DAY 273 - ESTREES ST DENIS TO ROYE: 21.7 MILES (42,400 STEPS)

Friday 20 January, 2012

21.7 miles (Total: 2640.8 miles) – 42,400 steps (Total: 5,948,801 steps)

What can you say about a day like this? Well, I walked up the D1017, which was as straight as a die for 20 miles. There was rain and a firm breeze from the west, but nothing compared to the previous days. To add to the straight forwardness of the day, there was a cycle path alongside the road so I didn’t even need to keep a keen eye open for oncoming traffic getting a bit too close. Yep, this was as regular a day as I was likely to have and it ended well with a good value hotel, Etap, in Roye. This also happened to be adjacent to a Macdonalds where I was able to catch up on emails and do a bit of digging about Roye, just in case I was to inadvertently walk past a site of significant interest to the walk:

The only thing about Roye which showed up was a link to the mystical group the ‘Illuminate’ who are mentioned in Dan Brown’s novel, Angels and Demons. Their connection to Roye was that some followers of the group fled Seville for fear of falling into the hands of the Spanish Inquisition and arrived in Roye in 1634. Following their arrival, the curate of the local church was converted to their teaching and had many followers. Sadly for them, France was still a Catholic country and so within a couple of years the Spanish refugees and French converts were all tracked down, captured, and handed over to the Inquisition for torture where their feet were held to the fire until they confessed their heresy and were subsequently burnt at the stake for owning up. The good old Inquisition, they were all heart … blood and guts. When we are boys we like to play cowboys and Indians, but when we grow up we all long to play God.

Socrates had a belief that satire was as essential as freedom in a democracy, for it kept politicians’ feet firmly in the city and avoided them ascending to the mountains to dine with the gods. Show me a dysfunctional society or institution and I will show you leaders who insist on the right to lead and yet deny the right to be mocked by others for doing so. Show me a healthy society and I will show you one where its leaders can be lampooned and mock and yet are nonetheless given the right to govern. Show me a society where there is only room for the mockers and scoffers and I will show you a circus.

The most important piece of advice that any young man in a hurry to ‘make a difference in the world’ or ‘do God’s will’ can have is, don’t take yourself too seriously; God doesn’t, and you can always have kids who will gladly take over that responsibility for life. Even better, learn to mock yourself and then you will at least discover why the guy in the other corner of the room is always laughing.

DAY 272 - CREIL TO ESTREES ST DENIS: 19.3 MILES (38,600 STEPS)

Thursday 19 January, 2012

19.3 miles (Total: 2619.1 miles) – 38,600 steps (Total: 5,906,401 steps)

There hadn’t been much let up in the wind or the rain overnight so it was going to be a ‘hood up, head down, iPod in’ kind of day. To my amazement, Rob and Steve got up at 7am to join me for breakfast, albeit with the plan to return to bed afterwards, but it was an impressive act of solidarity. One of the challenges I face on the walk is making good decisions and I struggle with this primarily because I am, for the large part, on my own and tired. It was wonderful to have Rob and Steve to offer advice on a number of key questions I had been wrestling with concerning the route.

Chief amongst these was whether to walk to Brussels and The Hague, which I had been putting off. I was inclined to go but it would mean doing three 130 miles weeks at a time when my body was beginning to show signs of serious wear and tear. One of the unintended by-products of a religious upbringing, which has many, many benefits, is that you prepare to live a life of guilt: guilt about not attending meetings, not achieving what you should have done etc. You end up doing things not because you want to, but because of fear of the reaction you would get if you don’t do them. It is as if God is sitting in heaven with a big stick waiting to say ‘gotcha’ the minute you step out of line. This has its benefits on a walk in which whenever I might be tempted to accept a lift in a rain storm, or hop on a passing bus, I simply picture the Almighty echoing the words of my Sunday School Superintendent, “Be Sure your sins will find you out”. So I carry on with my burden like the Spanish Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel in The Mission.

Having friends who you trust and who can puncture the illusions of the mind, and know how to do it, is one of the greatest privileges we can know; so Rob and Steve pick me up at Estrees took me to a Macdonalds for a chat. Whilst I am tucking into my McNuggets and fries, washed down with Diet Coke, they share their thoughts with me. This started with the fact that I had walked 2619 miles and that was quite a big enough achievement if I stopped now. There would be no prizes for ticking the ‘3000 miles +’ box because no one was watching anyway. If they were interested, then the only thing of interest is ‘Did he walk from Olympia, Greece to London?’ and ‘Did anything come of it?’ The answer to the former would be ‘yes’ if I went direct to Calais, and the latter would be ‘yes, possibly’ by virtue of having the meetings with political leaders in Brussels and The Hague because you were walking from Greece to London to promote the truce, not because you arrived in their offices soaked to the skin with mud on your boots. Oh and as for God, his opinion of you would have been just the same if you had stayed at home and watched the telly, because his love was never based on the condition of your activity but was instead offered unconditionally on the basis of your humanity. Point taken. Faithful are the wounds of a friend: now run along and get me a Daim McFlurry and don’t forget its chocolate not caramel sauce this time.

DAY 271 - ECOUEN TO CREIL: 18.4 MILES (36,800 STEPS)

Wednesday 18 January, 2012

18.4 miles (Total: 2599.8 miles) – 36,800 steps (Total: 5,867,801 steps)

What a great day!

Rob Parsons and Steve Williams drove out from Cardiff to spend a few days with me. Rob is the much in demand speaker/author and Chairman of Care for the Family and Steve Williams is the Chief Executive of Ty Coch Nursing Homes – the finest nursing homes in Wales and possibly the whole of the UK. The fact that two of the busiest people I know should choose to jump in a car to drive over four hundred miles in order to help carry the bags for their old mate is extraordinary. Then again, ‘extraordinary’ is exactly what they are.

In another respect, their timing could not have been better; only a few minutes after they arrived, I received a call from my bank, Lloyds TSB, advising me that my credit card details had been used to try and purchase some large items of computer equipment – thank heavens for having a £500 credit card limit I thought. Anyway, they advised me that they had stopped my card, which meant that I was without a replacement to pay for accommodation and it would be another two weeks before someone could bring the replacement out. I might have hoped that Lloyds TSB, as a principal sponsor of the Olympics, might have pushed the boat out and got the card to me earlier, but that I was reminded was a service for customers who banked with them, rather than the other way round. Obviously, the Call Centre hadn’t heard that the bank was only still trading because it had received a £20 billion bailout from the taxpayer. Very kindly though, Rob maxed his cash withdrawals from an ATM on two consecutive days and gave me the money – I am now off to Barbados to work for truce there! Of course, I probably shouldn’t mention on a blog that I am carrying a wad of cash but given that the readership is limited to my mum, my little sister, and my fiancée – I think I am on fairly safe ground.

The walk itself was very pleasant as it took me through the Chantilly area famous for horse racing and there were many ‘gallops’ as I walked through the forests. This was a very prosperous area so I decided to try and keep the costs down by pressing onward to Creil where accommodation was more competitive. Rob and Steve managed to find a motel complex, Hotel de France, on an industrial estate in Creil that was perfect for us, and successfully negotiated a price that included a set dinner, though none of us had any idea what was on it.

I reflected that what makes a hotel or guest house special, apart from wi-fi access, is the people and the welcome they give you. Similarly, what makes a meal special is primarily the people with whom you share it. This was a special place. Over dinner, we laughed so much that for the first time my sides were aching more than my feet. They could have served us anything and we would have eaten and drank it, and probably did. We retired to our rooms late with the wind and rain lashing against the windows, but at least Rob and Steve would have a lie in the next day – not that I’m bitter.