I actually wrote Texarkana, Arkansas before I realised that my hotel is on the left-hand side of the road, which means I've walked into Texas without being aware of it.

Sorry, is that a bit confusing? Well, as its name suggests, the city of Texarkana spans both states, and I'm staying on Stateline Avenue, which separates the two.

I began my day hunched in a dog cage in the back of a police car. Dan, my Costa Rican-born benefactor, is a highway patrolman, and turned up on the dot of 9.30 to give me a ride to where I stopped walking yesterday. The other inhabitants of the homeless shelter were suitably impressed - or perhaps his arrival just confirmed their suspicions about me.

As we drove, Dan took me through the sophisticated array of equipment he has at his fingertips. He pointed the speed radar at a car heading in the opposite direction at 72 mph in a 45-mph zone, and it instantly slowed to 56. 'He's obviously got a radar detector,' he grinned.

Then he told me about the dog - though he never uses that word, it's 'the canine' - that normally occupies my cage. The two of them have developed an extremely close bond during their ten-year partnership, and Dan has already been told that he can keep it as a pet when it retires.

The dog comes from Holland, and only understands Dutch. So when Dan wants him to bark at a suspect, he shouts 'bellen', and if the fugitive needs to be grabbed hold of, he yells 'pakken'. If Dan's being attacked, he presses a remote control on his belt, the back door of the car springs open, and a snarling ball of fur hurtles out at the assailant.

I shall miss Dan; he and wife Darene are incredibly generous and considerate people. I can imagine him on one of those World's Wackiest Police Videos, maintaining perfect politeness and composure as some swaying, drug-addled driver splutters abuse at him on the hard shoulder.

We said our goodbyes, I walked off into the distance, and he unleashed his parting shot. Over the car's loudspeaker, he yelled: 'God save the King... er, Queen'.

When I got into the car, it was 69F and I was in my t-shirt. An hour later, I'd donned every available item of clothing - sweatshirt, waterproofs, gloves, woolly hat - in an effort to keep out the arctic blast that has descended on much of the country. I think it was the sharpest one-day fall in temperature I've ever experienced; as I walked into Texarkana twelve miles later, it was 36F. I did a TV interview on the way, but I have a feeling my story is going to be squeezed out by coverage of the extreme weather.

It rained hard for most of the day, and despite my precautions most of the stuff in my backpack got damp. The first guy I asked directions from when I arrived just said 'What?' and cycled off. The downtown area is a semi-derelict graveyard of boarded-up businesses, rusting cars and countless pawn shops. I hope the place acquires a more cheerful aspect in the morning, because I was thinking of taking a day off here.

I've spent 114 nights in motels on this trip, and barring a few minor details they've all been exactly the same. The only problem I have is remembering which side of the room the bathroom is on so that I don't walk smack into the wall in the middle of the night.

I find this similarity reassuring: it's like they've all been mass produced in some huge factory and then dumped off the back of a truck at 15-mile intervals, so there's nearly always one at the end of my day's walking. A friend recently suggested that I should pretend they're all one and the same place, so that I go out in the morning and come home at night like a commuter, and I thought this was quite a good idea.

None of them has stood out as particularly bad, but two have been especially good. One was the EconoLodge in St Clairsville, OH, which I've written about already, and the other was the Americas Best Value Inn in Gurdon, AR, where I stayed a couple of nights ago.

The lobby looked like the aftermath of an explosion in a Christmas decoration factory. Every square inch was festooned with a dazzling array of tinsel, baubles, and a selection from manager Barbara Coplen?s collection of Santa Clauses, probably the largest in Arkansas, if not the known universe. Ignoring her boss?s complaints that they were a safety hazard, she?d gone completely over the top ? and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

I felt as though I?d wandered into someone?s living room, and instead of the usual perfunctory greetings, we were soon deep in conversation. From that moment onwards, nothing was too much for Barbara. She offered to drive down the road and pick up a takeout for me, and plied me with fresh fruit and homemade banana bread.

She hadn?t been doing the job for very long, and I just hope that her very obvious delight in taking care of her guests won?t be eroded by people leaving cigarette burns (and worse) on her carpets. So not only have I named this motel joint favourite of the trip so far, I?ve actually forgiven the missing apostrophe in its name.*

Last night, there was yet another spectacular sunset. A few miles outside Hope, Arkansas ? best known as the birthplace of Bill Clinton ? a guy beckoned me over to his driveway and asked what I was doing.

