With just over a month to go I asked Nick if he could provide us with an update on his preparations. Nick is absolutely delighted with the support that many  of you have given to him. Some by giving money. Others with offers of accommodation or contacts to help him on his way. Hopefully, we will have one more update before he sets out.

I have just over a month to go before starting my walk to Istanbul, following in Paddy’s footsteps. Ferries don’t leave from London these days, so I’m sailing to Rotterdam from Harwich, and from there will pick up his route to Dordrecht, and on towards Germany.

With my funding from the Globetrotters Club, I’ve bought most of my supplies. It’s kind of reassuring to know that despite 80 years of advances in technology and materials, and the growth of an entire ‘outdoors’ hiking industry, the most important things I could buy are still a rucksack and a decent pair of boots. Essentially I’ve just bought the same stuff Paddy did, but lighter and more waterproof. So while Paddy packed ‘different layers of jersey, grey flannel shirts’ and ‘a soft leather windbreaker,’ I have layers of merino wool and a wonderfully warm down vest. No hobnail boots, I’m sorry to say, but a pair of Scarpa Terra GTX boots, waterproofed with Goretex. And in place of an ‘old Army greatcoat,’ a lightweight Berghaus jacket.

During my journey I’ll be posting intermittently on afterthewoodsandthewater.wordpress.com – there’s a ‘Follow’ button, if you’d like to be informed when something new comes up. I may also be writing a weekly column for a newspaper – details are still to be arranged, so I can’t say more at the moment. It will surely be an interesting time to be walking through the heart of Europe, with the Eurozone bucking and writhing and its future increasingly uncertain … a reminder that the continent is still changing, is always in a state of flux, struggling with its identity, as it was when Paddy did his journey.

More to come before I go. For now, I’d just like to quote from James Kenward, Paddy’s great-nephew, who I had the great pleasure of meeting in London a few weeks ago. Paddy was clearly a huge influence and source of inspiration to him, and here are a few of his thoughts on what I’m setting out to do:

Personally I always find it difficult to understand why someone would seek to follow the line of someone else’s arrow … but the mission statement that emerged through our conversation seemed full of fresh intent and knocked the aforementioned out of me. Perhaps the very course of a great journey holds its own through time’s passing like the essence of structure provides timelessness to a heroic tale. The breadth of Europe will not cease to be a story and having such an incredible point of reference in Paddy’s writing adds another dimension. I think that Nick will dig deeply and write well of his journey and my hope and suspicion is that the seed of his inspiration — his regard for Paddy and his adventuring ways — will yield entirely new crop that Paddy would admire. Frankly his romantic masochism invested in and infected by a new age interests me — previously there was snow, and there will still be that — but imagine the frigging motorways.

Related article:

£1 a week – Nick explains the reason for his journey