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Showing posts from September, 2020

20p magic canal basketball (Kings Langley to Tring) - In the name of Thiago - Day 270

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  What an absolutely ridiculous day. There have been five of us today on today's day of magical mystery. Simon has just made it through his second consecutive day, Bulldog has completed his third and final day of walking and two more debutants joined the cause in the form of my host from last night Dirty Barry and my old school friend Mark Jeffery, who I'd not seen before today for a quarter of a century.  There we are, the five little smashers. I suspect we'd be a fairly shit band but my word what a wonderful bunch of walkers we all are (that's not a predictive text error)! I am feeling right on the money tonight after a day spent with these splendid fellows and the energy is coursing through my veins once more.  So to 20p magic canal basketball. Today's blog is named in honour of the magnificent fundraising dedication of Mr Simon Eastland, who put in an astonishing effort on the bucket today. He managed to successfully field a 20 pence piece being launched at him

The Langley of Kings (Uxbridge to Kings Langley) - In the name of Thiago - Day 269

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  Another sixteen miles polished off and I am absolutely shattered. This is going to have to be fairly brief as my ol' mucker Barry has just arrived at The Old Palace in Kings Langley, our end destination for today and he's very kindly taking me in for the night. Before long we shall heading off to Berkhamsted and having some grub and settling down to see Spurs get smashed by Chelsea I suspect. This was where it all started today - the majestic sight of Uxbridge - the very end of the Metropolitan line. And this is who I was with for the day, the splendid Mr Simon Eastland, sometimes known as Loser but we'll go with Simon for the time being and see how that goes. There are some right proper pads along the Grand Union Canal which I may start referring to as the GUC. Like this one. I reckon if I'd done a door knock around some of these gaffs I would definitely have filled up the bucket but we did ok me and Simon. Thanks to Simon's wandering eye, we ended up chatting to

Modern life is rubbish (Richmond to Uxbridge) - In the name of Thiago - Day 268

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  There were two cracking opportunities to slip in a reference to a Blur lyric or two from 'For Tomorrow' today. Along with the splendid troop of Mr Nicholas Metcalfe, Quinton Drawbridge and my lovely host Camilla Costa Calisto, I was very nearly lost on the Westway, it turned out we were even more lost than that but the A4020 wasn't quite the Westway, so that lyric passed by the wayside.  However, I did very nearly lose my shit in the Red Lion - our final stop for the day - when we were told to order from the app, as opposed to the person who was telling this in a virtually empty pub. Camilla had had to leave a little earlier in the day and Quinton and Nick both had dead batteries and my fucking phone isn't scanning QR codes apart from the NHS Test and Trace one. The lady telling us all this could very easily have taken an order and her colleague eventually did. Hence, Modern Life is Rubbish.  All of the above is something of an over-reaction on my part and probably re

Time for a bevy - In the name of Thiago - Day 267

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  The restorative effects of a trip to a brewery are something that I cannot recommend highly enough. I was really struggling yesterday with the whole situation of being caught between two stools; neither walking or really properly relaxing if I'm truthful. I woke up at the absolutely majestic time of 8.15 not feeling remotely guilty, until I realised where I was and remembered that my tardiness was preventing everyone else from accessing the front room of their home. That said, Camilla is never fussed about all that sort of stuff. I had slept for nine hours, half of that sleep was deep sleep and my God, I didn't 'arf feel much better afterwards. I also fussed over my feet with lotions and various creams and they are now ready for the off again tomorrow. It's been lovely spending some time with my godson Harry this weekend. As I said yesterday, he is a right bloody handful but he just needs the right environment to flourish. He has been brought up extremely well by his

Now what? - In the name of Thiago - Day 266

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  If this is how I feel on a non-walking day, then I'm not really looking forward to three weeks today when this whole thing's over. I've been swapping a few text messages with the good lady today and she predicted this would happen. She's a smart lady, Angelica. I've been lolloping around in a relatively unfocussed away spending some time with Camilla and her son, my godson Harry, but wishing I could be with my girls. It's started to hit me today that I wasn't able to spend the day with Elisa on her birthday on Thursday and that made me feel sad. I never got to spend a single birthday with the little man that gave this blog its name, so missing birthdays is a particularly painful thing. I've had so much to do this week that I didn't write about Elisa's birthday on the day, even though I did at least manage to speak to her before she went to school and while she was enjoying a lovely Italian meal at her favourite restaurant on Thursday. Instead t

Deer, beers and unexpected fears (Croydon to Richmond) - In the name of Thiago - Day 265

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  After the emergence into the city of London on the fifteen mile wander with Moose and Bulldog yesterday, today was a joyous meander through the gilded heaths of Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park. But first, Croydon. As you can see, we started as a team of five and Christ alive was it a bit parky. That wind was blowing up like something else and the old titfer was repeatedly being separated from my bonce. On one occasion comically a little later in the day, when we had reached the leafier setting of Richmond Park as it alighted my noggin' for the third or fourth time, I 'chased' it back to a group of toffs where miraculously I captured it immediately where Tibbals (centre of pic above) was immediately on hand with the charity bucket. This comedy double act secured £10 in donations from our onlookers. That's teamwork. Anyway, back to Croydon momentarily. Here we all are: that's Jamie, Camilla, Lord Tibbals, Nigel and myself stood outside the home for one of the big

London Loves (Redhill to Croydon) In the name of Thiago - Day 264

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  Christ I'm shagged. It all started with a phone call from my week one leader and planner extraordinaire Mr Jamie Hickey to say that he was feeling pretty ropey and wouldn't be able to make it today. This came as a blow. He has been the one consistent aspect of the opening five days and become a phenomenally reliable right hand man but needs must, today we would have to manage on our own. Well I say on our own. I was left in the capable hands of Moose and Bulldog, a quite magnificent back up team even if I do say so myself. We worked magnificently as a team. Moose on maps, Bulldog on roll-ups and me on the bucket. The smokes were dished out evenly between the Moose and the Dog, while the map-reading was quite outstanding. I might have navigated us into some of the tight spots we seemed to find ourselves in but it's very unlikely that I would have navigated ourselves back out of them. Then again, neither Bulldog or Moose would have successfully scored £96 on the bucket. It

Surrey meh (Three Bridges to Redhill) - In the name of Thiago - Day 263

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  I had to start the day by admitting defeat to my walking partner of five days Mr Jamie Hickey. As an ode to the mighty Suede, who hail from one of my previous walking destinations, Haywards Heath, I'd had some lyrics running around in my head, which were to form the basis of a version of Animal Nitrate dedicated to a friend's experience while overseas.  Anyway having dispensed with that idea shortly after getting out at Three Bridges station as we started to run out of Sussex to walk in and Surrey loomed gently on the horizon, attentions turned instead to how we were going to entertain ourselves on the long torturous trip up the A23 from Horley to Redhill. Before I get to that though, here is the obligatory walkers on the train shot, from left to right, Foggy, Clegg and Compo, (you'd have to follow me on social media - ChrisGibbs76 on Twitter - to get that reference, but I'm sure the middle-aged among you will have an idea)!   It was a strange one today, starting with