Start of my journey, Westminster cathedral
Assisi Diary Posting 1 - 22/05/2008, London
So this is my first posting to my new Diary and the last few days have been absolutely nuts! I think out of the last 48 hours I have slept about 7.
I was actually supposed to have started this walk from my house in Hertfordshire on Tuesday but completely underestimated the amount of time it would take to complete the various bits and pieces I had to do before leaving (I would never make a project manager would I Carl? and by the way let us wish Carl all the best as he gets married tomorrow 23rd May).
Anyway it soon became clear I would not be ready for Tuesday. So then I thought I could start the walk from Hertford town on Wednesday as that was only 15 kms and I had already booked my accommodation at the YHA. I was supposed to see my Parish Priest as he had agreed to bless my journey so I re-arranged this for the Wednesday. But no, I still had a pile of stuff to do at 20:00 on Wednesday night. Somehow it did not seem sensible to only walk one day in Herts so by 23:00 on Wednesday I had resigned myself to skipping out the pre-London stage and starting from London itself.
Would you believe though that even by 03:00 on Thursday morning I still had not finished my preparations? In fact here I am at 23:30 on Thursday evening and I still have not finished! One of the things I needed to do was update my website with info about this walk, and email people with details about where to find my diary. This I still have not done!
So back to the sceal (that's the Irish for story). Having decided not to walk at all prior to London I naturally thought I would have loads of time to finish everything. Not a bit of it! I did not leave the house today until after 16:00 and I had to be in Westminster before 18:00. By now I had decided that the most appropriate thing for me would be to start from Westminster Cathedral if I could not start from my home town. This I had arranged but needed to be at the Cathedral before 18:00 in order to have my Pilgrim passport stamped.
Anyway despite the problems uploading my revised website I managed to get there by the required time and received a stamp and a very very special send-off from the duty Chaplain. And now comes the 'Camino moment'. Sometimes things happen in real life that you cannot invent in a book because no-one would believe you. It seems to happen more frequently on a pilgrimage so they have become known by some as 'Camino moments'.
I had decided I wanted to light a candle in the Cathedral at the Chapel of St Patrick but annoyingly I had only 2p in change. initially I thought "It doesn't matter, but then I decided it did so I went in to a nearby cafe to get change. I had received my order and got the change I needed when suddenly I heard a voice saying "Hello Ann".
It was a member of the St Francis Ramblers who was delivering posters about a forthcoming Barn dance and was heading for the Cathedral. Mind you I forgot to ask her why she was in this cafe as she did not seem to buy anything. I was very pleased to see her and then to my delight she agreed to take a photo of me in front of the Cathedral, and insisted on taking them 'til she felt it was the right picture. We went in to the Cathedral, she to deliver the poster, me to light the candle. On our way in we met yet another member of the Rambler group. None of this would have happened if I had not gone off to find change!
from Cathedral to Abbey
the route takes me past a very famous London Landmark
End of day 1: St-Martins-in-the-Fields
So I then walked the rather short distance (perhaps 0.5 kms or 1 km) from Westminster Cathedral to St-Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square as this is where I will start the onward journey to Canterbury tomorrow.
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