A visit from Hillary Clinton and a very spooky training hike....

So, Hillary Rodham Clinton has nothing to do with our fundraising or our training, and no she didn’t pop in to visit us in Woking for a cup of tea and a macaroon. She did, however pay a visit to Cambodia this week, visiting the Angkor Wat temples near Siem Reap (which is where Grace House is located), and The Genocide Museum in the former Khmer Rouge detention centre in Phnom Penh known as S-21 or Tuol Sleng.  It was Duch, the director of S-21 who was recently sentenced to 19 years for his part in the torture and murder of 17,000 people during the genocide of the1970s.

I only mention Hillary’s visit as it doesn’t seem to have got any mention in any of the UK media, despite some very important dialogue with the Cambodian Prime Minister about the $445m that Cambodia still owes the US and the forthcoming trials of other Khmer Rouge Leaders.

If you don't have time to read the blog but would like to sponsor us please go to www.justgiving.com/simonandcolin2

Anyway, back to training:

Having got a thorough soaking whilst walking to a local hostelry on Friday evening, we were banking on the accuracy of the “dry and sunny” forecast for Saturday and our 8 mile training hike. Dry would be good, sunny would be ideal, but rain of biblical proportions was not on our wish list. However, as we set off on Saturday lunchtime, the heavens opened and Friday night's weather made a very unwelcome reappearance. Undeterred, we pressed on. We would hardly be able to bail out on December 3rd if the weather was against us so perhaps a bit of wet weather training would actually do us some good.

As luck would have it, it didn’t take long for the rain recede. We soon left the drab and grey of Surrey and drove into the warm brilliance of North Hampshire.

We started near Greywell tunnel on the Basingstoke canal, famous for its large colony of bats, a sort of “bat tunnel” if you will. But despite our high hopes, for the next three and half hours of very strenuous flat terrain walking there was no sign of the 1970's superhero, or his enthusiastic sidekick (although we did hear what Colin reliably informed me was a real robin singing away in a copse in the autumn sunshine).

Clearly with no superheroes around there would probably be no dastardly villains either and very few hazards to exaggerate, in order to make out that our training regime was highly risky and we therefore deserved everyone's sponsorship money even more. We did see a bloated carp floating on the surface of the water. Industrial poisoning? Possibly. And we saw what was almost certainly an escaped crocodile or alligator. It turned out, most surprisingly, to be a log. I swear you couldn't make it up.

But, joking aside, the Hampshire stretch of the Basingstoke Canal was the antithesis of the urban decay of the Woking stretch. The sound of crows, the smell of wood smoke, and the colours of autumn floating into the glassy canal were straight from the pages of a romantic anthology. A strangely dressed man, in plus-fours and gaiters, tightly buttoned waistcoat, tweed jacket, and a pair of highly incongruous orange sunglasses strode out of the undergrowth like an extra who had accidentally wandered of the set of the next series of Larkrise to Candleford. Unless of course he was a ghost. In broad daylight.

A canalside walk can be very strenuous...

At the half way stage we stopped for a welcome sugar fix. Jam butties and two leftover fortune cookies from the night before. Colin's told him that his next fortune cookie would be “more interesting than this one” (yawn). Mine, on the other hand said that I would become the parent of someone very famous. Given that is highly unlikely to happen naturally, barring sordid arrangements involving a turkey baster I can only assume that I am destined to adopt a Cambodian orphan, who will turn out to be the next Japanese-style piano playing prodigy to take the classical music world by storm.

Colin enjoys as an energy giving jam butty

And that was as spooky as it got. Well-dressed families with well-behaved chocolate labradors stood to one side to let us stomp past with a smile and a polite “good afternoon”. Well-fed cattle chewed the cud next to well-groomed horses in well-kept water meadows. Everything was very genteel.


So, apologies for failing to fall in the canal, sustain injuries or be abducted by aliens, but there's no getting away from it, there is a lot to be said for a spot of fast walking along the towpath on a bright October afternoon. As we neared the end I suddenly spotted a flash of electric blue darting along the water. And then again. It was a kingfisher. The first time I'd ever seen one in the wild in England. Then we did almost break into a run, which was a real shock to the system. Time was marching on, It was getting dark, and we hadn't put enough cash in the pay and display machine. Oh the excitement of living on the edge. Just call us the dangerous brothers.

Simon imagines what it might be like to be exhausted

In Cambodia, the monsoon rains have receded, and the floods have dried up making it possible once again for the children to get to Grace House and for the staff of grace House to get out to the villages to help those in need. This week, Bridget tells us about one of the elderly women whose life they have had a chance to change for the better:

“Yesterday “Granny” visited Grace House, just to say “hello”. With a baby on her hip, a toddler clinging to her skirt and a big toothless grin, Granny is a tall elegant lady whose poverty is only defined by her clothes. She often pops in for a chat. In the UK she would be coming for coffee but here it is just to natter. The problem is my Khmer (Cambodian) is almost non-existent and she speaks no English at all, but we get by with the help of smiles, nods and some translation.

Granny is my age, mid fifties, but looks at least 70. Her life is hard. Her daughter has abandoned her 5 children, all aged between 1 yr and 12 yrs. Granny looks after them. A few weeks ago Mum took the baby away returning her a week later with bite marks on her arm, Granny was very upset. I think it is just as well I did not understand the names she was calling her daughter. 

Just to make her life more difficult her eldest son has now left his 2 sons with her too. So Granny now has 7 children under 12 to raise with little money and only the support from her youngest son who lives with her.

All the children except the youngest 2 attend Grace House. We support the family with rice and have installed a well for clean drinking water and a toilet.  Pek, the son, manages the Grace House vegetable garden and we pay him a monthly wage for this. Granny just gets on with life, never complaining, and always with that toothless grin on her face. She is fast becoming my heroine!”

If you would like to sponsor us and help Grace House continue supporting the children and their families please go to www.justgiving.com/simonandcolin2