Costa Rican native and staunch anglophile Daniel Morales had recognised the British flag on my backpack ? as far as I know, the first person to do so on this entire trip ? and soon he, wife Darene and I were ensconced in their garage, watching the sun go down, drinking mug after mug of the finest Costa Rican coffee and listening to his extensive collection of British military music.

I?d never expected to be discussing the merits of the Royal Welch Fusiliers and humming along to the Dambusters theme tune in deepest rural Arkansas ? but then I?d never expected to be doing most of the things I?ve done on this walk.

After a while, Darene disappeared. When she reemerged a few minutes later, she announced that she?d booked a room for me at Hope in Action, a shelter for the homeless a few miles down the road. Dismissing my protestations that I could actually afford a roof over my head, she and Daniel more or less ordered me to go there.

So I did, and very hospitable it is. Everyone, staff and guests alike, has been incredibly welcoming, and the rooms are spartan, but clean and comfortable. Daniel and Darene have been feeding me, ferrying me around and generally treating me like royalty, and I shall miss the warmth of their welcome.

Speaking of warmth, it?s been 73F and sunny for days on end, but the Weather Channel says there?s a 70-percent probability of one to two inches of snow tomorrow. I?m very much aware that I?ve had it easy so far in terms of weather, accommodation and all the rest, and the hardest part is yet to come.

* I?ve written about this before. For a while, I thought charitably that it might be ?Americas?, as in ?Columbus sailed to the Americas?. But no, it?s not. The equivalent chain north of the border is called Canadas Best Value Inns.

Since this blog has taken an unexpected detour into the realms of gastronomy, with the gumbo recipe generating more comments than any other entry, this seems like a good time to share some random observations about American food. I'd be interested to hear what you think.

The death of dessert
The waitress where I ate tonight told me that only 20% of customers order dessert. This probably explains why, in many restaurants, they slap the bill down in front of you as you finish the main course. I'm sure this never used to be the case.
I'm guessing it's because, as waistlines expand and we grow ever more afraid of food, dessert has become a sinful overindulgence. To me, no meal is complete without a sugar fix at the end - though I'm lucky, I can eat whatever junk I like and work it off the next day.

Hostess fruit pies: what are they for?
Speaking of junk, I have some on the table here in front of me. My Hostess peach pie boasts forty-three sinister-looking ingredients, including cottonseed oil, beef fat, FDA yellow 5 and 6, and high-fructose corn syrup. It contains 55% of the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat, and enough salt to wipe out the world's entire slug population. The crust seems to be made from the same waxed paper as the wrapper, and leaves a nasty metallic aftertaste. And yet I eat them all the time. What's wrong with me?

Bigger is better
We sneer at the American predilection for mountains of fries, free refills of Coke, and all-you-can-eat buffets. But contrast this with the British approach: parsimonious portion control, exorbitantly priced meals that leave you nipping into the corner shop for a Mars bar on the way home, extra charges for sachets of ketchup and mayonnaise.
I think this country's culinary lavishness is symptomatic of something much wider: it's the same generosity that it shows to the immigrants who still flock to its shores. What's more, it doesn't have to be wasteful: even in the smartest restaurants, no one will turn a hair if you ask for a box to take home what you can't eat. Too much of a good thing, or not enough? I know which I prefer.

Smoking is good for you
Remember Goddard's first law of food? If you walk past a branch of Subway and you're hungry, always go in and buy a footlong Veggie Delite on wheat bread with pepper jack cheese, all the veggies, and lite mayonnaise. I have no idea why I do this, just as I have no idea why I eat Hostess fruit pies.
The corollary of this law is if you're in the south, you walk past a barbecue restaurant and you're hungry, always go in. This is American food at its simple best: hickory-smoked brisket, pulled pork, potato salad, baked beans. Some of the best places I've been to have been little more than dilapidated roadside shacks, but the food they serve has been a real revelation.

The Peabody duck march is one of Little Rock?s most popular visitor attractions. Each day at 11 am, five mallard ducks waddle out of their rooftop suite in the exclusive Peabody hotel and glide down to the ground floor in a glass-sided elevator. To the strains of Sousa?s King Cotton March, they strut along sixty feet of red carpet to the lobby fountain, where they spend the day paddling around in circles and having their photographs taken. The man responsible for their welfare is duckmaster Lloyd Withrow, 48.


'My first priority is the ducks: making sure they?re fed, cared for, cleaned up after ? in fact you could call me the head pooper scooper. They have a doctor at Little Rock zoo who looks after their medical needs, but I have to check their eyes and their stools each day to make sure they?re in good health. I also train them to do what they?re supposed to do, which takes three to four weeks, and I handle PR for the ducks and for the hotel in general.

