DAY 161 - CASTELFRANCO VENETO TO VICENZA: 24.8 MILES (49,600 STEPS)

30 September, 2011

24.8 miles (Total: 1593.9 miles) 49,600 steps (Total: 3,480, 401 steps)

My feet had not recovered at all from the marathon (and a half) of walking from the previous day before I need to set off and do it all, well nearly all, again. I managed it, but only just and the price was a bit of an ugly mess on my foot, especially the left foot and last three toes, which because of the extra wear on my shoes, seem to react very badly when I push beyond 25km per day.

I begin to wonder how many layers of skin I have to loose in blisters and whether I will run out of Elizabeth Arden No 8 cream to replace it. I am beginning to face up to the fact that a new pair of shoes may be required and I suppose being in Italy ain’t such a bad place to look for footwear – although functional footwear in size 11-12 rather than fashion footwear in size 8-10 is more hard to come by.

There are bound to be regrets on any venture of this nature and I think one, which I may well be in danger of, is of rattling too fast through northern Italy in order to reach Milan by October 10^th so that I can make it to Rome for some important meetings. I have walked in the shadow of the Dolomites from Trieste and have now arrived in Vicenza to discover that I am looking out on the foothills of the Alps. Just the mention of the word sends a shiver down my spine and through my feet. But more importantly I am walking through and close to cities and towns which have shaped our civilisation in the West, such as Venice and Trente, without so much as a glance.

I was grateful therefore, to be completely unable to walk on Saturday 1 October and instead was forced to take a day off in Vicenza on my way to Verona. I met up with a wonderful mutual friend, Paulo Benedetti, who is a doctor in Vicenza and he took me in the car up to Piazzale della Vittoria,  overlooking the city with the Alps rising in the distance. It was an incredible sight as I learned about this amazing city which I was just about to hobble through. We sat in the shadow of the Church of St. Mary of Mount Berico as the bells peeled, having a real cappuccino, and talking politics and Roman history. Paulo knows more about both topics, so I was the net gainer of the conversation.

Vicenza was a wealthy commercial town with strong influences from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which came after the Napoleonic times. It was heavily bombed by the Allies in WWII and many classical buildings were destroyed as well as over 2000 local residents killed. Incredibly Vicenza is now home to a garrison of the US Army, which will expand to about 15,000 troops and support personnel over the next few years. Their influence is very substantial on the local community as they account for 10% of the local population and their presence is not universally welcomed. It makes you wonder what our dear friends the US military have in mind by maintaining such a force in Italy where the acute need is not for an army of soldiers, but an army of entrepreneurs and accountants to spur on the economic recovery. Still it’s their money, but the Italians are surely right also to say it is their country too and seventy years or so after WWII and twenty five years after the end of the Cold War, might be as good a time as any for everyone to move on and adapt to the current political and security landscape.

Paulo and I then talked about politics and British attitudes to Europe—he informed me that the Emperor Constantine was actually crowned as Emperor under the City walls of York—I obviously missed that part of the history lesson. I has also thought that Constantine had converted to Christianity and had then changed the Roman Empire into the Holy Roman Empire with the church at its heart. I hadn’t realised that Constantine wasn’t a Christian, far from it.  His mother had converted, but he remained a pagan to the end of his life. His decision to embrace rather than persecute Christians was a political calculation because persecution just seemed to be making the Christians more popular; so he decided that it was better to have them ‘inside the tent…..’. Being a rather brutal man, in the mould of his predecessors, he then proceeded to ruthlessly persecute the opponents of Christianity and heretics.  Though of course in doing this, he was to have the blessing rather than the opposition of the established church—c’est la vie—as Del Boy would say.

Moreover, I learned that when the Romans actually left Briton in AD 400 or so to concentrate on their problems at home, the Brits dispatched an Emissary to Rome to beg them not to leave fearing that they would fall prey to the savage Picts—I then returned back to the hotel to watch the keenly fought match between Scotland and England, in the rugby World Cup, and saw the English front row and began to question whether the emissary wasn’t actually from the Picts—still England got through by the skin of its teeth on both occasions.

DAY 160 - ODERZO TO CASTELFRANCO VENETO

29 September, 2011

30.7 miles (Total: 1569.1 miles) 61,400 steps (Total: 3,430, 801 steps)

The weather is unseasonably hot people tell me—great weather for walking—well to a point; sure it is better to have sunshine than thunder and lightning, but I yearn for colder weather and 34 degrees is still way to high. Though, as I discover from my friend Richard Vardy who flies in to offer a couple of days support, the north east is enjoying an Indian summer with temperatures soaring to 30 degrees. The point I am making, without the slightest bit of ingratitude, is that sitting out in the garden in 30 degrees is pleasant, walking 25 miles along busy roads is not quite as pleasant and temperatures between 10 and 20 degrees are perfect for me even with a little rain thrown in to remind me of home.

