A Very Long Walk

The Long Walk

In August 2004, Skene and I joined five other intrepid walkers to hike from Minehead in Somerset to Bude in Cornwall along the South West Coast Path - 125 miles in eight days.

And we camped too which was even more of a challenge for me.

You can read more about our adventure at www.longwalk.co.uk and view our photos here.

For some unknown reason, we did it again in August 2006, picking up where we left off to walk from Bude to Land's End. Check out the itinerary here. This time it was 135 miles in eight days.

Photos from the second leg can be found here.

To provide added motivation (and to take advantage of a prime fundraising opportunity!), we walked for Oxfam and have now raised more than £1000 - about £2 each per mile. You can still donate online here.

Why walk for Oxfam?

• Girls in Mali, have to walk long distances to get to school. This causes parents to fear for their daughter's safety and is one of the main practical obstacles to education for girls in this region.
• Fetching safe water for her family, involves an hour's walk down the mountainside for Elise, a grandmother in Masisi, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. The journey home takes two hours with three of them carrying 20-litre jerry cans. She needs her granddaughters to help her and so they cannot go to school. The area is still suffering the effects of civil war.
• Women in Ali Roba, Metta, Eastern Hararge, Ethiopia, were interviewed by Oxfam to find out the key problems which contributed to poverty and malnutrition in the region. One of the problems cited by the women was the two hours' round trip to the grinding mill to have their grain milled.
• Manrelyan Narine, a resident of Arpy, a village in the Armenian region of Vayotcs Dzor, is grateful for the Oxfam-funded healthcare scheme in her home town. Otherwise, Manrelyan Narine and her family and friends would have to walk 10 kilometres to the nearest health clinic.
• In Shahr-e-Buzurg, the westernmost district of Badakhshan in the north-east of Afghanistan, on the Tajikistan border, Oxfam has been providing food aid for over 4000 families - 30,000 people, 80% of the population of 63 villages - unable to fend for themselves because of a combination of natural disasters, drought and politics. The families have to walk for two days from their villages in the mountains to the distribution point.
• In Lebanon, work had started before the current conflict on the construction of a National Hiking Trail. The project has now been interrupted and is unlikely to be revived for some years. Many of the Lebanese still cannot safely walk about their countryside.