Winter Solstice 2021

So here we are, six moons or so later and though many miles closer on our path around the sun than we were in the Summer we northerners are now leaning further away from the sun and spending so much more time lurking in total darkness and never far enough up from sunrise or sunset to burn off the mists and gloom.

Covid too is plunging us back into a dark gloomy place with the Omicron variant just taking off and criss-crossing the globe.

I had COVID with relatively mild symptoms but it still wiped me out for the worst part of two weeks. It may have been Omicron or good old Delta I don’t know but that vaccine I had back in May probably helped me fight it off.

As I suffered my ten day isolation my thoughts turned to the more satisfying challenge of the Summer and how we sat outside for lunch to avoid contamination. Our afternoon leg took us across the bed of the Little Hadham bypass just before they laid the tarmac so perhaps our prints are fossilised in the thin layer of dirt left by the glaciers between the speeding cars and the two hundred metres of chalk below. All other traces of the steps we took less than 100 days ago will have been washed by the rain, turned by the plough or covered with decaying autumn leaves by now.

My memories of the long day are fading too. I recall the slow slog up the the side of wet chalky clay fields to join the course of an old roman road that took the direct and demanding route over the top of the hills like us rather than the lazy meander along the river valleys that other routes took.

Perhaps my favourite encounter on the day was of a young family strolling with their children. When they heard that we had walked from London they asked how many days and where we had stayed over. Judging by the disbelief in their young daughter’s voice when she heard we had walked all the way that very same day perhaps she will be inspired by our challenge to stretch her own horizons beyond what seems possible to achieve something extraordinary.

This encounters like others on the way kept us motivated as we slogged on up the gentle slope to Strethall perched at the top of the chalk scarp and looked down across the flat lands to Cambridge and beyond across the fens as far as our eyes could see as the light started to fail and a welcome party joined us and guided us to sugary refreshment and sustenance in the Plough at Duxford before we continued to complete the last few miles in the dark. Finally reaching our Cambridge home where I lay down on my soft bed, exhausted to my bones, to be swept away into the deep by the tidal wave of sleep that I had vainly held back for nearly two whole spins of our green, white and blue ball.

To sleep perchance to dream that in some small way all our efforts each day have done more good than harm.

Autumn Equinox

In the last installment we left you waiting at the railway crossing for a train to pass before we left Roydon the patch of fertile land a roaming band of Saxon farmers settled into on their new found island 24 miles north of the roman ruins of Londinium and just over a third of the way along our walk to Cambridge.

Now, three months later I am home, idly turning the globe in my room to look down on this sceptered isle, a dot amongst the many great or small that are strung around the globe at this latitude, poking just far enough out of the blue to keep us Americans, Europeans and Asians dry, yet close enough to splash our coasts and steam our skies and tumble over fields and forests, keeping billions of us alive as together as we spin through our days, our busy green beads chasing each other as we burn around the neck of the world whilst up top its polar white sun cap is cracking and exposing a balding blue circle and homeless bears roaming in peril from the sun.

I spin my tilted globe to catch the sideways sun light from my window to get my head around the whole idea. Then think of millions of us like tiny bristles standing upright on the coloured territories staked out of the blue. Then it strikes me that every time we meet our feet must be slightly closer and our faces further back, leaning away from one another forced upright on the ball as we reach to shake hands. To get this in perspective the leaning tower of Pisa leans only about 4 degrees which seems a lot when you see it and when I stand up here in Cambridge I am leaning away from my London self by about a quarter of this, reflecting the degree or so we climbed up the ball this midsummers day.

This equinox week, the whole world north or south from its flat white frozen penguin feet right across the massive belly of Africa, whence we came, right up to its cracking polar cap, was equalized as we came together in the sun for the same twelve hours. The equal night and day reminding us up top of the coming long nights as we ride back deeper into shadow, or our feet down under of the sunshine to come as they emerge, or the Africans and others on the equator under the burning midday sun that their missing noon shadows would bounce back from under their feet and stretch away to the north side this time leaving them a few cooler months for the second time this year

The short warm nights we enjoyed leaving the streets of London in, just three full moons ago, have now gone south with the swallows. As each dusk gathers in, gaggles of new visitors, yearning for their eternal days of summer, but spurning the long cold nights, arrive to share our local comfort and security for the shorter warmer nights. We see them arriving in waves at our local lake splashing down in lines out of the deep rosy purple sky, rippling the surface and catching the last glinting embers of the setting sun, as it catches us all out once again by it's haste to leave us in the dark and get over to the other side.

