"End to End via the Margins"
-the diary of a walk.

Roadside inventory: the detritus of 21st century civilisation;-

• plastic cup fragments
• old lager cans
• crisp packets
• red bull cans
• fag packets with health warnings in Arial Narrow
• sandwich packets
• lolly sleeves
• a bit of nostalgia (see picture)
• plastic wheel trims
• cap retainer off a spring water bottle
• pieces of plastic too old to identify and about a million years too young to rot
• luggage elastic
• green plastic boules ball
• "boys and girls" sucette bag
• pop bottles (obviously)
• and, I should also mention, abundant primroses, as there have been ever since Land's End

It was a good day for walking, cooler and, for a while, cloudier than yesterday, made even better by my host's offer to take the bag in her car almost to halfway.

Some of the raods are unavoidable B-roads, and I've been trying to train the drivers by giving the considerate ones a smile and a friendly wave, and scowling at the other sort. No success so far. ISTR there's an experimental junction in the Netherlands where all the markings have been taken out. Road users including motorists are forced to slow down enough to make eye contact with each other and KSI's have reduced dramatically. Surely when we drive we are in relationship with other road users: we might as well acknowledge the fact.

The place I'm staying tonight is run by a couple from South Molton Baptist Church. They proudly showed me a video of how their church is blossoming with the help of the Home Missions Fund. Young people were on the church's mind ... "there's nothing for them to do here in South Molton" - they were just doing alcohol and other drugs ... well if there's nothing to do here it's a long way to anywhere else of any size. It was odd to hear this market town compared with a run down urban area. But as if to confirm the validity of the comparison, my host had his cards nicked this afternoon.