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 04
Day 2 – Houghton to Great Bircham
Nearly all telly programmes start – ludicrously in my view – warning viewers that watching, for example, Putin’s war in ghastly detail involving bombing, death, and rape “might be offensive to some viewers”. What do they expect? Do they think viewers live in a perpetual world of Little Bo Peep and The Sound of Music? …
Sep 03
Day 1 – Swaffham to Houghton
The sun is like a bishop’s bottom: large, shiny and hot, the first continual sun we have seen for months. Lunch in Castle Acre, a gem of a town with a priory, a castle and a grand house lurking somewhere. I see the news is dull, which is good when you think of the miseries …
Sep 02
The Day Before
A Wonderful Beginning Zimbabwe can be summed up in the words that Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, the late Madeleine Albright, once quoted: “God made a wonderful beginning,But man spoiled it all by sinning.We hope that the story will end in God’s glory,But, at the moment, the other side’s winning!” And how! A once wonderful …
Sep 13
Day 14: Runnymede to Walton-on-Thames
The Mystery of Faith Alec Douglas-Home, prime minister from 1963 to 1964, and a devout member of the CoE reticent, was once cornered in a lift by a woman who roared at him, “Have you been saved?” A nervous Douglas-Home said thanks for asking and that he thought he had. “Then why aren’t you leaping …
Sep 12
Day 13: Eton to Runnymede
The penultimate day, spent with delightful ZANE supporters. We discussed a range of subjects, including Brexit and the current political turmoil. We ended up in Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed. When they get their faces out of screens, I wonder if the young are taught the importance of this vital key to history …
Sep 11
Day 12: Marlow to Eton
Trust No One I have just read a remarkable book, The Great Post Office Scandal by Nick Wallis. The Post Office, that core member of the establishment – slightly dull, yet a deeply respected British institution – prosecuted around 900 sub-postmasters for theft, false accounting and fraud. After a vast court case, it was found that 99 …
Sep 10
Day 11: Henley to Marlow
Dry and a beautiful walk. Chains of pleasure boats. I wonder if I would be bored on a boat. I think I would be. I was going blind recently. Seriously I was unable to read, and it got worse quickly. Then a consultant in Oxford lasered my eyes; once I was blind, and now I …
Sep 09
Day 10: Reading to Henley
Queen Elizabeth is dead: Long live King Charles 111 Sad day and a great loss of a magnificent woman. The only time I met her was unfortunate. As a Scots Guards officer, I was asked to go to Dane in Holyrood to dance with Edinburgh maidens, Highland reels are a sort of war, not a …
Sep 08
Day 9: Streatley to Reading
The Scots call it “drookit”, and that is good enough for me. We were drenched in a proper downpour. We went from drought to Noah’s Ark in a single hour. Neither Jane nor I mind walking in the rain, as we were brought up in the Scottish Borders and in Edinburgh, that is what one …
Sep 07
Day 8: Rest Day
The Limits of Forgiveness How can we offer forgiveness on behalf of people we don’t know or have never even met? The famous Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal illustrated this with a story that began on 10 October 1944. At the time, he was a young architect incarcerated in Janowska Concentration Camp, just …