While Paddy flew home to relax with home comforts I still had one challenge left to do. Well actually a few, the first being to try in my horrid horrid horrid hung-over state to get on a plane from Istanbul to New York without re decorating the taxi or giving British Airways a new paint job. Then there was the 26.2 miles that i had to run, without any training (well running anyway).

The marathon itself was fantastic fun and a brilliant atmosphere. I started very well and although stiff from a week off walking in Istanbul I was feeling confident about making it around the streets of New York.

The first 12 miles went very well and I kept up with the 3 hour 15 minute pace group and although there was no hope of keeping up the pace the whole way I was sure to get a good time. Then I felt a horrific pain spread up my leg and I literally collapsed on the side of the road. The long and the short of it was that I think I have re-fractured my leg from my previous injury in France. I did however manage to hobble around the remaining 14 miles and reach the finish line in 5 hours 12 minutes. Certainly no record but it was one of the most painful and hardest things I have had to do and it made walking to Asia look and feel like a Sunday afternoon stroll!

Just like to say a massive thank you to my supporters along the way, Ems, Charlie, Davina, Willem, Kate and the Red Cross/Realbuzz team, I am almost certain I wouldn’t have finished without your encouragement! This the last marathon i am doing without any training, i think i have learnt my lesson….

It had taken a couple of months to secure permission from the Istanbul authorities to cross the Bosporus bridge into Asia on foot. This had not been possible since the late 1970s, when the surprisingly high number of suicides committed by jumping from the dizzyingly high bridge led to the walkway being closed to pedestrians indefinitely. Some way short of the bridge, a small white hatchback began to follow us at walking pace. Three burly men were peering out at us through the foggy condensation of the windscreen. It stopped to let one of the suited strangers out, who then started following us, trying to catch up with our now ever-quickening pace. Andy gripped his walking stick, ready to swipe if the chap got much closer. Then we heard a great shout of ‘Mr Andy!’. Stunned, we both turned to confront him. Mehmet explained that he was one of three police detectives who had been assigned for our personal safety that day, and would be escorting us for the rest of our journey. Apparently the bridge authorities, whose permission we had needed to cross the bridge, had notified the Department for Tourism about our journey. The Department had consequently set up a press conference at the Blue Mosque, from where our final day’s walking was due to start. As they had neglected to tell us any of this, we began our day’s walk from the front door of our hotel, and now we were reluctant to backtrack the couple of kilometres into the centre of town, despite to the waiting cameras. Concerned by our no-show, the Office of Tourism had dispatched a small phalanx of police across the city, some of whom, namely Mehmet and his entourage, had finally tracked us down just short of the bridge.

As the suspension towers of the bridge loomed out the incessant rain, we were joined by two motorcycle escorts. The seven of us set off to cross the final 1510m span that links Europe to Asia. Six months older and certainly wiser, we looked behind us at the muddy footprints left in our wake. Between us, we must have knocked up over 10 million of these. Some we could recall, some we couldn’t, but I knew that these last ones we would never forget. Eventually, inevitably, we were able to make out our friends and family beyond the eastern end of the bridge and perhaps more importantly, 200m in front of them, an enormous yellow sign proclaiming to the oncoming road traffic and two bedraggled pedestrians, ‘Welcome to Asia’.

Hello all! As you can see from the above photo we are now within an incredibly tiny distance from Istanbul. We have been getting progressively excited for the past few days knowing that we could complete the walk in one big day’s walk. However, we are drawing out the excitement for as long as we can and, if we stick to our schedule we will arrive on the out skirts of the town tonight, and the centre in three days time.

Lots and lots has hapened over the past week or so, Including meeting the chap seen in the photo below. He and his friend have cycled all the way from Korea, leavıng a few days before we left Trafalgar Square. I would recommend his website if your Korean is up to scratch. It can be found at www.eurasia2006.com. We have also met a cyclist who had spent the past month travelling up from Syria, so I guess we must now be on the main long-distance route between Europe and Asia.

The next blog will come from Istanbul. Thanks for all the support- We needed to keep to an incredibly tight schedule over the past three months, and we couldn’t have done it without your help.

(50kms walk, 2 kebabs, and 3 cans of Efes all in one day? It’s too much for Andy)

I’m going to have to keep this blog fairly brief. This slightly third-world computer is causing me all sorts of headaches and however much you all want to know what we’re up to, I value my sanity over and above your curiosities.