Our less welcome new visitors this year seem set to stay. Finding a new home in our warm blooded bodies, they're becoming the nuisance neighbour wherever we are spinning around the world. Whilst the icy habitat for polar bears is shrinking fast we humans are growing 81 million people each year and building the houses for our unwelcome new neighbours faster than even they destroy them, but destroying them they still are, at least 1 million gone with COVID since we left London in June and 4 million since theis time last year. This silent tide of invisible seeds waiting to grab and penetrate us to breed and diversify into this precious habitat we have grown like no other left on the planet.

Despite almost half of us being vaccinated the bell seems to be continuing its steady toll with perhaps another million leaving us before they see the end of this year. In a normal year the world loses about fifty seven million souls so an extra four million is around a month’s worth of extra deaths from this new cause.

But back to happier thoughts of life and grand memories of our walk …

After crossing the Stort and the railway at Roydon, we followed the Hunsdon Brook rising steadily through the grey morning up the north side of the valley. With a clear steady path for hours ahead, the frantic clambering in the mud and chatter in the pitch dark chaos six hours ago has settled us into a confident groove. I sink into a comfortable rhythm of one hundred beats a minute and my mind wanders out above the harmony of my heart and feet across this valley beyond it to the whole world supporting us as we edge up around the spinning blue marble we call home.

Our path is still damp with the run off of yesterday's rain. The flush green grass on either side sprouting more sprightly than the hair on my head as our lively legs speed past, disturbing the dead grey clay with each step and throwing the occasional sod to the wind and rain, to run back down the bubbling brook and feed the deep blue sea surrounding us with the concentrated minerals of life’s decay.

Meanwhile, this apparently solid ground underfoot is racing both faster and slower than we can imagine. When we started off east out of London we were already spinning at hundreds of miles and hour out of the shadow of night towards the sun and break of day before we added the paltry three miles an hour we have kept up since. Since we turned up north we are edging closer to the middle of the spin and the ground below now whizzing us around from left to right is taking a slightly shorter and slower trip as we walk up it. By afternoon we will be spinning away from the sun even when it comes around to face us in the late afternoon and we feel we are walking towards it as it sets.

Seems hard to take that each step north is slowing us down but while we are climbing this hill we are getting further from the centre of earth and further out on the spinning ball must be speeding up again until we head back downhill towards the centre of the earth.

Stretching my imagination up, way above the spinning ball through the clouds that hide the sun today, I start thinking of the hundreds of millions of miles our whole world takes to get around it each year. Then beyond that to our spin together around the invisible black hole at the centre of our galaxy before I am lost spinning in the thought that everything is moving further and faster away from everythiing else in the rest of the unimaginable mathematical universe even as I take each slow ponderous step through our time today...

After these fleeting thoughts, the mud and long wet grass drag me back down to earth. I start to ponder the fact that this little bit of England is slowly doing its own thing. Floating nervously on the sea of molten rock below, it is still edging up north towards the top of the world at less than the speed my hair grows as it has edged north for millions of years. This little piece of southern England was spared the crushing mile or more of ice that pilled up north of London just 10,000 years ago and squashed the whole of the north further into the molten rock below it tilting the south up a bit like a see-saw. So that now since the weight has come off the top end is still groaning slowly back up and this end is settling gently back down as the ice runs into the artic seas and way down here to lap at its white cliffs as they continue to sink and collapse back into the sea where new chalk is forming in the shallows under the summer sun.

Moving too fast and too slow to get my head around what I know to be true now I start to wonder where this hill we climb came from and when. Some new dirt is growing out of the air we breathe and settling to dark carbonised soil below the blades of grass on either side, but the grey mud below lived and died in a sea somewhere else millions of years back.

