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  1. Day 2 – Gone with the Wind — 7 comments
  2. Day 15 – Blenheim — 6 comments
  3. Day 6 – Rollright Stones — 5 comments
  4. Day 23 – Walking with the End in Sight — 5 comments
  5. The Day After — 4 comments

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Day 6 – Burnham Overy Staithe to Wells-next-the-Sea

Overarching mist the colour of a tramp’s vest. At my minute, I expected Magwitch to spring out at Pip from behind an ancient tombstone. Miles of glorious galloping beach and I thought of our horse Prince Panache, born in our old stables a generation ago. For ZANE donors interested in this sort of thing, prepare …

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Day 5 – Thornham to Burnham Overy

Here we are two old gits, not two pounds of us hanging straight, minute figures wandering along the Norfolk coast under a vast pale blue canopy of sky. What a wonderful world and what a privilege to be alive at this hour. God Save the King! It’s inevitable in our free society that republicans are …

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Day 4 – Holme-next-the-Sea to Thornham

Walking on the beach at Hunstanton, we found ourselves compelled to look at naked UK swimmers. One tanned man in a thong – Jane, avert your eyes! – and, flexing his muscles, looked rather like a condom stuffed with conkers. Then I saw myself in a window, my hat askew, a blob of ice cream …

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Day 3 – Great Bircham to Holme-next-the-Sea

In last year’s commentary, I listed the five regrets of the dying. The one that generated the most reader comments was, “When you wake do you think it just another boring day or are you full of wonder that we are still alive in this wondrous world?” Here I am on a beautiful day, contemplating …

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Day 2 – Houghton to Great Bircham

Nearly all telly programmes start – ludicrously in my view – warning viewers that watching, for example, Putin’s war in ghastly detail involving bombing, death, and rape “might be offensive to some viewers”. What do they expect? Do they think viewers live in a perpetual world of Little Bo Peep and The Sound of Music? …

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Day 1 – Swaffham to Houghton

The sun is like a bishop’s bottom: large, shiny and hot, the first continual sun we have seen for months. Lunch in Castle Acre, a gem of a town with a priory, a castle and a grand house lurking somewhere. I see the news is dull, which is good when you think of the miseries …

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The Day Before

A Wonderful Beginning Zimbabwe can be summed up in the words that Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, the late Madeleine Albright, once quoted: “God made a wonderful beginning,But man spoiled it all by sinning.We hope that the story will end in God’s glory,But, at the moment, the other side’s winning!” And how! A once wonderful …

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Day 14: Runnymede to Walton-on-Thames

The Mystery of Faith Alec Douglas-Home, prime minister from 1963 to 1964, and a devout member of the CoE reticent, was once cornered in a lift by a woman who roared at him, “Have you been saved?”  A nervous Douglas-Home said thanks for asking and that he thought he had. “Then why aren’t you leaping …

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Day 13: Eton to Runnymede

The penultimate day, spent with delightful ZANE supporters. We discussed a range of subjects, including Brexit and the current political turmoil. We ended up in Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed. When they get their faces out of screens, I wonder if the young are taught the importance of this vital key to history …

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Day 12: Marlow to Eton

Trust No One I have just read a remarkable book, The Great Post Office Scandal by Nick Wallis. The Post Office, that core member of the establishment – slightly dull, yet a deeply respected British institution – prosecuted around 900 sub-postmasters for theft, false accounting and fraud. After a vast court case, it was found that 99 …

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