I would love to be providing daily updates on The Western Front Expedition here, but the fact is I haven’t the time to do so at the moment, so I’ve made all images accessible on this public Facebook album.

A few pictures from our walk today, the first stage of 57 on The Western Front Expedition from London to Paris. There were four of us today: my mother Stephanie, my brother Ben, and my good friend Jeremy. 2.3 miles down, only 697.7 to go!

Keeping the captions brief tonight. We’re starting tomorrow’s walk at 8.30am and I just don’t have time to do it full justice.

Tomorrow’s walk is Stage 2: Monuments and Memorials

We met underneath the 15″ naval guns in front of the Imperial War Museum, London.

Mom in front of the museum. Photo by Benjamin Wenk.

Stephanie, Jeremy and David under the battleship guns at IWM London. Photo by Benjamin Wenk.

Now we’re inside the museum. A view of the horrors of war.

Mom and her namesake Howitzer. Photo by Benjamin Wenk.

The Tibetan Peace Garden is just two minutes’ walk from the front of the museum.

Jeremy in the back streets of Lambeth. This was St Mary’s Gardens. We’re around the corner from The Ship here.

This was lunch — the duck salad at The Ship on Kennington Lane.

Jeremy at The Ship.

We’d booked a private tour of Lambeth Palace after lunch. This place is the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

These are the gardens inside Lambeth Palace. Note the gold tinted Bath stone used in construction — unusual for London.

Across the Thames. The view of the Palace of Westminster from Victoria Tower Gardens.

The famous First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon lived here in Westminster.

Jeremy in the Dean’s Yard, Westminster. We’re right around the corner from Westminster Abbey.

The high, vaulted roof of Westminster Abbey.

First glance of The Tomb of the Unkown Warrior, inside Westminster Abbey.

Close-up of The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey. There’s a mirror-image tomb under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. That’s where I’ll be finishing up the walk on October 31st.

Tomorrow: Stage 2: Monuments and Memorials

Well, this blog has been quiet for a few years, hasn’t it?

In preparation for the next big English Country Walks trip — The Western Front Expedition — I went out to grab a new pair of boots.

I’ve had luck with this brand before, so I decided to try the Meindl Bhutan MFS this time:

Thanks to Marco and the staff at Cotswold Covent Garden for your help!

Links:
Cotswold Outdoor
Meindl

This photo was taken on the Dorset coast on Friday evening (July 29th), approaching Lulworth Cove on the South West Coast Path fom Weymouth. Thanks to Jan and Katja for helping with the research on this new route for ECW.

No time to do this elegantly as this is my first time working in Linux. Here’s a screenshot of the new White Cliffs walk profile as it stands now, still in development. The big change will be the addition of online ordering.

Sample screenshot of new White Cliffs walk profile

I’ve uploaded the new calendar of walks for this year. You can now book a walk anytime up to February 2011. There are a few new routes added, and more to come, which I will be highlighting in posts over the next few days.

One notable addition is the Alice in Wonderland walk, which I’m putting together to commemorate the release of the upcoming Walt Disney Studios film, due out this Friday. The walk is scheduled for Sat/Sun March 6th and 7th. Read about it here.

About a month ago, The Times newspapers approached me for help with running a special series of guided country walks for their readers.

So far we’ve been out four times, to four very different destinations all over the country: the Chiltern Hills, Hampstead Heath, Loch Ordie in Scotland, and most recently the Mendip Hills near Bristol.

Here’s some coverage of last weekend’s walk. Clicking the screenshot below will take you to the Times article.

You can see photos from this day out on my Flickr stream here.

At the moment, there are still two more Times Walks open to sign up for:

a) Sunday July 12th: an expedition to Pistyll Rhaeadr, the highest waterfall in Wales, with myself and Paul Sanders, the Times Picture Editor, and
b) Saturday July 25th: a walk near Aylesford Priory in Kent, with myself and Times correspondent Ruth Gledhill

If you’re interested, visit the sign-up page for Times Walks.

More updates to follow soon. Please keep in touch –

David

I’m replacing the hand-made static route maps on the walk profiles with Google Maps. It’s taking me a while to encode each route but they should all be done soon. See the profile pages for

The White Cliffs of the Seven Sisters
King Beorthwulf’s Gardens (Benington Lordship)
Bodiam Castle
Fortress of the Black Swans (Leeds Castle)

as examples.

Benefits of this approach:

a) you can zoom out to see where the route is relative to London and the rest of the country
b) you can zoom in to see details of the route
c) you can switch from “Terrain” view to “Satellite” view and get a highly detailed aerial image of the route

Once I start getting the hang of the Google Maps API (Application Programming Interface), I ought to be able to add nifty new features like pop-out photos showing on-the-ground views from selected points along the route of a walk.

— DW

Just back from the first walk of the year, a test run of a new route for me. Ben, Felipe, and I walked from Canterbury to Whitstable in Kent, along the course of the Crab & Winkle Line, one of the world’s first passenger railways.

Too whipped to do much more than post a couple of snaps from the day. I’ll get around to posting the full photo stream later.

Felipe and Ben in blizzard conditions, standing on the path of the old railway line in Clowes Wood.

More snow squalls ahead. Here we are on the track into Whitstable.

It snowed here in London tonight. Enough for it to pile up on the tops of cars. We even had a snowball fight outside The Abbey Tavern in Kentish Town.

Weather like this is unheard of here at this time of year. I will check the records tomorrow to see when London last saw snowfall in October.