Soil stuffed with dead cells, that lived brief lives crunching chemicals in the sunlight above or below water and that are still dropping dead from the grass and trees and in the rivers and ponds that we walk past today.

Looking ahead, the spire of Widford church reached up and led us on up the slope to the precipice. We had stopped here in the shadow of the church on a practice walk and admired this impressive view of the valley of the River Ash on a sunnier day in May.

The slow climb up the clay plateau before dropping into the green water meadows of the River Ash

As the earth wobbled closer to the warm sun all those centuries ago, the vast ice caps that covered all of this clay plateau started melting year by year and as the cliff of ice receded northwards the liquid water could only escape south over the clay.
This young river ash became a raging torrent each Spring cutting down through the softest clay to leave this impressive cliff edge pretty much where it is today. Torrents of mud and ice tore south and left on the picture below into the soft clay bowl of London, where, joining the Thames from the west, turned East together and out to fill the sea that still drags the boats into London on its flood tides as surely as the earth spins from dawn to dusk or the cold moon glides over silver clouds on warm summer nights.

On the edge of the valley of River Ash about to drop to the lush green water meadows taken back in May 2021

When we had plunged down this same clay bank a month earlier we stopped for lunch to admire the flowers and sun but today the sun and flowers are gone and we must press on but the river still bubbles through the meadows over flint washed out from the chalk just starting to emerge at our feet. The valley guided our way to the Bull at Much Hadham where we stopped for lunch.

Next time we report we will pick up on the afternoon leg that took us over the and home.

If you haven’t donated to our cause you still can for a few more weeks but don’t delay since Virgin Giving are shutting down their service very soon

Nearly two months ago now

We last left you eating breakfast sitting on a bench in a country churchyard 24 miles out through the forest from London.

Villagers emerged from their slumbering houses to walk the dog or nip to the shop before heading into town. One or two passed glances in our direction, but nobody dared approach us three strangers with shoes off and tubs of salad in their church yard.

I sat, munching and contemplating the ordinary comings and goings, struggling to comprehend that only a few hours earlier we were within the walls of London. Now, London seemed as distant  as the Romans who first made and named the place 20 centuries ago. They named our months too but on this June morning I am sitting by a church built around 10 centuries later so halfway from then to now at a time when waves of restless Saxons then Normans crossed the sea to get away from the crowds on mainland europe, pushing inland up the rivers of this island to find a brighter future or fertile fields in peace and quiet or seizing control by force. Some stopped here at this split in the river, around our breakfast seat, and settled down to grow rye, until, like some others in Angle land by hills (duns) of rye (ryge), this place came to be called “Roydon”.

We are the newcomers today coming down from the ancient wooded hills through the fields to pause by the river that cut through them and made it slow and easy to carry loads of rye and people to and from this special place before the rails and roads made everywhere else fast and easy around a century ago.

Those Saxon settlers rarely strayed far from these places and the familiar earth that fed them. Churchyards like this and the others we pass today bear witness to local familiar names set in the stone marking lives of millers, coopers, weavers and smiths that eventually saw the trains then cars then planes arrive in or over their village to disperse their children's names, genes and ideas out and about and all around the world in the time it took us to get here on foot from London today.

There was a time, when the news of the world, and diseases too, arrived here at the speed of strangers by boat, horse or like us on foot. Today we went about our strangely unremarkable business unnoticed amongst more exciting stories or threats that come and go by road or flit past at the speed of light across hand held screens.

And go we must as time presses on, north across the revolutionary victorian steam railway squeezed in here at the pinch in the valley against the slow lazy river that it vanquished before it quickly fell to the motor car.
On many mornings past, I gazed sleepily helpless from the stopping train sat in the station, strangely satisfied that the versatile and ubiquitous cars were held back in time on the little stone bridge over the river. But today, pedestrians on the outside, over the river, it was our turn to mark time impatient to get past and out back into our stride across the open fields.

We were still less than halfway home.

