In June, my friend, Anna, and I walked from London to Paris for the Malala Fund. It took eighteen days, spanned over five hundred kilometres and in total, we raised over £4000. Here’s ten things I learnt.
1 Don’t go to Poland in January
To this day, I’m not sure exactly how the idea for ‘Notre Grande Marche’ (‘Our Big Walk’) came about. We were in Krakow, in Poland, in January. Not my brightest idea. Even less bright, perhaps, was my choice of coat: a gilet. Being Uni students, the obvious solution was to settle ourselves in a warm corner of a rather aptly named ‘Vodka Bar’ and stay until close. You can imagine how that went.
I must now choose my words very carefully… In my humble opinion, sometimes – only sometimes – alcohol sparks brilliance. Most often, it sparks utter stupidity. But in this case, we had hit the jackpot of ideas (or so our drunk selves thought), and much to our surprise, the next morning’s heavy-headedness did little to deter our enthusiasm.
2 Walking far will hurt your feet (and your pride)
I’m not the sportiest of people. I try to avoid strenuous exercise where possible. The daily six-storey climb up to my little Parisian apartment was absolutely my limit; I still *sometimes* drive to my lectures. I must therefore warn you, in the event you decide to walk over five hundred kilometres, your feet will not thank you. In fact, four months later, my feet are still ugly. My right little toenail has peeled away. My former blisters cast a shadow of dry skin where they once sat. I am in desperate need of a pedicure it has to be said. To conclude, extreme walking is an ugly, painful business: enter at your feet’s risk.
3 Numbers over four are hard to conceptualise
I once read somewhere that the human brain is incapable of conceptualising numbers over four. I never thought much of it: I can picture five dots on a dice, eight legs on a spider. But when asked about the walk – 541 kilometres, 712,026 steps, 107 hours – the theory rings all too true. The truth is I can’t quite grapple with what we achieved. The distance, the time, the money. It all feels like some far gone, hazy dream that I can’t understand, let alone retell.
I distinctly remember the journey home, however. The 19th of June, three days after we arrived in Paris. I sit on a crowded train, hurtling me and my fellow passengers through Northern France back to London. The screen above me flashes our speed teasingly, and the irony is not lost on me. 186 kilometres per hour makes our feat entirely insignificant, and yet equally all the more significant. I have been meaning to write its story since that day. And yet, I have no idea quite how. But here’s my best shot.
4 It’s all a mindset
The first morning of an eighteen day walk from London to Paris should feel pretty daunting. But any tourists observing the two girls sauntering through Green Park from the tube station to Buckingham Palace would never guess the mammoth journey on which they would soon embark. Perhaps the two girls did not quite know it themselves. We may speculate naivety, a poor understanding of the distance (it being a number over four and all), or even an unbridled self-belief in the mission at hand. Perhaps it was all three. What I know is that the wearied girls gleefully skipping through the crowds of Parisian tourists five hundred kilometres later held the same determined enthusiasm evident on that first day’s overcast morning.
Make no mistake about it, it wasn’t easy. By absolutely no means were we gleefully skipping up muddy hills or through cob-webbed bean fields. I’m not a morning person on the best of days, and so you can imagine, at 7am, with a marathon ahead of you, the ‘PMA’ (‘Positive Mental Attitude’) is a fickle creature. But we had made a silent choice, a promise to ourselves, that we would simply – rather Britishly – get on with it, whatever may come. When you say you’re going to do something, you do it. And with a little encouragement in the form of regular karaoke interludes, snack breaks, and podcast indulgence (shout-out Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell), that’s exactly what we did.
5 The world is on your doorstep, literally
In true London fashion, the clouds held firm as we waited for my uncle (our first guest) to arrive and for our walk to begin. I’d like to say, having located said uncle, who then armed us with three milky cappuccinos, that our journey began in as mundane a way as a morning commute: no frills, no fanfares. But that isn’t strictly true. In fact, much to our amusement, the palace played host to a rather auspicious marching band, unwittingly wishing us luck as we took our first steps.
Our route conjured up all manners of places. And while Dartford or Calais might fall slightly short of the Notre Grande Marche travel guide, weirdly, around every next corner was something different, new. Monotony was not characteristic of our walk. Having left London’s sprawling suburbs behind, the English Coastal Path brought us wild horses, dead snakes, and shipwrecks; equally, the quiet tranquillity of the Valley of the Somme was a far cry from its destination: Amiens, rugged and metropolitan.
Even so, every place we walked through felt familiar. There were no culture shocks, no exoticism. It was mundane and understood. And yet the intrinsic gratification buried in the art of exploring was as true as ever: peering into another person’s every day, trying on their shoes, nosing through their shops, and then leaving, never to return, but all the better for it. Our walk is a perfect illustration of the celebrity of normality, and that things in life should be appreciated for no reason other than for the fact that they exist. And if that doesn’t convince you to travel, I don’t know what will.
6 Luck favours the prepared
A quick history lesson for you. The adage, ‘Fortune favours the bold’, can be traced back to the Roman Navy Commander, Pliny the Elder, on his (disastrous) rescue mission to Pompeii in 79AD. In 1854, Louis Pasteur, coined an alternative: “Chance favours the prepared mind”, its less glamourous modern reprise. And here’s the thing. While both carry truth, glamour and Notre Grande Marche were never the best of friends, as much as we would have liked them to have been (see: 7. It’s not a fashion show).
