Day 171 - Trezzo sull'Adda to Milan


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10 October, 2020

21.1 miles (Total: 2020 miles) 42,200 steps (Total: 3,775, 601 steps)

Buffet breakfast was back on again as I made a good start for the final stretch into Milan. The stretch of the walk from Rijeka, Croatia, which I left on 21 September, has been very demanding. I have covered 330 miles in three weeks and I am beginning to feel that pace in my joints especially hips, knees and ankles. There were very few highlights in the three-week period.  Normally encounters about the truce keep me going and break the journey, but this was just a hard slog all the way. I also felt as if I had missed understanding the enormous significance of the part of the world through which I was travelling—I had spent less than a day in Trieste, a day in Verona, had by-passed Venice and was going to arrive into Milan late evening and leave on the train for Rome early the next morning.  Along the way I only had about four serious encounters with local people who could offer me insights on the history and culture of the areas I was walking through and with whom I could share the vision for the truce and the purpose of the walk. This is perhaps understandable as I am seeking to make it through the Alps before the winter snow, but it is still less than satisfactory.

Milan is the largest city that I have encountered since Athens five months ago. One of the difficult aspects of the entering a large city is that you can arrive in the suburbs and think you have finished, but then discover that there is another two hours of walking to do.  I arrived in Piotella, which was just on the outskirts of Milan and thought I was there, so much so that I took a rest at Wanna’s Pub and relaxed over a couple of glasses of Chianti (because I couldn’t afford the Diet Coke).  I started reflecting on the last section of the journey from Rijeka, but I then had to get up and walk for another two hours into the centre of Milan and I then spent another hour walking around the circumference of the enormous Milan Central Station (pic) looking for a youth hostel which I had been told was next to the station. As usual it was about the last place you see, mind you it was only a few rooms on the sixth floor of an old apartment block literally next to the station, so close that I could hear the train announcements, which was a strangely comforting sound. It was a great location, a friendly welcome, and there was plenty of time to chat to the fellow guests in the queue for the single bathroom, but they had fast wi-fi and I would only have to cross the road for the 9AM train to Rome the next morning.

I spoke to my parents on Skype and they reminded me that we had been in that same place in 2020 when I was 13 and we were catching the car transporting train on our way back from Florence to Paris. It was one of those moments when we paused and said together “that is almost 40 years ago”. Life is a wonderful journey full of lines that cross each other often many, many years apart. I thought, I wonder if you had told that young boy in 2020 that he would be actually walking through Milan on his way from Greece to London when he was 50 to promote the Olympic truce what he might have said. I conclude he would probably first have said, “What’s the Olympic truce?” and then wondered how a 50 year old could manage to walk at all! Still here is the true joy of life—the future is an unfolding mystery that we just don’t know, and personally speaking, I think it is better that way. We seem to have developed an industry of wanting to plan into the future; we want five-year plans not only for our businesses, but even for our kids and have barely started working before we start worrying about our pensions. Yet, having looked at and even written many five-year plans, I can tell you that I have never met one which came anywhere remotely close to what actually happened.

Because our eventual destination is not determined by a long range forecast, which by and large merely extrapolate the present into the future, but rather in the cumulating effect of the often small decisions and actions which we take each day. By dwelling too long on what we think is the future destination, we fail to pay sufficient attention to the moment and the use we make of it.  The decisions we make in that moment will shape our destination more surely than any well structured spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation.

Nowhere is the culture of planning more apparent than in education children.  Parents start worrying about their kids exams from when they enter kindergarten.  Kids are told that there life will be determined by exams at 7, 11, 14, 16, 18 and then their university. By focussing their minds on the next thing, they can often miss out on the value of the present thing. They can think that life is a sure thing: you study, pass an exam, you advance on the board and get the rewards, but life is not a production line, things happen: illnesses, love, misjudgements, accidents, risks, the discovery of a talent, once in a lifetime opportunities, the cruel word or deed, the life changing chance encounter. Moreover, past performance is no guarantee of future returns anymore in the lives of people than it is in the stock market. As has been said ‘If you have one eye on yesterday, and one eye on tomorrow, you’re going to be cockeyed today.’

Rather than planning for the next exam, it would be wise to spend time examining the current life because favourable outcomes will be more likely determined by Character, Courage, Commitment and Compassion; for with these qualities, young people will be equipped to navigate a course through the events of life as they are presented before us each day.

One Response to Day 171 – Trezzo sull’Adda to Milan

  1. John and Ruth Bates     says:

    A brilliant,creative peice of writing which deserves a wide readership. Thanks for the memory!



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