Part 2

I’m back.  Feet are healed and I’m ready for the open road again, thanks to Roisin McSwiggan for the expert advice and to Mary Ann for the excellent nursing care she has ministered.  I was very disappointed that I was unable to finish the walk at the first attempt.  It is not exactly Everest, but walking on those complaining feet made it seem like my Everest minus the danger of falling down a cliff or being obliterated in an avalanche.  Hopefully I will be able to avoid a blister repeat.  I have been educating myself in ways to avoid them, but with those rough roads in the south, I know it will be a challenge and I am not setting out as cocky as I was first time round.  Wisdom for some of us only comes from a gradual accumulation of mistakes.  It’s called learning the hard way.

I have trod about fifty miles over the past week in preparation for the second half of the walk.  I will start in Ballymahon just North of Athlone which is about 25 miles north of where I left off in Ferbane.  I’ll count the fifty miles walked this week in lieu of that.  I have driven that road from Athlone to Ballymahon a few times recently and it is really too dangerous to walk on.  It is very twisty, narrow and in some stretches does not even have a grass verge to step on to avoid oncoming vehicles.  It is also a very busy main road.  It would therefore, I’ve decided, be too dangerous a venture both for me and for drivers coming round a sharp corner and having to swerve to avoid the vision in front of them.  I set out again then on Sunday morning June 2^nd, full of hope but a chastened man.  I will be keeping you all updated on progress any time I have access to a computer on my journey.

The funding total is currently well over £13,000.00.  It is a magnificent sum and thanks to so many people who have given so generously and to those who have organised fundraising events.  I have been overwhelmed by the generosity I have encountered and greatly heartened by the sheer goodness of so many people.  For that alone the venture has been well worth while.  It has however taken over our lives these past three months, Mary Ann’s as much as mine.  It has turned out to be a much larger operation than we could have imagined.  When I’m on the road putting one foot in front of the other I often think of the difference it will make to so many people in Malawi, such a poor part of the world where I spent five wonderful years and where I met Mary Ann.  And as the poet says “And that has made all the difference”