I distinctly remember a rather tense conversation on a rainy February afternoon (pathetic fallacy never fails us). The debate is pretty easy to follow, it went something along the lines of: “This is impossible!”; “Where there’s a will, there’s a way!” (repeat times ten). I’ll leave you to guess which of us said what. But having ruled out a ferry from Brighton, then a ferry from Portsmouth, and then starting in Kent; after which we meticulously planned each day’s route (taking extra care to avoid as many hills as possible – sorry to the South Downs), ‘training’ commenced. Three times a week, (pretty much) every week, until the end of May. I say ‘training’ in quotes because we’re not fooling anyone: a couple hours of yapping, walking, and scoffing croissants in one of the most beautiful cities in the world does not quite compare to any conception of elite athleticism.
Even so, it paid off. Unfortunately for my dad, this is where I embarrass him. In a surprising turn of events, the man who has ran marathons, completed triathlons, and cycled across Britain, succumbed to exhaustion by the end his first day. To be fair, it was fifty kilometres, and he may or may not have eaten a plateful of mussels at lunch, drawing almost immediate critique from Anna. But nevertheless, the tables had truly turned, and while the 20-something-year-olds carried on as normal, spirited and energetic, the 50-something-year-old was a single step away from being tucked into bed with a spoonful of Calpol. Shock horror: training actually works! (P.S. Dad, we were very, very grateful for your support).
7 It’s not a fashion show
The famed words every parent has uttered not so infrequently: “It’s not a fashion show”. I thought that at twenty-two years old, we would have outgrown such advice. But surprisingly enough, on a Sunday night in May, the familiar dad vs daughter showdown, once again, reared its ugly head. More surprisingly, perhaps, is that for the first time, maybe in the history of dads and daughters, the advice was listened to. If I’m entirely honest, in our heart of hearts, we knew that ten T-shirts, a glass bottle of Giorgio Armani’s ‘Si’, a make-up bag the size of a toaster and a pair of straighteners were not ‘essential’ items. Even so, the paternal mockery was not so well received, and the shedding of these prized possessions was not easy, although quickly appreciated (within less than an hour of carrying them).
8 We’re the lucky ones
Our cause was the Malala Fund, a charity which needs no introduction (or so I thought until we discovered that my uncle had confused our cause for the sub-Saharan country of Malawi). So for those who don’t know, Malala Yousafzai, its namesake co-founder, made headlines in 2012 after being shot in the head on her way home from school. She was targeted by the Taliban after speaking out against their ban on girls’ education two years earlier. Her story remains ingrained in my brain, as I’m sure it is for many others.
A brief scroll through the Malala Fund’s homepage will send shivers down your spine. The numbers are stunning. Nearly 120 million girls are out of school worldwide. About fourteen percent of the world’s population cannot read or write, of which two thirds are women. Only sixty-four percent of girls in Tanzania complete secondary education. In Nigeria that number drops to thirty-eight percent. In India, it’s one in three. I live in a world where going to school is as mundane, as ordinary, as brushing your teeth. It’s easy to forget that these liberties are not universal.
And so we walked from where we ‘live’ to where we ‘studied’, for all those girls who can’t safely walk from where they live to their schools. The Malala Fund “fights for a world where every girl can learn and lead”. In a world where we are privileged enough to learn freely and safely, we must not forget to lead.
9 Smell the roses
Our world is an immediate one. We no longer spend days on end travelling from place to place, slowly watching the world go by. We no longer wait for seasons to change to buy our favourite fruits and vegetables. I could order a Halloween costume on the 30th without breaking a sweat. Immediacy is modernity, there’s no two ways about it.
And yet Notre Grande Marche was a complete rejection of that. Tortoise-like, we plodded along, plotting our path and gradually hacking away at the distance, the peculiarity of being able to see our route on a map of the globe never fading. It felt entirely raw, instinctive: so constrained by our humanness and yet all the more free.
The feeling can be summed up in a singular moment. It’s the 4th of June, and three lonely figures (us plus our second guest, my dad) walk slowly down the beach extending south from Calais. The sand stretches out ahead of them for as far as the eye can see, and behind them, sandy footprints retrace their journey so far. The beach is deserted except for the odd dog walker. In the moment, I’m sure it was tiring and painful (walking on sand is tough), but in hindsight, the scene is euphoric.
10 Doing hard things is important
Unfortunately, the biggest lesson I learnt is probably the most cliché – humour me.
Our walk was big, and hard, and tiring. And yet the whole thing can be boiled down to a matter of putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going. One step more, small gains. Our walk is a reminder that consistency is pretty formidable. And that small gains day after day after day become big gains.
The world is big, but it waits for you. It welcomes you. Putting your mind to something is an achievement in itself. And hard work pays off: the two girls jumping excitedly at the first sight of a toy-sized Eiffel Tower, barely visible on the horizon, can surely testify to that.
But zooming out past our individual achievements, the most gratifying part of our walk was inevitably our cause, always in the back of our minds, reminding us that our mission was bigger than ourselves. Two girls can walk from London to Paris and raise thousands. One girl can walk to school, get shot, and found a charity that has reached over twenty-one million students across ten different countries. Affecting real change is possible, and important. Girls’ education opens doors which transcend cultures and classes. And I know, that in spite of our blistered feet and shin splints, we would do it again in a heartbeat. Because when you send love into the universe, it always comes back.
by Ella Scampion