'I get to work at about 7.15 and let them out for forty-five minutes of exercise and frolicking, and I also feed them a head of romaine lettuce. Why that particular kind of lettuce? Well, it contains more nutrients and it?s very similar to the duckweed they?d be eating in the wild.

'At about 10.15 I roll out the red carpet in the lobby, and then I go back upstairs, load the ducks into a cart and bring them to the ballroom elevator ready for their grand entrance. I get the music ready and make sure they have plenty of feed. Then at 11 o?clock I stand up and tell everyone about the history of the ducks, and the march begins.

'I used to work on the engineering side of the hotel, but I started getting reactions to some of the chemicals we used as cleaning solvents. I?ve been doing this particular job for the past twenty-seven months.

'The ducks are bred by a guy called Otis. I can?t tell you his last name because he prefers to remain anonymous, but he has a farm about an hour south of here and the hotel leases a portion of it. They come here for seven to eight months, and then go back to the farm for a year or so, so they get time to nest ? it just keeps them more content. Then they often come back here again.

'I develop quite close relationships with them, and I hate to see some of them leave. This is a particularly good team we have here at the moment.The ducks are very good PR for the hotel ? a lot of people stay here just because of them.

'My job as duckmaster takes up about three hours of each day, and for the rest of the time I work as the lobby ambassador ? a combination of valet, bellman, doorman and concierge ? and I also drive the shuttle and act as the hotel?s historian. I?ve met lots of famous people, including Bill and Chelsea Clinton, Jose Feliciano, Robin Williams and Chevy Chase. I answer questions and make mad guests happy. My goal for each day is to wow two associates ? your hair looks good, you?re doing a great job ? and two guests.

'My daughter told me the other day: "Dad, of all the people I know, you?ve got the most interesting job." I try to make people feel special, and when I die, I?d like the inscription on my tombstone to read: "Well done, good and faithful servant."?

I?d like to thank Pam?s daughter Dana and son-in-law Scott for making me feel so welcome in their Little Rock home. Scott is a keen cyclist, and gave me free pick of his collection of outdoor clothing, so now I?m prepared for whatever the winter throws my way. I?d also like to thank Pam for (a) making sure I?m both warm and visible by crocheting nine feet of bright yellow scarf in less than one day, and (b) existing.

Recipe of the week, by popular request: Pam's turkey and sausage gumbo
Serves four

Gumbo is a stew or soup from the southern United States, and is particularly popular in New Orleans where I live. The name comes from an African word for okra, which is often used as a thickening agent.

The ideal start for this recipe is the carcass of a turkey left over from Thanksgiving or Christmas. At Matassa's Market, the family-owned grocery store I work at in the French Quarter, we cook two turkeys for Sunday lunch every week. Instead of stuffing them in the traditional way, we just quarter three to four onions, cut the tops off a couple of heads of garlic, throw these in the cavity and bake the turkeys. Alternatively, you can use two to three legs and five or six wings, or a whole chicken instead of turkey.

Place the meat, onion and garlic in a stockpot with some bayleaves and water, boil for a couple of hours and allow to cool. The bone and cartilage should now be easily removable. If you're not making the gumbo right away, the mixture can be frozen for future use.

I recently learned that you can make a roux in a microwave. I thought if I admitted to this, people would throw rocks at me and call me an infidel, but after hearing a woman with a thick Louisiana accent admit to doing the same on several occasions, I guess I don't have to turn in my chef's certificate just yet.

To make the roux, mix one half-cup of oil and one cup of flour in an ovenproof glass measuring jug and cook for 16 to 20 minutes, depending on the strength of your microwave. Stir thoroughly every two minutes until the mixture begins to brown and you smell a nutty aroma. Towards the end, begin stirring every minute to avoid burning, until you have a mahogany-coloured roux.

Place this in the stockpot with three to four diced white or yellow onions, two diced red, green or yellow bell peppers [peppers], and four ribs [sticks] of diced celery. Stir these together, slowly adding two cups of warmed canned chicken broth (or chicken stock cubes dissolved in water) and the turkey. At this point you should have about 1.75 quarts (or litres) of gumbo. Add a pound to a pound and a half of sliced andouille or other smoked, slightly spicy sausage, more bayleaves, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika and thyme. Simmer for 30-45 minutes and serve with rice.

I just wanted to say a special word of thanks to my good friend Algernon Arbuthnot for contributing the £4.16 I needed to reach my £12,000 sponsorship target.

Algernon is an Old Etonian with a penchant for bow ties, Lamborghinis and badger baiting. He'd be the first to admit that fine wines and generations of inbreeding have left him and his lovely wife Cecily with a limited supply of brain cells, but he's as generous with his inherited millions as the day is long. Thanks, Algy!

I'd also like to express my gratitude to Rupert Murdoch (yes, that one), who has now, albeit unknowingly, contributed a substantial sum to my collection. Thanks to the munificence of these two fine people and countless others, I've now increased my target to £14,000 ($26,500).

The last four states I've walked through have been Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. They have population densities per square mile of 277, 101, 138 and 51 respectively, so the population is really starting to thin out, which means I'm meeting fewer people and having to rely more on my own resources. I knew this was going to be the case, and I've had time to adjust to it, but still one of the main criteria by which I measure each day is the people I meet.

I wish every day could be like Thursday. After the worst weather of my trip so far on Wednesday night - pouring rain and cold winds - it was cloudless again. Half a dozen people stopped to chat after having seen me on TV. One offered me a place for the night, the first time that has happened on the walk since Kentucky, but it was only 10 am so I decided to press on.

Then Eric Johnson drove by. He'd spotted the Coast to Coast banner on my backpack, and told me he worked at a nearby clinic for adults with severe mental illness run by Birch Tree Communities, a non-profit organisation. Would I like to come and talk to his clients?

So I did, and they bombarded me with questions for something like forty-five minutes. I thought I'd heard most of the questions that could be asked about my walk, but they proved me wrong; it turned into a heated debate about living your life and realising your dreams, and I really enjoyed it. Just to make sure I didn't get too full of myself, some of my audience slept or talked through my presentation. I left with my pack stuffed with donations of food, water and money.

I'm doing one more day's walking on Friday, and then backtracking to Little Rock to spend a few days with Pam and family.

Like I said, nice things happen in cities.

In Little Rock, the nice things came courtesy of Michael Hickerson, the manager of the Courtyard by Marriott. He gave me two free nights, a welcome opportunity to wallow in luxury and enjoy my first day off since Memphis.

I've always said that if I weren't a translator, I'd like to be either the curator of the famous palm house at London's Kew Gardens or an American TV weatherman, jumping around in front of a map and getting all excited about blizzards, tornadoes and heatwaves.

I've now added a third fantasy vocation to the list: that of food critic.

Michael had organised a lunch for his staff on Tuesday, and asked me to come along and tell them about my walk.

He'd also asked them to bring along their own homemade food, which they did, in massive quantities: twenty-two savoury dishes and nine desserts. I know this because I counted, and I counted because Michael appointed me and two other leading gastronomes to award prizes to the best.

It was a tough job, but we rose to the challenge and managed to pick four particularly outstanding contributions. And I thought, I could really get a taste for this.

Afterwards, I worked off my 31-course banquet by slumping in a cinema seat, watching Borat and laughing a lot. There were only about six other people in the audience, and beforehand we had a discussion about other films we'd seen. This would not happen in England, where it's against the law to talk to strangers.

When Michael heard that I was going back to Little Rock this weekend to meet Pam, he immediately offered me another free night on Saturday. I'd like to thank him and everyone else at the hotel for their extremely generous hospitality.

I did my shopping in Wal-Mart yesterday, and was punished accordingly.

Shortly before I came to the States, my friend Ken and I went to see Wal-Mart, the High Cost of Low Prices, a documentary about the company's ruthless trading practices, low pay and anti-unionism. As we came out of the cinema, I mentally added Wal-Mart to my ever-lengthening boycott list.

Well, that resolution was short-lived; I've shopped there several times, usually because there simply is nowhere else. So many of the small-town high streets I've walked along have been lined with boarded-up windows and empty of shoppers thanks to Wal-Mart and its fellow retail giants.

Anyway, as I went in to the store a small insect flew into my face, I batted it away, and it stung me just below my eye. It felt like a bee or wasp sting, and I now have a large and somewhat disfiguring crescent-shaped blister on my cheek, giving me a baggy-eyed, lopsided look. I've decided this is divine retribution for my sacrificed principles.

Yesterday's landscape had a distinctly watery theme. First I walked through a huge fish farm, some three miles long and two miles wide, a rare opportunity to get off the road and follow a dusty track between deep blue, mirror-smooth fishponds stretching almost to the horizon.



Then, as I approached North Little Rock, I walked alongside one of the deepwater swamps that once covered so much of the south. As the sun set and the air began to chill, the forests of swollen-trunked bald cypress and water tupelo took on an eerie, otherworldly air.


In the evening, TV viewers in Little Rock were treated to an evening of wall-to-wall Phil Goddard. Well, maybe not quite, but I made four appearances on evening news programmes, a record for me. Several people stopped to say hallo today, and as I walked across the Arkansas river into the city a tram driver waved and tooted a cheery welcome.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the extreme right-wing British National Party, has today been cleared of inciting racial hatred. Two years ago, the BBC filmed him making a speech describing Islam as a 'wicked, vicious faith' and saying that Muslims were turning Britain into 'a multiracial hell-hole'. He concluded: 'Let's show these ethnics the door in 2004'.

Yesterday, I hitched from my motel back to the spot where I'd stopped walking the previous night. Beside the road where I waited, a group of men were building a huge new prefabricated church.

Eventually, one of the building workers gave me a ride in his pickup. I asked him about the church, and he proudly told me that it was a big gamble, but they were hoping to fill it despite being in a remote rural area. Then he asked me where I was from.

'Oh, I hear y'all's been having a lot of problems with them Muslims.'

Instantly, the whole atmosphere changed, and I thought oh no, here we go again. No, I told him, we've been having problems with a tiny minority of militant fundamentalist Muslims, but we all get on pretty well most of the time.

He ignored me.

'You guys wanna watch yourselves, or they'll take over the whole place before you know it. You ever read about the four horses of the apocalypse in the Book of Revelation? There's the black horse, that's the antichrist, and the white horse, which is catholicism. Then there's the red horse, which is communism. And then there's the green horse, though that's a mistranslation - it should be the pale horse. Anyway, that represents death and destruction, and that's Islam.'

He was a Christian, and he was building a church, but in his own way he was just as full of hate as the leader of the British National Party.

I'm glad I came such a long way south: it was extra miles, but worth it for the better weather. I still haven't worn my sweatshirt much during the day, the forecast for today is 82F, and my bottle of sunscreen is getting plenty of use. Yesterday I swam in a river, though probably for the last time this year.

Since I got back from New Orleans, the road has been almost totally straight and the walking wholly uneventful. The road is treelined for much of the way, blocking out some stunning bayou-country views of trees and telephone poles standing waist-deep in huge expanses of still water that mirror the wispy clouds.

I always get excited by crops that I haven't seen before on my walk. They're another sign of progress: soybeans in Ohio, tobacco in Kentucky, cotton in Tennessee, and now rice, of which Arkansas is the country's largest producer, accounting for 43% of the total harvest.

Another major local industry is catfish farming. The map of this area is generously sprinkled with ponds, and I've seen big flapping fish being loaded onto tankers beside the road.

Arkansas' official nickname is the Natural State, and wildlife has been very much in evidence. Thousands of geese have been crisscrossing the road at high altitude, their V formations joined in tree-like shapes that cover half the sky. Yesterday, the air was thick with swarming ladybugs that crawled into my ears and down my socks. And this is the home of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which made international headlines after reports of its rediscovery in 2004, sixty years after it was written off as extinct.

Up and down the country, bars and church halls have been filled with passionate debate about today's midterm elections. Or at least I assume they have, because I've seen none of it.


What I have seen is tens of thousands of these posters, reminding me that in America, elections aren't just about who has control over Congress. This is quite literally a grassroots democracy, with countless local officials' jobs dependent upon the support of their fellow citizens.

It's not like that where I come from, and I'm curious as to how much people really care who serves as their local treasurer, court clerk or justice of the peace. Perhaps, if you're an American, you can tell me.

If the sun bothered to come up at all yesterday, it wasn't very much in evidence. It was a twilight day of low, heavy clouds, stop-start drizzle and glum faces.

As I walked out of Forrest City one of my new boots started causing me intense pain. I needed to take the weight off my feet, and I was hungry too, but there was nowhere to eat.

Eventually I found a gas station with a cabinet full of overcooked food, and chose the least unattractive option, a couple of wizened corndogs that should have been pushing up daisies in a landfill by now.

I sat down at a table. Behind me, a large black woman perched precariously on a stool and listlessly fed coins into a slot machine for fifteen minutes without winning a single penny. She's very patient, I thought.

Then I turned round and saw the sign on the wall: 'Absolutly no cash giving out for the winning of these machine'. It seemed like the ultimate exercise in futility: a gamble with a zero-percent payback.

