the Minister of Sport and the Luxembourg Olympic Committee. There was an excellent turn out which was a tribute to the persistence of Petra Kiefer and the reputation of HMA Alice Walpole. Pictured are: Sports minister, Romain Schneider, Sports ministry representative Marc Mathékowitsch, Luxembourg Olympic Committee, President Marc Theisen and London 2012 Mission Head Heinz Thews.

It was a perfect ‘one stop shop’ for getting the message of the Truce out in Luxembourg. There was a general awareness of the truce, but the thought was that this was a military truce and as Luxembourg has a standing army of less than 1000 and is not currently deployed on active duty overseas, apart from a small detachment in Bosnia as part of the NATO peacekeeping force, that the Truce was not something which applied to them. When I mentioned about the truce being expressed as a humanitarian act, such as when it was used to broker a ceasefire in Sarajevo in 1994, there was a recognition of the possibilities and an undertaking to make further enquires as to what shape the Luxembourg Truce could take. It was a productive and friendly meeting and at the conclusion of it, the president of the Luxembourg Olympic Committee presented me with a replica of the only Gold Medal Luxembourg has ever won at the Olympic Games: it was won in 1952 by Josy Barthel. This was a great honour, as it is a limited edition and I was very grateful. I decided to loan the medal to the Residence to help promote the London 2012 Games.

After lunch Alice had arranged for a visit to the Court of Justice of the European Union to learn more about its work. This walk has already exposed a woeful ignorance on Europe and its institutions, but at least I am willing to learn. We met with two senior British judges at the Court: Eleanor Sharpston who is Advocate General in the Court of Justice—the final court of appeal, and Nicholas Forwood who is a judge in the General Court of the European Union. It turned out to be a fascinating meeting, as it was an opportunity to get some serious brainpower applied to the matter of the Olympic Truce and its prospects for implementation. Two great ideas came from the meeting: the first was that after the Olympic & Paralympic Games are completed, the athletes should be encouraged to undertake bi-lateral acts of peace and reconciliation, perhaps in the country, but perhaps in other countries too. It was acknowledged that athletes and especially Olympian and Paralympians have a currency which is way beyond that which can be mustered by politicians and this must be harnessed and deployed as a force for good. Second, we discussed issues pertaining to the British veto in a very general way and we considered how teams promoted a sense of common purpose; for instance Team Great Britain rather than the four nations.  How would it be viewed, if when displaying the medal tables, there were to be a summary of European medals won—would that make us think any differently? Perhaps not, but we should be open to such ideas in shaping how we see ourselves – after all it seems to work okay in the Ryder Cup.

After our meeting Nick Forwood took us on a tour of the building, during which I discovered that he was a very serious walker and had walked from Holland to Nice and was now working east to west from Luxembourg and had covered a similar distance to myself over the past year and all the while holding down a hugely responsible and demanding role at the European Court. I discovered that there may well be a fellowship amongst lawyers and amongst Olympians, but there is also an instant one amongst walkers. The only difference was that my effort had been on a ‘wing and a prayer’, whereas Nick’s had been conducted with the planning, preparation and equipment with which one might use to invade a small country (not Luxembourg, of course) and his results were testament to that attention to detail.

Back at the Residence I met a fellow ‘House Guest’, Pete Smith, who is a writer from Brooklyn with the kind of rich and interesting life that had me enthralled. He took me on a tour of the backstreets and small art galleries such as gallerie terre rouge. He was able to see things in photographs and pictures that I would never have noticed had I sat in front of it for a month. We walked down into the gorge, which made Luxembourg city and impregnable fortress for centuries, and he explained some of its history. The Grand Duchy had been a disputed and prized territory for centuries by Prussia, France, the Netherlands and the Belgians.  Its independence was only secured as a result of the second Treaty of London in 1867 – although even then the King of the Netherlands was also the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. The independence of such a strategic location did not last long in either the First or the Second World War, when it was occupied by the Germans. After the war it joined forces with the Netherlands and Belgium to form the Benelux free trade area, which was the forerunner of the EEC and then EU. If you are a Luxembourgian and you have France to your left and Germany to your right, you will probably be a very big fan of the EU—this is so. There are three official languages in Luxembourg, French, German and Luxembourgish—for the latter ‘Yo, yo’ ‘tip-top’ will get you quite a long way.

It was then back to the residence, where we were required to be on duty for a Reception for the British-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, which is ably led by Robert Deed of Lombard Assurance. It was a very impressive array of guests, largely from professional and financial services. It was fertile ground for me to spread around my business cards and talk about the Olympic Truce, as everyone else was handing out business cards too. The guest of honour was Yves Mersch, the hugely able and respected Governor of the Central Bank of Luxembourg, who has been tipped for a senior role at the ECB. His speech made Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England sound like a wide-eyed optimist. It was quite a depressing message, very true, but it kind of made you want to leap into the gorge to beat the rush.

After the reception there was a smaller group who had been invited to stay on for dinner, of which I was one. We gathered with in the grand dining room of the Ambassador’s Residence for dinner at which I was ‘Guest of Honour’. Looking for an opportunity to enter into the conversation I noticed the dog lying obediently at his master’s feet and enquired what the dog was called: “Dido” she replied—seeing a moment to enter into the conversation I said “ah, Dido, named after the pop singer—she’s great, ‘White Flag’ is my most played tune on my iPod.” The table went quiet as the guests listened attentively to my first ‘wise insight’ to which the Ambassador responded with the full authority of someone who had earned a First in Classics from Cambridge, “No.” “Actually, named after the Queen of Carthage mentioned in Virgil’s poem, Aeneid, who stabs herself to death on the cliffs as she sees her lover, Aeneas depart for Italy.”  I began to toy with my knife and contemplated ‘Doing the decent thing’, but instead simply said, “Of course, nice doggy” Dido lifted his head and rolled his eyes as my fellow guests lowered theirs…..

