Walk To Lille

Blogging and Twitter has thrown me a friend in Andrew Gibney. It’s frightening how alike we are. We have done podcasts together and been away to Paris, its uncanny how well we get on and know what each other is thinking. (Beginning to make us sound like a couple here).

Well we often share ideas on what we planning for our sites. So it’s not unusual for one of us to ask the other to jump on Skype to discuss a thought that has just popped into our heads.

Most of the time the thoughts are either brilliant or extremely woeful and funny as we rip them apart.

So at around one in the morning Andrew tells me ‘I am thinking of walking to Lille’.

I obviously burst out laughing. Then importantly I asked him ‘why?’

He responded ‘Cause its something to say I have done with my life’.

That’s when it got serious and I became very interested in taking part and joining him.

It’s a challenge and like Andrew I want to achieve something different with my life. I am at that age when friends are settling down, getting married and having kids. So I want to aim at doing something different and something to be proud of.

I immediately wanted to make sure this walk would be for charity, Andrew telling me that he wanted to do it for an MS charity.

His father-in-law has the disease and struggles to walk now. Seems an ideal charity to help out. After telling my family of the plan they agreed it was a great idea and a good cause, I never realised that there were people close to us with MS.

So Andrew, two of his work colleagues and myself are now planning to walk from Sheffield to Lille. (Yeah I need to get to Sheffield but I am not walking that part!)

Now we can’t walk on water and I can’t swim so it’s actually walking from Sheffield to Hull. Ferry to Zebrugge in Belgium and then off to Lille.

All to be done in April 2013.

Now we are obviously football writers, so it has to involve the beautiful game.

We’re aiming to be in Lille for the weekend of the 12th of April, so we can catch the Lille OSC game against Olympique Marseille (As I write this I realise I have no wish to see that team after what they did in 1993). On our trip we hope to visit the stadiums of Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Scunthorpe Utd, Doncaster Rovers, Hull City, Club Brugge, Cercle Brugge, SV Roeslare, KV Kortrijk and Mouscron inside six days.

Maybe not the glamour clubs or stadia of European football but they are convenient with the travelling plans.

Now it’s going to be tough. Yes I have walked for around 27 years of my life and I do a lot of it, as I don’t drive. But I am also a Type One diabetic with Asthma, another reason for the decision to do it iss to prove to myself that I actually can do this.

I am aiming to do a video diary of our trip, so that can’t go wrong and at least you will get to see us at our best and probably at our worst.

From now until April I shall be trying to lose excess weight and aim to up my fitness to a standard capable of walking up to 30 miles a day.

Now as I say this is for a very worthwhile charity. You can really help us. Check on the link below and please donate if you can.

https://www.justgiving.com/teams/WalkToLille

We would also like any advice from those who have done similar challenges. Or if you have ideas on how we can get more exposure, any help would be welcome.

I will hope to do a blog a month till the event to update you all on our progress and to keep the momentum going. But I promise i won’t bang on and on about it until March.

Thanks for reading.

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