Category: Uncategorized
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In the Footsteps of Major Thompson.
People ask me, ‘What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?’ and my answer must at once be, ‘It is of no use.’ If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle…
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Walks around the World
If the thing is feasible, the first to do it ought to be an Englishman Around the World in 80 Days – Jules Verne I turn 61 today. The sunflowers in the field below our house have finally been harvested and although temperatures are still in the low 20s, the…
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Mud, Sweat and Tears – Walks on the Wild Side.
Above all, do not lose the desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts and know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it Soren Kierkegard…
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Another six of the best!
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time T.S.Eliot- The Four Quartets : Little Gidding. While I was walking the GR65 (Chemin de St Jacques) earlier this year, I bumped…
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Six of the best!
The notion that I had walked twelve hundred miles since Rotterdam filled me with a legitimate feeling of something achieved. But why should the thought that nobody knew where I was, as though I were in flight from bloodhounds or from worshipping corybants bent on dismemberment, generate such a feeling…
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Day 19: St Gilles du Gard to Le Grau du Roi (35 km) Journey’s End – into the Camargue and on to the Med.
Journeys end in lovers meeting,Every wise man’s son doth know. William Shakespeare – Twelfth Night Act 2 Scene 3 At the beginning of the day I made a deal with myself. If I and my boots made it safely to the Hotel d’Angleterre at Le Grau-du-Roi, I would treat myself…
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Day 18: Nîmes to St Gilles du Gard (27km) The Glory that was Rome.
Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. William Shakespeare – Julius Caesar Act 1 Scene 2 Dubbed the most Roman city outside Italy, the centre of today’s Nîmes combines the impressive vestiges…
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Day 17: Russan to Nimes (30km) Battling the Mistral and getting lost.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. Ian Fleming- Goldfinger (Goldfinger to Mr Bond) I had envisaged an easy day. 27km to Nimes. Fingers in the nose (doigts dans le nez) as they say in France. I would be in Nîmes by mid afternon, more than…
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Day 16: Alès to Russan (40km) From Russan with Love.
But I am greedy for life. I do too much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail. The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable…
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Day 15: Génolhac to Alès (42km) Is there providence in the fall of a sparrow?
Not a whit, we defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. William Shakespeare –…
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Day 14: La Bastide Puylaurent to Génolhac (40km) Growing Old Disgracefully
All my life I worried ’bout,What others thought of me.I always tried to watch myself,And act as I should be. Mind my manners, stand up straight,And try to be a lady,But we all knew that in my heart,I was a little shady. There was a wild thing lurking there,Just below…
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Day 13: Pradelles to La Bastide Puylaurent (27km) Travels in the Cévennes without a Donkey
You must have your own pace, and neither trot alongside a champion walker, nor mince in time with a girl Robert Louis Stevenson- Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes Pradelles is apparently one of the most beautiful villages in France. In mid September with the mercury barely into double…
Pilgrim's Progress - Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK 