Tuesday the 18th of August - to Sheffield

Pauline also made a great breakfast, and absolutely nothing was a worry with her - she sorted everything out, and I left the Briscoes after setting up another A4SML, to head back into town, and the Town Hall. Here though, there was no Leah, and the other woman on the counter told me that a message had been left saying that the Council could accept NO FLYERS OR CORRESPONDENCE THAT ARE NOT ON HEADED PAPER. I told them that I was backed by Sunderland Council, and that everything was legit. The communications manager came down, and she was fine, saying that everything would have been ok, had they simply known that I was coming, first. True - as I've said, and will probably say a few more times, I needed more time in certain places, and wish I'd had more time to plan this beforehand. We did the best with the time we had, though and so long as I try to get my foot in the door when I'm in a town, it could fail, as it did here, or it could work, as the next day was to prove, in Sheffield...

Anyway, the manager said she's put a link to the bid website on their intranet, and I left, to flyer a few shops, and a lot of people in a coffee bar, before climbing the hill, and reaching the sign above. Father Briscoe has printed me out seven detailed maps , and advised me to take a turn away from the road I'd planned to take (always listen to a local!), and I was soon over the M1:

..through a village, and onto a dual carriageway for a few hundred yards until I reached a big roundabout, with a ..Mcdonalds (I needed a coke). Here I got a very encouraging phone call from Jenny, and got talking, flyering and signing with a guy called Martin. I set off again, taking another call from Victoria, which was interrupted by another man and his dog asking, and getting a flyer in return.

The landscape here, just north of Sheffield was glorious; still the wooded roadsides in place of fields:

but I was soon passing houses, and going down a huge hill, across roads, and under railways. In time, I passed Hillborough:, and the industrial area of 'Owlerton' all around it. Just a bit further on, I noticed this sign:..which is a story waiting to be discovered ...by someone who has the time. I didn't, though, because I recieved a phone call from today's contact, Father Simon Griffiths, saying that he wanted me in town pronto, as he was urgently wanted to give last orders to someone.. I had to run into the centre, which -having never been to Sheffield before - I didn't know at all, and frantically look around all these streets I knew nothing about, looking for 'Carver Street'. I asked a woman, and found out that I was quite close, but at the bottom of a hill I needed to be right on top of. I pelted up 'Parliament Street', which would have been a LOT easier to pelt down, and looked like the archetypal eccentric bloke-you-wouldn't-talk-to-with-a-barge-pole as I sprang into Carver Street:

I was staying in the old, red vicarage on the right, and I had the entire front room to myself:

...and I had my pick of beds:





Father Simon was a very friendly guy - he told me that he had wanted to do the walk with me tomorrow, but, he had to hurry off, after leaving me some food, and the key. It was in this room that I also chose to decorate the guitar with the pen I'd bought in Harrogate. This is the result:

I wasn't sure about putting 'the history of England ' It didn't want it to make me sound like I was doing some 'zenophobic bulldog thing', but I though it over, and this is something I'll never do again, that needs to grab the eye as much as possible. Anyone can see when they talk to me that it's just a soundbite, and that the walk is well-grounded, but that it's also a bit of fun (painful fun, sometimes, but fun nonetheless). I've said the phrase countless times when handing the flyers over anyway, and it seems to work then.

I updated the blog a bit, and headed outside, to a place on 'Division Street' (a U2 title-in-waiting if I've ever seen one), but it was a quiet night of scattered groups deep in conversation. I flyered one group, but got back some sarky reply about 'Well I'm from Runnymede, and we've got history everywhere there - the Magna Carta: that's the start of English history..' One of the guys was from Hamsterley, and he took the flyer. The next place was a meat-market just about to close, and I was exhausted, so I skipped around the city centre taking a few photos like this one:





..and this one of the Crucible Theatre, home of all the snooker matches, including the legendary one between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis in 1985 that almost grounded the national grid with all the kettles being boiled after it finished...apparently:





...and then I went to bed.