DAY 233 - REMICH TO LUXEMBOURG: 15.5 MILES (31,400 STEPS)

12 December, 2011

15.5 (Total: 2317.3 miles)–31,000 (Total: 4,981,601 steps)

My decision to add in Luxembourg was very much last minute, for a couple of reasons; The Grand Duke, Henri is a member of the International Olympic Committee and I thought that this might help leverage support for Luxembourg to be a leading implementer of the London 2012, Olympic Truce and secondly, it was one more country, the thirteenth visited, leaving only two more, Belgium and Holland to complete the ‘3000 miles, 15 countries in 300 days’ line for the walk. There is a long way to go to achieve that, especially a very tough six weeks after New Year in which I must do 600 miles, but it seemed as good a target as any.

My plans to visit Luxembourg may have been last minute, but the response of the British Embassy was virtually instantaneous. No sooner had I advised the FCO in London of my change of plan, a week before arriving in the country, than Her Majesty’s Ambassador, The Honourable Alice Walpole was on the phone offering to put together a programme and to offer hospitality during my stay at the official Residence and Petra Kiefer, the Press Officer was putting together a press release. Moreover, on my walk in from Remich Alice Walpole called to ask if she and her son, Inigo could come out and join me for the last five miles—I was of course delighted.

As it approached 2:30PM, the time when the Ambassador’s car was supposed to draw up I suddenly had a desperate call of nature, but dared not answer it for fear that standing behind a tree in a fluorescent jacket might not be quite the first impression one would like to make on my gracious host. With great fortitude I resisted, mind over matter and just as well as with impeccable timing the Ambassadorial limo resplendent with Union flag drew up and three bright young energetic people leapt out: Inigo, George Bush, an Intern at the Embassy, and Alice Walpole.

As we walked in and introduced each other, I wished that I had managed just a few seconds research as in doing so I would have realised that Alice was a descendent of the first British prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole; that I had served in the House of Commons with Alice’s mother, Judith Chaplin a wonderfully gifted no-nonsense, common sense politician whose service was tragically cut short and whose death stunned fellow members of the 1992 intake, as she had been tipped as the first of our group to make it into the Cabinet and that I was currently serving in the House of Lords with her father, the Crossbench peer, Lord Walpole. I must admit that it does make you feel old when you know the parents of HM’s Ambassador.

It was good to have their company, not least for navigating my way into the city. George Bush was terrific from the start and I could see what Alice, a former FCO recruiter, saw in him; he just seemed to instinctively be in the right place and offering to do the right thing at the right time—taking pictures, guiding us in on the route and carrying my rucksack! We all arrived at the Residence just in time for tea—how very English, but it was great to feel at home. After a quick briefing about the programme for the next couple of days it was upstairs to get changed for the first reception.

The British Ambassador’s Residence in Luxembourg is a grand build in a prime location and some of the bean counters at Head Office are no doubt looking at the value of such a large residence in such a small country. Well they should think twice and thrice, because this Residence was less a comfortable home for the ambassador and more an international conference centre. Scarcely a minute seemed to pass without comings and goings, mostly business related. Luxembourg is a very strategic country, it is the wealthiest in Europe for a start, around double the per capita income of the UK; it is also a major centre for global financial services and has very close ties with the City of London and it is home to the Council of Ministers for the European Union and the European Court of Justice. Moreover, when rationalising we don’t want to set off alarm bells, if Marks & Spencer’s is having financial troubles then it doesn’t close its Baker Street branch first, for so to do would be to panic investors. The same goes for Residences and Embassies. There is a general view out there that the British government has the balance just about right in responding to the current economic crisis; if we start downgrading our presence in prime locations and moving into serviced offices in out of town business parks, then people are going to think that we are in worse trouble than we are. It might be appropriate for Greece, Ireland and Portugal to downsize to demonstrate they are taking their fiscal situation seriously, but not the UK. Our Residences and our Embassies are our shop window and our diplomats our front line sales executives, we need them both more than ever in order to ‘Keep the British End Up’ as Bond may say.

After we had glad-handed all the guests and Alice had given a terrific speech, it was all hands on deck to work with Françoise, the multi-talented chauffer, cook, cleaner and handyman to clear the glasses and dishes and get the place ready for the next day’s events. We then retired exhausted to watch the news which was leading on a wonderful exchange between Cameron and Miliband at PMQs’ in which Cameron came out with one of the best lines I have ever heard from the despatch box; when questioned by Miliband on disagreements with Clegg over the use of the British ‘Veto’ he responded, ”No one should be surprised that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives occasionally differ over Europe—it’s not as if we are brothers.” Miliband should have sat down at that point, but he came back for more and got it. This is what great leaders, athletes and performers do—they make moves that would be audacious and brilliant on the training pitch whilst in the equivalent of a World Cup Final. If Miliband was leading the Conservative Party he would be facing a leadership challenge over Christmas, the Labour Party are more collegiate and less ruthless when it comes to leaders, which is why they have found themselves in Opposition for so long—let’s hope they don’t change….