Upton Bishop St John's Walk to Jerusalem

Friday 29th January Meeting in the early evening at the pier, we had to resist the temptation to turn around and go back into town because our route from here takes us to the south coast of Turkey where next ferry only goes on certain days of the week, Saturday being one of them. Reluctantly we peeled ourselves away from the Byzantine glories of Istanbul and watched the minarets recede as we crossed the Bosphorus. Saturday 30th We spent the night in Yalova, an pleasant enough modern city, and set out early this morning to find our route ran, again, along a narrow valley by way of a dual carriageway. We had visions of delays for accidents that we couldn't afford so we were lucky to run into a group of young Turks in the filling station who were, apparently, off on something similar to a Duke of Edinburgh's expedition. They led us cheerfully over the mountain tracks and brought us safely down onto the banks of the Iznik Gölü, a large lake where we hardly saw a soul, apart from so...

Monday 25th to Thursday 28th Monday It was only when we woke up after our evening's trek in the Carpathians and looked down on the Danube in daylight that one of us remarked that we were now below the famous Iron Gates gorge. Patrick Leigh Fermor came this way before WWII and travelled through the gorge where mountains 'soared on either side in precipices' and the river 'swelled and boiled in protest.' * Since his travels a hydro-electric dam has somewhat tamed the water but the vitality of it is still evident this morning. We didn't follow the banks too closely as the river winds and sweeps through the Romanian countryside. Instead we took the more direct route across the fields, hardly seeing a soul until we came to the Danube again in Bechet. Waiting for the  ferry crossing, some of our pilgrims fell into conversation with Father Silviu, a local priest who took a keen interest in our adventure and pressed into Graham's hand a wooden madonna and child sta...

Hungary, the bits we've seen of it, is, on the whole flat. We walked on into the dusk and crossed uneventfully into Romania, which promises us mountains. This, we reflected, might be a mixed blessing: easier on the eye, harder on the calf muscles. We were, however, still on the great Hungarian plain even here and couldn't see now, in the dark, whether the landscape before us was changing much. It didn't feel like it.  Eventually we arrived in Timisoara, a city big enough to offer us a comfortable night's rest.  The squares of old city centre are lined with brightly coloured buildings and two cathedrals, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic, stand opposite one another in Piata Unirii, each as elegant and impressive as the other. We weren't surprised when our waiter told us, in perfect English, that Timisoara is know as 'Little Vienna'. He was a chatty fellow (he introduced himself as Phil) who had come away from his plumbing job in Birmingham after the Brexit refe...

Ah Vienna! In spite of our reluctance to leave the delights of the Czech Republic, as soon as we crossed into Austria at the foot of a small lake at Neunagelberg thoughts of Vienna gave us wings: we sped through the fields and villages and the excitement mounted until at last we came to the banks of the Danube. There was a stretch of industrial grimness to negotiate before we crossed the bridge into this most elegant of cities. As there are now sixty-nine of us, there were sixty nine different opinions about the  sehenswürdigkeiten not to be missed. The only thing we could agree on was that we should meet this evening in the Naschmarkt where there are a number of jolly little restaurants where everyone would find something to suit the whim of the moment.  We did the sensible thing and withdrew immediately to Kaffeehaus Demel for fortifying Apfelstrudel and Sachertorte before strolling through the streets and parks of the city. At every turning there is something to draw the e...

 Monday 18th - Thursday 21st January And so we passed into the Czech Republic. We found ourselves somewhat out of our comfort zone here as no-one had very good, if any, Czech. The going is easy enough: flat agricultural land, interspersed with large areas of forest. It inspired a few people to remember stories from Grimms fairy tales, with some contemporary twists. To say the countryside is sparsely populated is no exaggeration and by the time we reached Belá nad Radbouzou we were quite hungry. It was then that we realised what a large group we had become: sixty-one people descending on a smallish village drew the attention of the locals. They came out to stare.  There was a café but the owners were not terribly pleased to see so many of us and it took a long time to get served as the waiter was seen first at the village shop then knocking on doors for extra supplies.  Out of one of the houses came an imposing woman wrapped in a voluminous overcoat. We could see her tryin...

  Breakfast on the Grand Place in Brussels with coffee and gaufres after a short walk from our overnight stop in Kortrijk. Mmmm the delicious smell of freshly waffled gaufres! They set us up for a great walking day. More people have joined us, we're now 54, some of them great walkers. The more the merrier: their fresh encouragement had us swinging through Belgium, past my grandmother's door in Leuven (although she knew it as Louvain) and over the border to The Netherlands where we had a small altercation at the customs post resulting in some of us having to hand over our ham sandwiches. Passing through the centre of Maastricht we reminisced about John Major and his Spitting Image avatar, the Grey Man.Once into Germany, we skirted to the north of Aachen and stopped for a break in Düren. This, we discovered, was once one of the wealthiest cities in Germany but it was flattened by Allied bombers in November 1944. The good citizens rolled up their sleeves and rebuilt so we were abl...

  Week 1 Our starting point is St John the Baptist Upton Bishop which is in need of a few repairs which is why we decided to walk (run/swim/cycle/ride/row out of doors or on a machine) to Jerusalem as a team effort to help raise some of the necessary funds. Since taking exercise is something we are allowed to do in lockdown, everyone is welcome to join in. Details can be found at http://uptonbishop.org/walk-to-jerusalem/ . Armchair walkers are also very welcome to sponsor the walkers. First leg, via London and Canterbury, to Dover on foot is 190 miles from Upton Bishop. Second leg, via the Dover-Calais ferry, to Brussels is 337 miles for UB Third leg to Bonn is 469 miles from UB Fourth leg to Vienna is 983 miles from UB Fifth leg to Timisoara is 1,289 miles from UB Sixth leg to Istanbul, via the ferry to Yalova, is 1,930 from UB Seventh leg, via the ferry to Tripoli, to Tasucu, is 2,427 miles from UB The final leg to Jerusalem is 2,886 miles from UB And so the adventure begins. Fri...