Plans and more plans

The silence since my last blog is not a symptom of inactivity. Certainly not! And I haven't fled the country or fallen down a hole and broken my leg. Oh no! Instead I've been panicking about the walk, how soon it will start and how much I need to do before I go.

I will not bore you with a list of tasks done, tasks to do and problems encountered. After all, I've been here before and it would be very sad if I weren't on top of the job of getting ready. And behind me as I write is a pile of stuff that's ready to go into the rucksack, all weighed, charged and polished while, in front of me is a screen that's full of information about my route (now more or less finalised) and where I'm going to stay (getting clearer all the time).

I have to say that there has been a very welcome and heart-warming number of offers of accommodation from friends and Christian Aid supporters and these are still coming in - so far I have 22 of my 78 nights organised and another 6 B&Bs and hostels in Scotland booked so that I get off to a flying start. I am really heartened by this, by the escalating number of hits on the website and by the generous donations that have so far come in. Thank you to everyone - it makes a huge difference to my morale as well as to the children whose lives will be changed.

I will be leaving Cornwall early on Monday 13th June, going to Bristol by train then to Inverness by Easyjet. On Tuesday I will take the train to Thurso, stay the night there and then take a morning bus to John O' Groats where the walk will start with an easy day's coast walk to Keiss. From there I will dive into the solitary life of an end-to-end walker. You will see from the website that I've made some changes to the other end of the walk, preferring to miss the bank holiday crowds along the coast path and taking an inland route. How far I stick to the rest of the walk plan is hard to say - you'll need to keep reading the blog to find out what happens.

And, while I'm writing about this, can I draw your attention to another walk being done for Christian Aid this summer. Nancy and John Eckersley from Yorkshire did a Lands End to John O'Groats walk in 2011; they followed a far more generous route than I took in 2012 and raised a lot of money. They have done other walks in the years since then and we've had a desultory correspondence about these, culminating with an exchange of information about our plans for 2016. They are walking part of the the east coast of Scotland between Inverness and Dundee - a total of about 250 miles - and there's a lot of information about this and their other exploits on https://johneckersley.wordpress.com/. We will not meet next month but I hope that their walk goes well, that they enjoy it and that everyone donates to it as well as to mine.

In between the endless round of badly argued and often ill-informed claims and counter-claims about Europe there have been some news items that have caught my eye. In particular I see that Save the Children has issued a warning about the dangers of failing to provide education for the many child refugees stuck on the borders of Europe or in camps in the Middle East at the present time. It called on governments to make sure that, within a few weeks of becoming a refugee, every child has access to schooling, pointing to the disheartening loss of opportunity, waste of talent and risk of unrest if this doesn't happen.

And then, if the lack of education weren't enough, there was a UNICEF television advert the other evening appealing for funds to feed and house the same children. Why aren't our governments collaborating over supplying the aid needed and why has the help for people in peril to depend so heavily on voluntary support? Shouldn't we be deeply ashamed that we are focusing so much attention on the marginal advantages or disadvantages of being in or leaving the EU when there are such dire needs to be met?

I don't want to end this post on an angry note so here's a small gardening aside. We have a steeply sloping garden that has a stream down one side and a polytunnel near the top. To irrigate plants in the polytunnel I built a small hydraulic ram pump which supplies a tank from which water descends into a watering system. (I should point out that the automatic hydraulic ram was invented over 200 years ago but I am (or was) a mechanical engineer who prefers this to a new-fangled electric pump). Every year I drain the pump since freezing did nasty things to my welding some years ago and every year I struggle to get the pump going again; once started it generally chunters away very reassuringly.

This spring it was the usual problem to get it started but, when it did, no water flowed into the polytunnel. The tank had rusted through. That's not too surprising since the tank may well be my age - nothing gets thrown away in Cornwall. So I have repaired the tank and, this afternoon, will put on old clothes and wellies (I have to walk in the stream), fit everything back together and, presto, water will flow again in the polytunnel. I hope.