Our next update will take you out of this valley, beyond its narrow horizon over the hills to where we stopped for lunch.
 

Three weeks past and the flesh wounds have healed

We still have the tee shirts and each of the research charities will be finding some use for well over one thousand pounds each. Each and every one of your contributions being put to a good cause and maybe diverting some tax too.

Contributions are still coming in so feel free to join the stream.

Sun up in Epping Forest and breakfast down by the river Lea

We left you last time having mounted our commando assault on reservoir hill by cover of darkness, making the succesful ascent of the defensive earth work led on the by a bright red mysterious star in the sky above us.

The “red star” turned out to be the light on a tower crane and our view from the summit of London was curtailed by the soft rain still hanging in the air but we marched on to breach the first ring blocking our exit and separating the city from its green belt.

The North Circular

The north circular road deserted, unpatrolled and passable even at ground level and eerily silent

Looking dwon from the bridge here at 03:14 on a damp Saturday morning who in their right minds was on the road?

In fact for the next three hours, we would see no sign of anybody but as we marched on through the forest paths by torch light the forest woke up around us. First we heard one solitary bird singing in the pitch dark to our left, then another and another.

Out of the darkeness

As we wandered on through the forest, and ruffled feathers joined chorus around us, it gradually became lighter. There was no rosy glow but just a gradual disapperance of the dark. Our eyes did better than our phones but gradually we realised that the sky was brighter than the trees and the head torches had served their purpose and we could see our toes and each other again outside our personal patches of light.

Into the light

At the hunting lodge the lights were still on but all was silent as we grabbed a coffee. Later on we spotted an early morning milk float parked up wiating to start his deliveries. And we walked on up to High Beach

before we saw our first couple of isolated cars moving past us at 5am. The car park by the pillow mounds was empty and the mist still hang damply obscuring the view.

By the time we reached the next defensive ring, a high altitude traverse was the only option.

The M25 one hundred and twenty miles around London

The M25 dawn patrols already gearing into life at 6am on a damp grey Saturday.

The next few miles saw us emerge from the forest into the fields and into villages and signs of human life with dog walkers and over keen golfers braving the miserable Summer dawn. We took a short break at a seat by a top hole, watching the golfers start their slow progress up from the distant clubhouse down below. Then on through the well kept family seats of Essex and down into Roydon for breakfast delivered to us by our support crew in the sanctuary of the churchyard, 24 miles in and our first chance to rest long enough to examine the damage and change the feet into dry shoes and socks.

Still nearly two thirds of the trip left so a couple more installments to look forward to …

Still recovering and recalling the big day

Now two weeks since the big event, and the aches and pains have subsided leaving the more tolerable memories behind.

In our last update we left you in the early hours of Saturday on a quiet dry well lit deserted London pavement and about to walk right off the hard edge of the great city onto what we expected to be the soft green grass that would carry us home.

That, after all, was what we had lunched on during our daytime reconnaissance mission.

However, as we stepped off the hard, out of the pool of the nearest street light, and onto the soft, we heard, felt and then saw that our feet were splashing. Yesterday's inches of rain were still lying on the impermeable flat London clay waiting to do battle with our somewhat less impermeable trainers. On the open heath the going was good but where the path was concentrated between the bushes and trees the flat surface was churned up by earlier feet it was decidedly soft and deep and wet. Not being able to see the scale of what we were up against ahead was one challenge but staying upright on the patch below was something else, especially for those of us whose night vision was not so great.

We developed various techniques like the puddle straddle with legs apart, combined with reckless jumps onto the dark flat patches ahead sometimes finding firm flat earth and sometimes splatting flat water in every direction to plumb the hidden depths.

Somehow with the help of our smart phones, we tracked a wobbly course further into the darkness away from the city lights. Doubling back every so often to find another way round and getting somewhat less cheerful with each trainer full of drink.

We crossed a couple of refreshingly dry and deserted roads before entering the zone of the increasingly dreaded mudslide that we knew lay ahead by the reservoirs at the top of the hill.