Firstly I’m sure you’re all wondering what has happened to the dots above my I’s. Well they don’t have them here and that’s that. Be satisfied that I’ve crossed the t’s. But where’s ‘here’? Here is Turkey!

Yes, after almost 160 days we have marched happily into our 11th and final country. We left Bulgaria about 2 days ago and snuck across a little sliver of Greece into Turkey and thus were in three countries in a little less than 24 hours. The latter half of Bulgaria went by in a blur of rubbish-filled fields, dead dogs, and cheap beer. It’s best summed up with the same sort of sentiments as those that we had for Serbia. Wonderful people, but what are you all playing at? Sort it out, ok?

It seems like years since we were in Sofia though in fact it was only about 10 days ago. We’ve simply been keeping our heads down and tramping along as hard as we can. There are various reasons for this. Not only does Andy have a marathon to run, but people are coming to Istanbul and we mustn’t be late. But perhaps the main reason for our increase in pace is the ridiculous temperatures. It only needs the night-time temperatures to drop another degree or two for the surrounding countryside to be littered with our frostbitten extremities. But with just 8 days to do the remaining 270kms we’ll keep our fingers crossed while we still have them.

We hope to be on the internet again in a few days to pop up a couple more lines of blog. Keep checking and, more importantly, tell everyone you know that if they haven’t yet donated then they’re the reason that two poor ramblers cry themselves to sleep each night, sheltering in hedgerows as snowstorms rage across the countryside. See if that works at all.

Other than the above there’s not a huge deal to report. Plus we’re going to keep a bit of an embargo on the news in a cunning ruse to force you all to attend our party to hear how the last stages went. So keep the 25th November free, and we look forward to seeing you all remarkably soon.

I hope you’re all well, as, I suspect, does Andy.

Regards from us both.

Hello! Many apologies for the lack of blog updates for the last few weeks but we have been on the road covering the huge distance from Belgrade to Sofia in Bulgaria.

Since leaving Belgrade we headed due south for the first time towards the town of Nis in southern Serbia. The route took us firstly across the mountains just south of Belgrade and then along the river Niska towards it’s source across the Bulgarian border. Serbia was an interesting country and had given us a real taste for the Eastern culture change we have experienced with crazy ‘turbo folk’ music, the ability to turn any fruit into an intoxicating liquid and the massive poverty levels that are abundant in the countryside regions. The countryside has been beautiful but unfortunately the huge amounts of rubbish that line the roads, even in the depths of the countryside have put a huge dampener on the walking. The government can not afford to provide any form of rubbish disposal except in the main cities and so people are forced to burn and dump their rubbish in every possible location, including their gardens. That, combined with the huge stray dog population, has meant that we have been forced to use our walking sticks as weapons rather than to help us along the very uneven roads!

The walk from Nis up into the mountains towards the Bulgarian border was breath-takingly beautiful as our road lead us up a steep gorge with tunnels and rock ledges and some staggering views. The only problem was that our road was the only road to Bulgaria from that region of Serbia and so it was home to a continuous flow of lorries moving their goods from Bulgaria, Turkey, Hungary and Iran into the west. We have been forced many a time to dive from the road into whatever lay beyond the concrete to miss almost certain death from the thundering freight trains that past us at immense speeds.

We have also been plagued with an extraordinary hot end to the summer here with temperatures reaching well above 32 degrees. I hate to think of the ratio of water intake to the amount that literally spurts from our bodies over a 7 hour walk. Alas our prayers for cooler weather have been answered and the summer has in the last few days come to a quick end with incredibly cold nights and torrential downpours. The walk for the next three weeks is looking very uninviting but hopefully the excitement of being so close to the finish will pull us through.

Bulgaria has brought many new things to our walk. Another stamp has been added to the passport and we have even experienced our first time change since reaching Calais but more importantly we have seen our first road signs to Istanbul!!!!! This caused immense excitement from us at the border to the extent that the border guards that had just admitted us almost rounded us up and deported us back to Serbia in a flash thinking we might have MMD (Mad Mosquito Disease – the Serbians answer to mad cow disease!).

