Daphne's experiences on the sponsored walk
I have received an email from Daphne describing her experiences on the sponsored walk (see below)
Hi Elena,
Firstly let me just say thank you very much for lunch the other day and the cheque. Great. Lovely talking to you.
The photograph with my friend Jude and James Twyman and myself was actually taken at Orto not in St. Peters Square, so it was along the journey.
I arrived in Rome on the Saturday evening with my friend Jude. We found accommodation for the night and next day caught the train to Assisi. We arrived in Assisi with tremendous crowds actually 200,000 people who had walked 10 miles into Assisi , walking for Peace. Our group had the torch handed over to us by a member of the local council and we carried it with us on the 110 miles from Assisi to Rome.
The response we had along the way was fantastic, very emotional at times. Car and truck driv ers who knew what we were doing kept blowing their horns as they passed by and shouting Bravo, Bravo and Gratis. Some members of the group went into a shop along the way to buy water and when the shopkeeper knew what we were doing they gave the water free of charge.
We were also walking in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi so it was a peace walk and a pilgrimage at the same time. The whole schedule for our walking had to be re-arranged as whoever first did it used all the motorways which in some places were far to dangerous to walk. So we did the journey in 8 days instead of 9. However it was more exhausting on some days, such as the first day we were expecting to walk 7 miles to gently break ourselves in and in actual fact ended up walking 13 miles.
When you are walking continuously like we were after a few days you more or less fall into silence and your body gets very very tired and you have no resistence left and you suddenly find that you have to deal with emotional stuff you may have been avoiding for some time. In our everyday lives we can get away from it and avoid it by making ourselves busy and not allowing ourselves to look at it. Oh boy, when you are on a walk like this there is no getting away from it. This walk has just giving me a little insight into what Shirley Maclaine must have experienced when she did the 500 mile pilgrimage across Spain and I am only 56 she was 60 when she did that.
It was like our bodies kept going but as soon as we knew we had reached our destination our bodies just flooped down and couldn't go any further. However if we had had to walk more miles to reach that destination in the first place we would have done it.
I had some very moving experiences,met some fantastic and lovely people, saw some fantastic scenery along the way and at the end of it all we met the Pope. Although I was so tired by then I kept dozing off and I wasn't the only one.
All and all it was a fantastic experience and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Elena with great support got a great amount for her charity and I in turn expect to get about £1000 or very near it for the charity in India. So I am a very happy bunny.