Some near here was a lake with a seat where we had dreamt we might see a glimpse of the morning glow reflecting on the lake. we spotted the simple bench and on approaching it realised that the ground worn lower around it was one large puddle, but we could just perch on the ends without paddling so took it in turns as we supped from flasks of coffee and bit into energy bars before setting off again.

Now and again, ahead of us in the bushes, eyes stared, glinting in our torches, momentarily trying to unpick what they saw before the fox or deer behind them dived in terror of its life into the bushes and out of our remorseless path.

Bush after wet dripping bush parted to reveal the next until one last bush parted and revealed our nemesis. The terrible wall of dark brown mud glistening with trickles of water dribbling down the staircase of hoof prints and tyre tracks still just discernible in the gloom towering up from our feet to above our heads.  As our torches scanned up the churned lifeless clay mass and up out and over the top into the black sky above, a bright red star appeared. Was it a warning or was it our guiding light?

Who could tell at three in the morning? The GPS confirmed we were on course, so red alert or welcome beacon we went for it! Careering up the bank with the red and white stars dancing above us.

We survived this challenge without losing it, but there was more to come for us ..

and for those who are are keeping up, and have not yet tired of the journey there will be another installment …

Recovery and reflection

Well here we are one week in, just one week ago I was finishing a week at work having started at 7am Friday morning. Then found myself standing on the platform I know so well and from which I started my early morning commute in all weathers on so many days over the decades I have lived here, on the outskirts of Cambridge.

Ready for a family outing or a midsummer’s night dream?

As we sat on the familiar rattling old carriage with broken springs prodding us from below, and buzzing electrics and clattering compressors bombarding our senses, I tried to snatch the sleep that I knew I would be yearning for later. I was briefly inspired by the thought that at least the first part of our journey back would actually be more comfortable than this.

A few commuters out of Cambridge left the train as it headed south and a few heading into London joined and emptied out with us when we arrived in the wet dark London night.

London Night

We stumbled into a burger bar for shelter, watching the umbrellas outside, as strangers stumbled out of pubs and bars splashing and grimacing through puddles into black cabs to take them home.

As it neared 10pm police vans positioned themselves in strategic locations between pubs and stations as the England Scotland match finished and the chants of rain soaked supporters rose above the city street noise. We lingered over chips and burgers in the dry, as long as we could, then moved up Old Broad Street to an old after work pub that was still open but emptying of fast. The minutes dragged on but we wanted to save our legs and keep dry until the stroke of midnight and the Phoenix was open until 23:30.

Sat by the coffee machine we tried to be good and ordered coffee and tea but that caused some consternation, apparently the machine was off or they were out of milk or both, so I succumbed to the easy option of an after work pint of London ale as I had on many other Friday nights over the years, before starting the commute back home. This night felt different.

Again we lingered, watching the dwindling numbers diving into taxis and hearing the raggle taggle songsters gradually running out of steam after a rousing rendition of the national anthem. The golf came on the big screens and the pace slowed down. Finally it was time to empty the bladders one last time and walk the last few yards of Friday around the Bank of Englang under Tivoli corner crossing the River Walbrook hidden deep below our feet twice to face the Royal Exchange.

The Royal Exchange site of the original trading heart of London and the steps whence we are about to leave

Over to the right the Shard, London’s tallest building glows at us from the foot of London Bridge where the Romans marched in to build the first settlement here just twenty centuries ago.

We positioned ourselves out of the rain and gazed out expectantly until the bells struck midnight and the rain miracously stopped. We were off!

Next stop Cambridge

Round to the left and briskly up Cornhill, only to be held for ages at traffic lights as we had only covered the first half mile to leave the confines of Roman London’s square mile. Up the Mile End Road there were a few more people about. A dodgy guy accosted us with some contraband perfume but scarpered when he spotted the go-pro clipped to Isy’s shoulder.

Opposite the London Hospital, past the Blind Beggar pub, at the end of the mile, we turned north up Cambridge Heath Road and started heading home. Next turn was east again along Roman Road over the A12 and the River Lea at the old Roman ford to Stratford and the Olympics.

