Day 1: Steeple Morden – Somewhere in the North Sea. I think it was Mao Tse-tung who said “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. Which in many ways seemed quite apt as we had decided to walk the first leg of the journey. The only difference was that Mao's journey was 1,000 miles, whereas ours was nearer 12,000 miles.After a final excursions to the Waggon & Horses for a final farewell drink with Steve, Karen and I donned our ruck-sacks and set off on the short 3 mile walk to the country station of Ashwell & Morden over those delightful country paths that brought us to Steeple Morden in the first place.
It was a great relief to be finally on our way. The last few weeks had been an emotional roller-coaster for Karen and me as we had been completely over-whelmed by the warmth and sincerity offered by our close friends and relatives as we kissed and hugged our goodbyes. Even the first leg of our journey wasn't without emotion, with Ange insisting on taking our picture outside of the church as she offered us one last embrace. John, the chairman of the Church Friends shook our hand as we passed St Peter & St Paul's and Sue from the Parish Council waved her goodbyes as we walked down the side of John Jarman's farm.
It took us an hour with our backpacks to walk that first leg of the journey, but soon we were aboard the 16:04 to Cambridge. At the station, we took a short bus ride in to Cambridge City Centre for a spot of dinner and people watching. How strange it felt sitting in All Bar One, mingling with the commuters as they filed out of their office buildings whilst we were there on our way to Bangkok.
At 19:43 we boarded the Dutch Flyer, which whisked across East Anglia from Cambridge to Harwich where we boarded the Stena Line Ferry that took us to the Hoek van Holland, and then onwards to Amsterdam via Rotterdam using the Dutch National Railway system.
Not a bad start then. Day 1: Total Mileage to Date: 150: Number of Time Zones Crossed: 2; Number of Countries Visited: 1; Number of Transport Modes Used: 4.
We were on our way.
1 comment:
You must be feeling 1000 times happier now that you are finally on the move. As you know, time has a habit of flying by so relish every moment and keep blogging! I'm thinking of getting a world map on the kitchen wall to keep track of you both - adventures by proxy!
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