The Old Road

At the end of August, with Alison and my brother Terry and his wife Sue, not forgetting Barney the dog, we set off to follow the ancient road from Winchester to Canterbury, known as the Pilgrim's Way. The trip is in part inspired by Hillaire Belloc's 1904 book The Old Road: and recalls Hamish Fulton's 1971 Pilgrim's Way - a work he repeated in 1991 in a continuous walk without sleep: I doubt we'll be trying to duplicate that. The route is neolithic, layered with history. And at the moment we live in a pretty village in the Itchen valley that lies along to route

Terry has set up a site to raise funds in aid of the excellent Crohns and Colitis UK charity at justgiving.com if you feel inclined to commemorate the pilgrimage in a useful way


The Schedule is:
25 8: Winchester to Farringdon
26.8 Farringdon to Farnham [all stay with friends]
27.8 Farnham-Dorking stay at Premier Inn[booked]
28.8 Dorking-Westerham stay at Clacket Lane Days Inn![booked]
29.8 Westerham-Maidstone stay with Sue's cousin Anita
30.8 Maidstone - Charing stay at pub [booked]
31.8 Charing- Canterbury

If you'd like to join us for a section, or just catch up for a pie and a pint along the way, do drop us a note. I will try to blog the trail when circumstances allow - barring the 27th, which promises us a rather long day on the road

Cod

We like to believe that human creativity is an infinite resource. We used to think that was true of the oceans – that we could throw as much garbage in, and take as much food out, as we could, as fast as we could, and the seas would replenish and clean themselves up. That was before the effective extinction of the Atlantic cod. We have to hope that we do not make a similar mistake with creativity.