In the gloom of the towpath in the early hours a late night straggler was shocked into a string of expletives at the sudden sight of us when he looked up from his phone and almost fell into the river with it.

The air was fresh and cool and clear as we walked across the deserted Olympic site passing occasional house parties booming and chattering with laughter into the night sky oblivious to as we walked past mingling with the urban foxes below. We crossed the imaginary Greenwich meridian as we began the slow steady climb up the side of the valley then turned north again up Leyton High Street and up the hill to the forest.

All quiet on Leyton High Street at 2am on a Saturday morning.

Mission Accomplished

Apologies for the somewhat belated news update, but yes we all made it all 100km in 24 hours!

That’s the headline and here is the evidence

Apple watch trail

Isy’s heart rate a cool 119 sustained for over twenty hours. I wasn’t tracking mine but suspect it might have been triggering all sorts of health warnings!!

Further blow by blow accounts and photos of the epic journey will follow for those who are not too exhausted by it all and thanks to all who kept the faith and supported us.

Although we have hit our fundraising target we are very happy to get more. They will help us through our recovery phase as new aches and pains come and go as each hour passes.

Thanks again everyone!!

Off we go ....

This is it - we are off

We should be in London by now and in exactly two hours time at midnight we should be setting off from a wet Friday night in London, wallking out of the city into Saturday and carrying on and on until we drop or reach Cambridge before Sunday.

Follow us on google maps by using this live link

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JURs21oKjtVAf8Tu5

And you can still sponsor us

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Team/CommuteByFoote

And see our planned route here

https://osmaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/route/4174186/LongWalkHome

And feel free to post any words of support or comments on our progress here. We will monitor as we walk and may even respond, if we stop for breath, to the more supportive comments we get.

Into the final week

The perfect weather forecast is looking a bit less perfect now with some rain forecast next weekend.

Still better too cool and wet than too hot, this weekend would have been hard.

So we are resting up a little this week ready for the big day next weekend.

A reminder that you can see our planned route here and sponsor our charities here. We have all suffered this year and charities have fallen short so any contribution you can make is really really welcome.

We will post another news item on Friday night, just before we set off so you can track our location in real time! And be sure that we stay right on track or even meet us somewhere en-route.

The Final Practice Report

Final practice mission accomplished! Now well on the way to recovery.

Our revised route into Roydon was a big improvement and we made it to Littlebury Green before darkness fell. That’s 52.8km in an elapsed time of around 12 hours about ten of those walking.

The A120 was closed because of the Little Hadham bypass construction which made crossing it easier than expected but the bypass itself proved to be more of a challenge as you can see below. Our footbridge over the bypass to be is not yet reachable.

I suspect the signs for commuters on the A120 were somewhat clearer than the signs here for foot traffic. So we had to use some initiative but we think we found the intended route in the end and made it through to the other side.

We just need to manage twice the distance in three weeks time!

Keep the support coming we are definitely going to need it.

Planning for the final practice walk

This May Bank Holiday Weekend the weather is looking good. I have had my second Covid jab, and we are ready to push our bodies and convince our selves that our legs and kit are up to the 24 hour challenge in just 3 weeks time!

We are going to test a route alteration near Roydon based on our London reconnaissance walk and we need to find out whether the new Little Hadham bypass which cuts right across our route will require special measures.

We are grateful for all your support so far but keep telling your friends and sharing our links we really appreciate any extra boost to our morale at this stage.

As a test for the real thing, here is a live link that should track our progress on this practice walk.

GoogleMapsRealtimeLocation

OS Route

May 8th Practice Walk

The weather didn’t look great but we took the plunge donned our masks and headed down to London on the empty Saturday morning train. Today the plan was to walk from the Bank of Eingland in the centre of the City to Roydon to check out the first couple of legs of our planned route.

We are glad we did, since the “centenary” way marked so clearly through Epping Forest on our 1:25000 map is not quite so clear on the ground, even in broad daylight, never mind at dawn after a sleepless night!

