Tag: Turin

Not good at the moment and mainly linked to my physical state. As a result of walking well over 100 miles in 7 days (doesn’t sound like much? Well, I climbed two 1000km high slopes and did 33 of the miles in one hit yesterday) I have the sorest feet in the world ever. In addition, my shoulders are red raw from carrying my rucksack, I’m tired from lack of sleep and I’m going mental at the scale of what I’ve undertaken.

7 days down, 60 or so to go.

Now, I know I can walk 33 miles in a day. This is twice what I’d reckoned on so I should be able to finish The Walk in half the planned time. Only if I walk that far, my feet self-destruct and it takes days for them to get better. If I only do 17 miles, then I arrive at some town with nothing to do all afternoon and evening at 2pm. I wait around for sunfall, find a place to camp (if I’m able) and try to sleep far earlier than I’m used to.

Then I wake up when the sun rises and repeat. I can’t carry a load of books as they’re too heavy. I can’t spend evening in cybercafes as it’s too expensive (if I can find the things). I don’t know people in the towns and most don’t have hostels, not that I could afford to stay in one every night anyway.

Plus, there’s a lot of people back home I miss like hell and I can’t wait to see you all again. If I could do this walk in a month, I would do. The worst thing would be to have it take longer than I’ve planned.

If I had someone (or someones) with me, it would definitely help. It’d be an adventure, a lark. But instead it’s just me (partly my own fault, I did have at least one person volunteer to join me but he was a dodgy-sounding guy from Ghana who was trying to get me to send forms to the embassy for him and stuff). You try walking for 33 miles with nobody to talk to. Along a road so you can’t read as you have to watch for traffic. When the only scenery is fields.

What the hell have I set myself up for? I am now in Turin a day ahead of schedule – good. But knowing I’ll need to spend an extra day here to sort my feet out – bad. And that I still have at least 60 days left – worse. And I can’t realistically speed that up. Worse again.

Anyone want to walk with me for a few days? Spread it out between everyone here and it’d only be a day or so each!