DAY 152 - PODGRAD, SLOVENIA TO TRIESTE, ITALY: 24.8 MILES (49,600 STEPS)

21 September, 2011

24.8 miles (Total: 1449.14 miles) 49,600 steps (Total: 3,248, 481 steps)

I set off from Podgrad with Italy in my sights. This should have been a perfect day: The weather had cooled to around 22 degrees, because I was on higher ground making it very comfortable to walk; the road was excellent and not too busy; there were many small villages all with rooms to let and small cafe’s to refill with water and the scenery was as beautiful as I have seen. In fact that stretch of about 30 miles from Sapjane in Croatia to Kozina would make an absolutely fabulous walk for a long weekend or bike ride because of the scenery and abundance of accommodation.

Despite all this the walk was difficult to enjoy because of the pains in my feet and leg joints. As I had begun the day, I was doing mental calculations as to whether I could actually make it to Geneva (500 miles) by 17 October for the launch of the Olympic Truce Resolution on foot; a few hours in and I was wondering whether I would be able to make it to Trieste.

Crossing the Italian border was a strange experience—there were lots of buildings, shops etc that tend to accumulate around border crossings, but there was no passport or customs check.  In fact, no border guards or police to be found at all. The flag outside the former passport control office at the border seem to sum up perfectly Italy’s woes. Still this was a border within the EU and the real heavy checks had been moved back down the road to the Slovenian/Croatian border where there was a very strict series of checks and a heavy police presence.

Coming into large cities is always a mixed blessing: there is the excitement of seeing the sign ‘Trieste’ which somehow causes your body to think that it has reached its destination, but then there are 3-4 miles of suburbs to be walked though and then accommodation to be found. Finding accommodation was not easy and I found myself sizing up the benches around the huge and impressive Piazza Dell Unita D’Italia—the problem was really price rather than availability. The going rate for basic rooms was about 100 euros a night, because I was feeling very rough I knew it was likely I would need to stay two nights and that would blow the budget for the week.

Eventually I tried a bed and breakfast in a large old apartment block up four flights of stairs.  It was ‘only 65 euros’, but I was in no mood to argue and then just as I was about to sign in, another person came out, there was a short conversation and then I was told that they were full. The lady took pity on me and said that she had a friend who had a similar residence on the other side of town and she had room. She called ahead to confirm and then gave me directions. I arrived and it was just what I needed and I even got it for 60 euros.

The day in Trieste was used to do some essential catching up on email and writing. I bought some magnesium tablets from a herbal shop and they seemed to give my joints some relief from the pain, but it was worst at night.

Being an optimist I had hoped that David Cameron’s first address to the UN General Assembly in New York might have contained a reference to the Olympic Truce, but after the rant by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the need to send messages about Libya and Palestinian aspirations for statehood, I suppose there is a time and place for everything and this was not the place for the truce. Although, when David Cameron said, the UN should not “just be united in condemnation but united in action” to defeat tyrants and “You can sign every human rights declaration in the world. But if you stand by and watch people being slaughtered in their own country, when you could act, then what are those signatures really worth?” I thought that this section does work for the Olympic Truce which is a resolution for action for peace and reconciliation which everyone signs, but no one implements.

I finished the day with a Chinese meal and an interview with Rachel Wearmouth from the Newcastle Chronicle and Jounrnal—we spent some time talking about the Walk and then discussed at great length the reasons behind Newcastle’s stella start to the season and whether and how it could be sustained. As we talked, I felt a homesickness for the north east but managed to remove the taste with some fine Peking crispy duck.

DAY 151 - VIDEO DIARY: THOUGHTS ON LEAVING CROATIA

20 September, 2011

Kastav, Croatia to Podgrad, Slovenia

19.2 miles (Total: 1423.34 miles) 38,400 steps (Total: 2,798, 881 steps)

DAY 147 - LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA

16 September, 2011

Total: 1404.14 miles Total: 2,760, 481 steps

The highlight of the day came at the end of the day when the Embassy arranged for me to meet the most famous Olympian in Slovenia, Marko Racic, who had competed in the 1948 London Olympics.  We were to walk with students from the British International School in Ljubljana part way round Path of Remembrance and Comradeship, which is a 33km path, which follows the route of a barbed wire fence, erected by occupying forces during World War II around the entire city of Ljubljana. If the British Embassy had tried to tick every possible box for a photo opportunity on the Olympic Truce for London 2012, it is difficult to see how they could have scored more highly . . . and it worked.