Now let me tell you about George…
We met George outside a small town on the main road into Sofia. We were plodding along as usual when we heard a great cry and frantic waving coming from the garden next to us. Slightly surprised and with a quick glance around to check it was directed to us we ventured in to say hello. We were met but a big bounding Bulgarian guy who could apart from the colour of his skin have easily been mistaken for Shrek. Accompanying him was a elderly man, who we assumed to be his father but who was only about 5ft tall and half the size of George. Not speaking a word of English didn’t stop George from inviting us to sit down as he disappeared into his house in a fit of hysterics before reappearing with an armful of fruit and vegetables for us – this included a watermelon, tomatoes, apples and bag full of walnuts! Why people see two backpackers already buckling under the weight of their loads and immediately think we must give them more to carry still baffles us. Then about 10 seconds later George’s father coming scuttling out with a variety of glasses and sets them down in front of us, 2 of which were shot glasses. Paddy and I exchanged glances, both concerned about the further 3 hours walk in the mid-day sun that we had to complete. Those concerned glances couldn’t have been more justified, considering the events that followed. The pure home brew liquid that we were fed, weighing in at no less than 150% proof, almost evaporated before we even had chance to tuck into the rather generous 60 ml helping that we were both given. Well needless to say for Queen and Country we both immediately lifted our glasses in a toast to which George, in a moment that could only have come from ‘Withnail & I’, pipes up with ‘chin chin’! Trying to hold the hysterics we put away most of the glass in one go only to almost fall off our chairs with the incredible potency of the grape based liquor. It numbed our brains and legs within a few seconds and burned not only our nostrils, mouths, throat but then proceeded to dissolve the contents of my stomach and its lining. We managed to finish our glasses and wash it down with some water before saying our goodbyes and heading back onto the road. At this point George, who had obviously been on the juice for most of the afternoon embraced Paddy and, sobbing, began kissing him on the cheeks! I narrowly escaped the kisses with a clever move but had my hand squeezed so tight that I almost wished I had taken the previous option. In my pissed state I decided the watermelon was an absolute necessity and packed it into the top of my rucksack and stumbled down the road in all sorts of directions untill I sobered up enough an hour later to collapse and eat it. George was another classic example of the exemplary hospitality that we have seen throughout the Balkans but was certainly in a league of his own.

Sofia, which we staggered into yesterday, is a very different and impressive city. The outskirts were muich the same as the rest of the big towns that one finds in these parts, but the city centre is affluent, buzzing, and attractive. Admittedly, a young lady tried to pick-pocket me yesterday, but she did it very politely and wasn’t the least offended when i wouldn’t give her my things. We’re staying in a nice little hostel, where we were welcomed with booze and food and a short history of everything Bulgarian, and much as we would like to stay here for a few more days we have sadly got to push on. A slight peice of mis-mapsmanship has somehow lost us a day (or was it all that homebrew?) so were are going to have a furious pace from here on. We were also informed yesterday that it’s going to rain for about a million years starting today (it has, indeed, been pouring all day) so that’ll add a fun new aspect to the walk. Still, our spirits are high and we are neither bruised nor battered, but just a little tired. We are nearly as close to the end of the walk as London is to Edinburgh, which is, now that i come to think about it, not actually a very comforting way of looking at it. Wish us luck!

Paddy’s Party Blog

Right. Enough of Andy’s tourism nonsense. Let’s all talk business for a second. The party is now completely confirmed for the evening of the 25th of November. Write it in your diaries now, because you’ll feel like such plonkers if you end up having to go else-where and someone else wins the 48″ plasma screen TV, or whatever it is which happens to be top prize. (Just to clarify, we don’t actualy have a 48″ plasma screen TV yet, but if anyone reading this happens to work for Sony, Panasonic, etc, or if they have a dodgey relative who works out of a transit van down East Hackney way and might be able to get his hands on that sort of clobber, then let us know).

To get an idea of what we do have in our raffle, go, as always, to our website where you will see all sorts of exciting brands scrolling across the top of your screen. We also have a chap who, at this very instant, is dreaming up all sorts of exciting canapes and nibbles to stop the bubbly (that’ll be beer obviously, unless you win any of the bottles of champangne) from going to your heads.

I must also take this opportunity to remind you all of our dates for arriving in Istanbul, and for crossing into Asia. Drinking buddies are coming from as far afield as Russia to help us party the walking out of our systems. We’ll get to town on the 28th (a weekend, dear workers) and then cross into Asia on the 31st. If you think you’re up to the task of joining our ever-increasing band of volunteers, then give us a ring and we’ll tell you all the details. It’s a city that’s well worth a visit, even if you don’t want to hang out with smelly ramblers.

Anyway, lastly, as always, thankyou to all the sponsors. It’s been an incredibly profitable week, and though we shan’t embarass anyone here, we all know where the fundraising page is to be found, and that the donors are all listed at the bottom, so thank you again, really and truly, to everyone for their wonderful, generous, kindly and unexpected support.

