Walking round the World.The Highway of the Dead

It was walking out of Rome that we picked up a roman road of crucial military importance and dedicated to various cults of the dead. No doubt many a legion stepped out down these pathways and many a weary and beaten prisoner struggled the other way.

This ancient highway , the Appian Way or the Highway of the Dead, proved to be a metaphor for our journey south.  What journeyman throughout time has not had first to walk through some dark tunnel, almost as a prerequisite for what was to come. Often in those darkest moments resolve is shaped that then carries us to distant shores. So it was that those tentative steps out of Rome turned in time, to be the very substance that shaped the wonderful miles that were to follow as we made our way out of one continent into another. The euphoria of the walk to Rome was wonderful, but it is in the dark place of the soul that strength is later found to keep putting one foot in front of another.

Any sportsman or adventurer will tell you that it is in the mind that everything is won or lost. We were no conquerors of mountains or the wild wilderness, but we were still putting much at risk to continue this journey.

To arrive in Brindisi however was very special. We had now walked the length of three nations, England, France and Italy. Looking across the sea we wondered who in generations gone by had also looked to cast their bread upon these waters in the hope of fortune or fame. For us neither were on offer sadly; rather the knowledge that we were on a journey that was shaping our lives and the boundaries and barriers to so much of what we held precious. Greece was next; all 1600 km of her!