Countdown to Tarifa

I'll be setting of from Tarifa, heading to Budapest, on the 1st of March. That's less than 12 weeks away. The countdown for the E4 walk has really begun.

Definitely having second thoughts, a lot more than just second thoughts to be honest. I did anticipate this a year ago when I started to put the idea together and deliberately wanted to paint myself into a corner. Coming out with the plan, giving up work, and making the commitment to the Britain Nepal Medical Trust were partly at least designed to prevent any last minute turnaround. The fact that it's worked doesn't reduce the anxiety however but it does mean that I'm definitely going. Tarifa here I come!

One excuse I could use to get out of it is that there is just too much to do. I could really turn planning the walk into a full-time exercise and never get round to actually doing it. Some of this is Parkinson's law applied to long-distance walking (although Murphy's law kicks in on the technology) but part of it is the amount of detailed information you could assemble for a 180 day work.

At the moment I'm working on three things:

• the detail of the walk - getting all the maps and navigation in order (paranoid about wasting time by getting lost);
• the actual schedule of overnight stops - really important for people who might want to join me, might even be a source of sponsorship;
• sponsorship - set myself a £20,000 target and only raised £2,000 so far so a long way to go - a lot of heavy pestering needed.

Getting lots of feedback from all over Europe which is nice, lots of emails as well as the comments. Going to try and blog more often as the walk gets nearer and build to a level I can sustain once I get started.