We hope you are all as well as can be, and (for the first time in a blog) look forward to seeing you in the not-too-distant future! What a strange thought.

Paddy and Andy

Zdravo!

After extensive passport checks and our first border stamps we have reached Serbia! There has been a dramatic culture change and we are now truly in the depths of Eastern Europe. We are currently in Belgrade after a long 7 days of solid walking since our last blog update from Croatia. It has been an interesting week with on-the-spot police checks, drinking sessions with the locals of backcountry villages and the crossing of our first minefield!

The first of our ‘on the spot’ police checks came 4 kms from the Serbia border and took us rather by surprise at 6 in the morning! We were peacefully plodding along after an early start on a road that would lead us to the Croatian border town, when in the distance we heard sirens and saw blue flashing lights in a cloud of dust racing towards us. We were forced to surrender our documents by the 4 heavily armed officers who leaped out of the car. They looked very disappointed when we didn’t take off across the fields so that they could take chase or even have some target practice! However they were very impressed with our efforts and quickly sent us on our way.

In our first Serbian city of Sremska Mitrovica we met a lady that spoke very good English and she immediately warned us of the trouble that we would have in Serbia if we were not careful. This is partly due to the role that the UK had in the NATO force that heavily bombed areas of the country during the war in 1991. However so far her views have been as far from the truth as possible and we have met incredibly generous and nice people who have always been amazed at our adventure and how far we have come. Once again we have been treated to a whole host of freebies ranging from beer to donunts which has kept us motivated on the road.

The only other news to report is that over the last week we have twice been thought to be Russian! I can only assume that this is because of our dirty, bearded appearance and our attempt to speak Serbian! The roads are so full of diesel fumes and dust from the old cars and lorries that our lungs are about to give up and are voices become rather deeper than normal. We have however had a chance to clean up our appearance now we are in Belgrade for 2 nights while we await a diplomatic bag from England full of new maps to get us to Istanbul.

The end is truly in sight and within the next week we shall have walked further than the straight-line distance between London and the North Pole ! Just 6 weeks of solid walking lie between us and Istanbul now! Thank you once again for all those of you that have sponsored us over the last few weeks. It is great moral boost and reminds us when we are in a low spot why we are doing this marathon effort and bring us back on track. Please encourage all your friends that have not sponsored us to log on to www.justgiving.com/paddymorris help us try and reach our £10,000 target.

Hours of day dreaming while we endure our endless march across Europe has lead to some rather productive party planning for our (hopefully) triumphant return to London in November.

On the 25th of November we shall be having a massive fundraising party in London. We have already, thanks to the invaluable help of a couple of friends and family, been able to secure a number of fabulous prizes for our raffle. A fancy Belgrave venue has been booked, caterers consulted and Oddbins warned to double their Christmas stock order! There will also be photos, videos, endless story-telling and for the geography minded of you, hundreds of maps!

The dress code changes hourly but be sure that it will get you out of your Monday to Friday suits and is certain to take Belgravia by surprise!

Obviously invitations are a little tricky with us being on the road 6 days a week so don’t expect a fancy invite through the door quite yet but everyone is of course invited so please keep evening of the 25th of November free.

Andy and Paddy

Hello! By the time you read this blog we shall be crossing the Croatian border in to Serbia. Since leaving Zagreb over a week ago, we have been racing in the straightest line possible towards Belgrade. This included a quick trip into Bosnia to add another country to the ever growing list.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been increasingly aware of just how close to Asia we are starting to become. With people now booking flights to Istambul for our crossing of the finish line, we thought it prudent to have a reckoning of just how much of the job there is left for us to do. Thanks to some astonishingly detailed map work carried out by our Surrey office, we can present you the following vital statistics:

In the next forty seven days we must walk 1,320km through three more countries. Although we will still allow ourselves one day each week for laundry, a shower and blog updates, we will otherwise be covering at the very least 35km or seven hours walking every day until the end of next month. Although that might not sound too much to you folk reading this from the comfort of your desks, think of this as walking between Sloan Square and Crazy Larry’s, twelve and a bit times every day, carrying sixteen bottles of wine on your back, for the next seven and a half weeks – sober. Ok, it’s still better than being an accountant.

This endurance race is taking its toll on our bodies. Paddy has been hit with tendonitis, whilst I continue to wake with cramp in the night caused by being a foot too long for my tiny tent. It will be both a mental and physical challenge to keep up this pace to Istanbul, but a challenge we look forward to facing. Keep sponsorship and texts raining in as it really boosts moral, and keeps us motivated.

