A part of
Moving at the Speed of Life
In early spring 2009 with the trees still bare, I took the first steps on a journey whose beauty and challenges I could never have imagined. It took me 247 days (8 months) to walk from the village of Whiteparish in England to Istanbul. Over 3,000 miles. Flight time is about 4 hours.
From London I passed through Canterbury and stood on the worn stones at Becket’s tomb where countless pilgrims had stood before me. I crossed the channel at Dover and walked through the storms and barren spaces of Northern France, and from Paris, I traced the Seine to Dijon as spring eased into the world.
After a month on the flat, the hills began to rise in slowly growing folds, until the Alps were surrounding me, snow still thick on the ground in May. For weeks I climbed through almost impenetrable passes, and finally emerged into Italy, and into summer, traversing the Apennines and following the coast to Slovenia.
When I began, I had decided that I wanted to try to relinquish the control that we seem to increasingly obsess about, and rather just see what happened to me in the most simple way that I knew. Invited back to a vicar’s house for Sunday lunch during the first week of the journey, his daughter said to me that this was how she thought of faith.
From London I passed through Canterbury and stood on the worn stones at Becket’s tomb where countless pilgrims had stood before me. I crossed the channel at Dover and walked through the storms and barren spaces of Northern France, and from Paris, I traced the Seine to Dijon as spring eased into the world.
After a month on the flat, the hills began to rise in slowly growing folds, until the Alps were surrounding me, snow still thick on the ground in May. For weeks I climbed through almost impenetrable passes, and finally emerged into Italy, and into summer, traversing the Apennines and following the coast to Slovenia.
When I began, I had decided that I wanted to try to relinquish the control that we seem to increasingly obsess about, and rather just see what happened to me in the most simple way that I knew. Invited back to a vicar’s house for Sunday lunch during the first week of the journey, his daughter said to me that this was how she thought of faith.
Adam Weymouth pauses near Termingnon in the French Alps