Our first adjustment was around the post Olympic developments at Old Ford and Stratford on the River Lea. We made it over the canal and the tidal river and through to Leyton, the town named after the Lea at this end, not to be confused with Luton the other “town on the Lea” up in the chalk downs at its source.

At the top of Lea town we passed the Leyton “Stone” an obelisk on top of the remains of a roman milestone and a benchmark for the height we had climbed thus far out of London.

This was our portal, taking us off the concrete pavements into the magical green finger of Epping forest reaching right down to Leytonstone house, the old home of Edward Buxton the philanthropist who helped protect it.

From there onwards we walked on the soft green earth up into the calm of the forest glades

Before bridging the roar of London’s ring roads, the first built in my father’s lifetime to accommodate the motor car

The North Circular early on a Saturday afternoon in May

then we a few miles further higher up through the forest

we broke out across the never ending M25 built in my lifetime to accommodate London’s expanding girth,

The M25 late on a Saturday afternoon in May

Escaping the noisy circus felt good, but we managed to get nicely lost in a bluebell wood in the less well trodden paths across the open country on the “out” side of London.

As we dropped down to the river at Roydon, darkness had fallen and, after detours, we counted around 31 miles walking which is around half our planned total distance. Our legs were still standing and our feet a little sore after nearly 11 hours and we hope we are better prepared!

St Mark's Day 2021

Yesterday, April 25th St Mark’s day, I did another training walk stretching my legs up onto the chalk along the old roman road that ran from Cambridge to what was the old british capital occupied by the romans before the founded Londinium. Luckily the relative demise of Colchester means what was a major highway is now a beautiful green way encasing rare habitats lost elsewhere.

The Old Roman Street from Colchester (CAMVLODVNVM) to Cambridge (DVROLIPONTE) just over the horizon

The mud under my feet is dry now as the Spring sunshine and lack of April showers have cracked the surface into crazed pieces. When reached the water tower above Linton I was surprised to find an artifical stream, presumably of treated drinking water, leaking all the way down my path into Lin town making the path muddy and slippery and water for animals and birds.

I followed the Linton tributary of the Cam back down towards Cambridge and as I passed the sewage works I was surprised to see that, as well as the fresh water leak running down the valley to the river, the sewage outflow was making its own contribution on this fine sunny day.

I must find out why.

Easter Sunday

Happy Easter to all who are celebrating this year.

Our training is ramping up as the days get longer. We have opened our doors for donations as we all count down the days to midsummer and the light at the end of the tunnel of life beyond lockdown.

We plan to walk our 100km way out of the lockdown tunnel as midsummer day arrives so please get giving early if you want to help us even more by keeping some of your tax from the taxman to help our chosen causes too.

We’ll keep updating the website with our news and views over the few short weeks we have left to get ourselves walk fit and ready to survive 24 sleep deprived hours.

Spring Equinox 2021

It started a year ago, our long walk plan, but like the best laid plans it caught the world wide Covid-19 cold. Our 2020 vision blurred to chaos and we put our lives on pause.

I was lucky my last night in London a good one, watching the sun go down in a crowded cosy pub on the bank of the Thames laughing and joking as darkness fell then on to a concert cheering and bopping cheek by jowl with hundreds of strangers, before one last commute that Friday 13th March 2020 the night the music died and so much of life’s dancing stopped for the weeks that have dragged on to months and a full muzzled year.

Some I was with that fateful night in London are gone now and many more drained of life or mourning their premature losses.

Cities through history are no strangers to horrific plagues; but some curious strangers amongst us with time to spare have little by little enlightened us, grinding lenses and making all sorts of instruments to see and measure more and more of the invisible world in and around us, building the knowledge and understanding that this year has spared many so more of us from this particular suffering or untimely end.

Brilliant white has returned to the black thorn twigs, so the green shoots are not far behind.

This week, as the Spring days finally overtake the long Winter nights, we are optimistically pressing reset, one full lap of the sun later than originally planned, and now more than ever, hoping to raise the funds and your interest and support for our amazing life saving scientists across our globe to redouble their search for a deeper understanding of life the universe and everything but especially us and our little blue dot.