Croatia, meanwhile has been fascinating. We didn’t realise the extent to which the Balkan wars had affected the whole of the eastern half of the country. Every village through which we pass shows the clear signs of recent conflict. In the poorer regions, where repair and reconstruction is less common, every house front is pock-marked with bullet holes, and every second paving slab is shattered by mortar rounds. While in the more affluent areas the damage has been completely repaired with new breeze-block houses lining the roads, there is still the anti-Serbian graffiti, black-clad widows, and road-side memorials, which is so unexpected in communities that are, don’t forget, within walking distance from London!

This not withstanding, the people have been welcoming, friendly and generous to an extraordinary degree. Not half an hour ago we were beckoned in to a village bar for a free lunch (thanks Krono), free drinks, and sent away with bundles of chocolate bars which we are trying to munch our way through before they all melt in the afternoon heat.

However the novelty of being stopped in every village, by upwards of twenty people, to ask us what we are doing is wearing thin and slowing our pace dramatically. We are longing for the hopefully less populated mountain passes of Bulgaria where we can wander undisturbed and not feel like the local celebrities.

All that remains, before we say farewell for another few days, is to tell you all to keep the evening of the 25th November free. We will be having an enormous party in London, and everyone’s invited. More details to come next week.

So thanks once again for all the sponsorship and encouragement, its hugely appreciated.

Kind regards

Paddy and Andy

Well, another blog, another country. This one comes to you from Zagreb, in Croatia, where we are enjoying another of our none-too-frequent days off. The sun is shining and the sky is blue, and all would be well if Andy and I hadn’t just discovered, thanks to RAC Routeplanner, that there’s still a ridiculous 1,600kms between us and Asia.

The satisfaction of reaching Croatia two days ago was countered by our disappointment at having to leave Slovenia. The week or so that we spent walking through it was nicely finished off by an early morning border crossing (with our first passport-check since Dover), following our descent through the hills seen photographed in fetching Sepia tones below.

 

On we raced into Croatia, where for some reason summer was back in full swing after our Slovenian autumn. As yet we have no real feel for the country as our experience has been restricted to the suburbs of Zagreb, which seem to stretch almost all the way to the border. But apart from the mildly worring Italian driving ethic, the people have all been friendly and curious (see photograph below, of a passing consultation from the Zagrebi Cartographic Society), and we’ve a good fortnight or so of countryside coming up in which to get a proper feel of the country before we’re spat out at the other end into Serbia (oooooh- Serbia! Landmines!)

It’s now less than 2 months until we aim to cross the bridge in Istanbul between Europe and Asia. Andy has now booked his flight to New York for the marathon on the 5th of November, so a definite end is in sight. A very curious feeling, he assures me. This means, importantly, that A DATE IS SET! On the 31st of october we will be hosting a bridge-side reception (BYOBoc*, dress code: rambling) with an open invitation to one and all (conditional on reciept of sponsorship by that date, dear friends). We already have a whole host of exciting people with flights booked, but as with all these things, the more the merrier.

*- of champagne please. No Cava.

And that concludes the news for today. We’ll leave you with our fond farewells, and this current travel advice from our friends at the Foreign Office…

“…be careful not to stray from roads and paved areas without an experienced guide. If you are planning to travel outside the normal tourist resorts you should be aware that there are areas affected by the war, which ended in 1995, where unexploded mines remain. Areas include the Danube region (Eastern Slavonia) [which means, of course, the main walking route from London to Istanbul]. You should be wary about leaving cultivated land or marked paths.”

Perhaps we should consider replacing our walking sticks with metal detectors??

Regards and thanks, as usual,

Paddy and Andy

 

Another highly exciting milestone is my purchase today of a shiny new pair of trainers! The old ones eventually died a glorious death on the final stretch into town yesterday. They had, since Trafalgar Square, consumed 1 tube of superglue, 2 pairs of laces, 3 sets of insoles, 4 maids-a-milking and 5 countries. They are currently in an envelope winging their way back to my mother (almost under their own steam) in Shropshire, where they will look lovely on the mantelpiece.

 

Not much news to report apart from the above. I have no idea, either, why I am now writing in blue and underlined, but these Slovenian computers are a curious breed. Many thanks again to everyone who has sponsored us. Keep telling the world about our good cause (mind you, after the article in the Windsor Times this week, I’d say most people probably know) and we-ll be back in touch again as soon as something exciting happens.

Regards from the Balkans,

Paddy and Andy