Marko Racic (pictured holding Walk for Truce t-shirt which I presented to him), is 91 years old and yet left us all standing as the walk commenced.  He is so physically and mentally fit that he is still the most reliable point of reference for sports statisticians on athletics. Through our translator from the Olympic Committee of Slovenia, we talked  about what life was like for an athlete at the London 1948 Games: the accommodation for the Yugoslav national team was in Royal Air Force barracks at West Drayton. They had been told that because of food rationing they would need to bring their own food supplies and therefore they lived off salami for the entire fortnight. They had been instructed on arrival to place two pictures, one of Tito and the other of Stalin, at either end of their barracks, but the Olympic organisers came round and insisted they were removed or they would be sent home for violating the ‘no politics’ rule of the Olympics. Marko was competing in the 400 metres and he managed a respectable 50.2 seconds, which wasn’t bad on a diet of salami and running on a cinder track, and was enough to get him through to the quarter finals.

I felt for Marko as his Olympic career was like far too many athletes in the twentieth century: cut short by wars and boycotts. He was born in 1920 and the 1936 Games came a few years too early; the next two Games were cancelled and the London 1948 Games came just a few days after his peak. He wasn’t in the slightest bit bitter about the run of events; athletics had given him a wonderful long and healthy life through which he had travelled the world both as a competitor and then as an official and through which he had made many, many enduring friendships. It was wonderful for the young people to hear Marko’s story, not least because it reminds them that sport is not just about sponsorship deals and seeking celebrity status, it is a lifestyle choice of which Marko Racic is an inspiring example.

Marko and the students asked me many questions on our long walk interspaced by shouts of ‘bike’ as a cyclist would hurtle past us, often cursing under their breath—the cyclists of Ljubljana are like none other I have encountered in the world; they have such belief in their right of way that I saw them ride out in front of buses and trucks causing them to screech to a halt. One question, which I was asked a number of times, was whether I had ever been a sportsman. The short answer was “no”, apart from completing the Great North Run on five occasions. They asked why and I suppose I never really thought of it—I had tried out for the football team at every school I attended, but never made the team, although I was appointed my Mr. Durham Chief Supporter because I was the only person to turn up and watch Kells Lane play away to Oakfield on a freezing and rainy Saturday morning. I then said that when I was at the Breckenbeds School  we all had to sign up for a sport and I chose the 1500 metres and won both years I competed by a full lap in one race. I wasn’t fast, but I seemed to be able to just keep going and I had been inspired by local Gateshead hero Brendan Forster. I wondered whether at that time I had been encouraged or had a bit more self-belief, I might have gone on to do some distance running, but I am glad I chose politics which has been and still is my passion.

In many ways it was a day of a bit of reflection and self education, perhaps started by Doreen Lawrence, and helped along by conversations in between meetings with James Hampson of the British Council and continued through the questions of the students on our walk and two in depth interviews.  The first was with Ana Straus at RTV (with whom we discussed the writings of Stephane Hessel the French protest leader and philospher) and the second with Mankica Kranjec at NeDelo.

It was one of those very special days that had been a real education and that continued late into the evening when the ambassador, Andrew Page, arrived back from his conference and we went for dinner down by the river in the spectacularly beautiful old town of Ljubljana. We enjoyed an informative and stimulating debate on foreign policy, which largely consisted of me offering up a limp serve that just skirted over the net, only to find Andrew waiting there giving an elegant return volley at an impossible angle for me to reach even if he had told me before hand where he was going to place it.

I love debate, even when I am been trounced (as is usually the case, because my mind simply can’t move as fast of others).  I love debate not because I win, but because I am informed and when I am informed I am able to understand and that is for me the purpose of living—to understand and in the context of that understanding then to act. That is what freedom is for, to increase our understanding through unfettered public debate that we first understand and then act. That is civilization. The purpose of politics is to protect that freedom to speak up in the debate even when the arguments are clumsy and the views which are put forward shock and offend.  For upon that fragile principle, the advancement of all human civilization depends. Thank you Ljubljana for reminding me.