I don’t know how the last twenty four hours were for you, but for me, they weren’t that good. Yesterday, I managed to walk as far as Thalmässig, which is about forty kilometers from Nürnberg but when I arrived there, my left ankle hurt so badly that I decided to take a break and have a look at it. I twisted it, you see; I twisted it on Sunday whilst trying to avoid being hit by a rather large farmyard vehicle and from Sunday until yesterday I’d been popping ibuprofen and smearing my ankle with voltaren. But, as I sat on a bench in Thalmässig, I soon realised that it was actually quite serious.
You know what it’s like when you’ve got a serious decision to make? Or when you’ve got to let go of something that you so dearly wanted? Well, I sat on that bench for two hours weighing up the pros and the cons of carrying on. I sat there thinking about the shame of having to stop, what people would say and what you would think of me. You know, when the walk was hard (and I did walk between eight to ten hours a day), I would push myself on by imagining what it would be like when I finally arrived in Hamburg to see you; I would imagine what it would be like to meet you and discover if you would be interested in the things I had to say.
For two hours I argued with myself. I put my shoes and socks back on. I put the 10kg rucksack back on and tried to walk about a bit but it was clear that this simply wasn’t going to go away. I needed to get to safety and I needed to see a doctor so I put the call in and three hours later Eva picked me up.
It’s difficult to describe what went through my head during those three hours. I thought about the walk; the hours and hours of walking for you, a man I’ve never met and the people that I encountered along the way. I thought about the elderly couple in Petersbruch who had given me food and the catholic priest in Jebertshausen who actually gave me his blessing. I considered with disappointment the encounters that I would miss and all of the things that I would now not be able to share with you. I thought about all the people supporting me, willing me on and what it meant to let them down. I cried.
I’ve been to see the doctor today and I’ve basically buggered the ligaments in my left ankle and there’s a chance I have something called compression syndrome (update: this is, thankfully, not the case). According to the doctor, I have some “impressive blisters” too. I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to walk for at least four weeks and he’s insisted that he checks me over again before I go back to Thalmässig and set off, once more, to see you.
It was an honour, Dr. Figge, to walk the hundred odd kilometers for you but as you can see, we shall both have to wait before I walk the rest.
Warm regards,
Marcus Brown – aka The kaiser