It is great to see Richard; he had flown into Venice, hired a car and we met up in the very pleasant Venetian town of Oderzo in time for dinner. In deciding where to eat Richard delivered the first of his messages from home—I needed to eat more meat and less pizza.  Fortunately Richard was generously paying so I ‘reluctantly’ agreed to accept his advice and go off to a fabulous restaurant called Sosteria (www.sosteria.it) which, if you are ever in say 250 miles of Oderzo, I suggest you pop in to. The steak was so good it virtually melted on the tongue—I then lowered the tone by ask for a side order of chips; the waiter looked puzzled and brought some halved roast potatoes with rosemary, olive oil and rock salt.  I responded “Well it’s not salt and vinegar, but it’ll do.”  Richard gave me that look as if to say “You can take the man out of Geordieland, but you can’t take the Geordieland out of the man”—I decided to take the hint and not ask for the ketchup.

If I could have written a job description for the perfect person to accompany me on a difficult stretch of the walk, then Richard would have been on a short list of one. First, he had tons of news from home in the north east then, as a second year theology student at Durham, we had a good theological discussion about what he had learned in his first year. Next, he was totally there to help when called upon – without following me around as if I am about to give birth to some Dali Lama style profundity on the meaning of life or the nature of inner peace, and then looking slightly disappointed when I start reeling off Tommy Cooper jokes and asking them to go off and track down the nearest MacDonalds or source a bottle of Diet Coke for me rather than finding some loaves and fishes for the poor. Next, Richard’s company was easy.  He was happy to leave me to do the walking and to lounge around at the hotel reading his Kindle without feeling guilty or making me feel guilty.  Finally, taking advantage of the fact that Richard had a car, I was able to set off without the rucksack and extend my daily walking from an average of 30km to an average of 45km, which kicked a big hole in the long stretch between Oderzo and Verona – much needed whilst the ‘good weather’ held.

Richard’s visit was just a complete and utter blessing and it provided me with a much needed lift as I pressed on to Milan.

Ps: If Richard and his family read this eulogy decide that it is clear that he must come out again soon then the plan has worked a treat!

DAY 158 - PORTOGRUANO TO ODERZO: 18.4 MILES (36,800 STEPS)

27 September, 2011

18.4 miles (Total: 1538.4 miles) 36,800 steps (Total: 3,369, 401 steps)

The campaign is building some momentum and to keep up with it, never mind on top of it is a bit of a challenge. It is a constant trade off between making the progress required to get back before the Rio Olympics and responding to emails, telephone calls and the need to maintain the web-site.

I am glad to have an opportunity for a Skype conversation with Michael Green, the long suffering and incredibly patient project manager for the walk, to talk through priorities and I feel more settled about the balance I need to achieve after that.

The entire support team of Gary Streeter, Michael Green, John Glen, Alison Hardy, Nigel Double, Xuelin Black, are all leading very demanding lives themselves and volunteering their support to the project, but without them the project would have come off the rails somewhere in the suburbs of Athens, if it had ever left the station.

Their efforts are augmented by the wonderful support I get from other friends and family.  My parents (now they have figured out Skype and are sure that it is absolutely free!), my brother David, who is a whiz on directions and the correct gear, Rob and Di Parsons, who always seem to call at the right moment to encourage me on the way, Peter and Richard Vardy (more tomorrow) and my sons Matt, who as a basketball coach in the US manages to motivate me so much when I listen to him I want to go out and run the next stage, and Alex who keeps me entertained, up to date with happenings in the premiership and always keeps my feet firmly on the ground.

Monday this week was a very big day as we had our first full-time member of the team join us—Julia Spence, an Intern who has been generously and graciously assigned to us by CARE. Julia will work out of Gary Streeter’s Office at Westminster and will be a huge help in keeping us all co-ordinated – especially during the next few months and the campaign intensifies around the formal moving of the UN truce resolution at the General Assembly by the UK government.

In many ways it feels quite similar to an election campaign, with us gradually getting the machinery in place in the run up to polling day, always feeling you are chasing events rather than in control of them. When the election campaign is called, there is always a rush of enthusiasm and then there are the weeks when nothing seems to be happening, but everything is happening—leaflets are being designed and printed, posters are being prepared, canvass returns printed, fight fund appeals launched and then it all builds to a frenzy in the run up to polling day.

I have been a candidate in several big campaigns, but this is different because we are not all gathering in the Campaign Centre every day to brief each other on what is being done and what needs to be done—it is difficult to build the esprit de corps when the candidate is 2000 miles away, although many of my campaign managers in the past have suggested that might not be a bad idea if I wanted to stand any chance of winning.

In essence I use the same rough test that I was told by my mentor in my first General Election Campaign back in 1987 (Tyne Bridge) –John Lacy, at that time Head of Campaigning for the Conservative Party.  He said that election campaigns are always about who has the momentum. No campaign is ever static, it is either going forward, backwards or it has stalled.  Ask yourself each day ‘are we making progress?’  Progress is momentum and if you keep being able to say that, then it will build through the electoral equivalent of compound interest. By this test, I would without one shadow of doubt say that we have momentum.  We are making progress and in that most crucial respect our team is winning.