Most commented posts
- Day 2 – Gone with the Wind — 7 comments
- Day 15 – Blenheim — 6 comments
- Day 6 – Rollright Stones — 5 comments
- Day 23 – Walking with the End in Sight — 5 comments
- Day 3: Brockenhurst to Lyndhurst — 4 comments
Author's posts
Sep 27
Day 14: Hardmead to Goldington
A long haul through flat Bedfordshire fields coated in stubble and clay. In the most part it was particularly hard going as many farmers score out the paths, perhaps to spite walkers. We lunched with Anne Atkins, one of the most ballsy people I know. She meets adversity with a head butt and a two …
Sep 25
Day 13: Cosgrove to Hardmead
Last night I asked our host how he had voted in the referendum. He was Brexit. When I asked him how his wife had voted he said he had no idea! A minute later she told me she had voted Brexit too and neither had thought to discuss it! Strange things, marriages. Today we are …
Sep 24
Day 12: Blakeseley to Cosgrove
Another thirteen long miles. We plod through boggy, plowed-up, often clay-based fields, where the adjacent river banks are strewn with rusted barbed wire that would do the Somme battle fields proud. Often we face impassable “pedestrian” access points smothered in brambles. I imagine an overarching statement from the council hanging there: “Why not stay away …
Sep 24
Day 11: Claydon to Blakesley
We walk a full twelve miles through Northamptonshire countryside where we hunted with the Grafton Hunt all those years ago; memories of the wide fields and the golden bricks of the houses all flooded back to us. Charles Clayton was the CEO of the UK international charity, World Vision, and now one of his consultancies …
Sep 22
Day 10: Pillerton Hersey to Claydon
A couple of calls that are hard to cope with without giving terminal offence… A dear friend with a great heart want to join our teams in Zimbabwe and “help the poor.” The trouble is that it is not as simple as it sounds. Unschooled friends always need a great deal of looking after and …
Sep 21
Break Day 4
Another day off to allow my injured little toe to recover its poise. The colour has subsided from vermillion to a delicate pink and the pain has lowered to my gloomy awareness that there is still some way to go. I want the toe to recover but not so much as I forfeit whatever sympathy …
Sep 20
Break Day 3
Now is the time for me to read ‘Power and Pragmatism” by past Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind who is speaking for ZANE in early November. An excellent and insightful book about an extraordinary career by a man crackling with ability and high achievement. Defence Secretary and foreign Secretary and today an elder statesman whose views …
Sep 19
Break Day 2
I managed to slip down a flight of stairs in my stockinged feet in one of our host’s houses and jammed the little toe of my left foot in the banisters. This brilliant move may have broken my fall but it twisted the toe just this side of snapping. Not a good move in the …
Sep 18
Break Day 1
We walk back towards Stratford to pick up the car and leave for a couple of days off. Marcus, our excellent driver. comments about Jane’s and my relationship and tell me we are a great team. I ask him who he thinks is the boss? He grins: “it’s obvious, ” he says. “Jane of course,” …
Sep 17
Day 9: Alcester to Pillerton Hersey
Last night we had dinner with the talented and rightly famous cricket star Andy Flower. In 2003, Andy and Henry Olonga decided to wear black armbands in an international match in Harare to mark the horrors taking place in their beloved country. Because of the violence of the row they generated both men decided that …