Beside the door was a spinner full of beautifully hand-designed postcards, all on the same theme:

'The burning hell: thousands of degrees hot and not a drop of water'.
'Death: it happens every day'.
'This could be your last minute alive'.

I went for a closer look, and it turned out that they weren't postcards at all, but little two-page tracts. I helped myself to one, and went back to my table.

It has been estimated that three people around the world will die every second. This means that by the time you finish reading this tract, over nine hundred people will have died. For the next five minutes, I want you to imagine what it would be like if these were your last moments alive. After all, someone in your city will likely die in the next few minutes. It could be you. Why not?

When you die, someone will place a sheet or a blanket over your head. An ambulance may take you to the hospital for an autopsy. The undertaker will be called, and arrangements will be made to place you in a grave.

People will come to the funeral and shed tears over your lifeless body. They will look at your cold, blank face and mourn, but you will be gone.

They will slowly drive to a cemetery with your body in a casket. At the cemetery, they will carry your casket to a hole in the ground and lower it down. People will cry. The men will cover your casket with dirt and a tombstone. Your name, the date of your birth, and today's date will be on the stone. The people will leave, recover, and perhaps someday forget that your body is there.

Your five minutes are almost gone, so I must get to the point. When your time is up and you have died, where are you going? We have already decided where your body is going, but what about your soul? Will you be in heaven or hell? Oh, yes, you will be in one place or the other. So in these remaining minutes, I will tell you what to do to get to the place of your choice.

I could stand it no longer, so I poured myself a coffee to drown my sorrows and went to the counter to pay.

The woman shot me a dazzling smile and waved my money away. 'Oh, no, don't worry about that,' she said. 'It's on the house'.

I walked out of the gas station with a spring in my step.

Remember Steve Vaught, better known as Fat Man Walking, who gained international celebrity by walking across America to lose weight? He succeeded, but his life since then has, if anything, been even more extraordinary - and for all the wrong reasons. This is a piece from his local paper in San Diego.

When he finished, he wrote of the huge sense of anticlimax that he experienced. It's something I think about myself, but it's too abstract and too far in the future. I find worrying about the next 24 hours is more manageable.

Frequently asked questions

Why America?
Because I love this country, and more especially its people. Their government is getting a bad press at the moment, but we still have a lot to learn from them as a society.

What have been the highlights?
They've mostly been individuals, and I won't embarrass them by naming names. But New Orleans has been one, the Amish country of Pennsylvania was another, and so was being sung to by a couple of hundred people at the Bruderhof religious community, also in Pennsylvania.

Do you get lonely?
Yes, but it's always low-level, not the kind where you have to rush off and find someone to talk to. And it's often dispelled in a trice by a chance encounter or a phone call.

Is it boring?
Ditto.

Do your feet hurt?
Only after a long break from walking, or if I do much more than about twenty miles. Usually they stage a miraculous recovery while I sleep, and are raring to go the next morning.

Do you have trouble getting proper food?
Yes. A lot of the food I buy is from gas stations and convenience stores selling nothing but donuts and savoury snacks, and restaurants where everything is covered in batter. But at least I can work it all off the next day.
Sometimes there are unexpected delights, though. I particularly like the buffet places where lots of very fat people go because they can have three or four helpings without attracting too much opprobrium. They have lots of good, cheap, healthy food like salads and fresh vegetables.

Do you want a ride?
No thanks, I'm hiking. (This seems to be the word Americans use for long-distance walking. It doesn't have the boy-scout connotations that it does at home, though some people confuse it with hitchhiking.)

Are you sure?
Yes, but thanks for stopping.

How much weight have you lost?
About six pounds.

And how much does your pack weigh?
Forty pounds.

How do you afford all those motels?
The exchange rate is so much in my favour that they only cost me about half what they would at home.

Are you Australian?
No. Are you? (At least, that's the answer I'm always tempted to give.)

Actually, Pam isn't just a friend; she's a whole lot more than that. She's one of two main reasons why I stayed in New Orleans for longer than I'd planned, and found it such a wrench to leave.

She works in a grocery store in the French Quarter, I invited her out to dinner, she said yes. We struggled to find anything in common apart from our age; she's a fiery southern belle with curly blonde hair and fearsomely long white-painted fingernails who says things like 'hot diggedy' and 'Jesus criminy'; I'm a repressed, diffident Englishman who doesn't say anything very much of note.

So we hit it off immediately, and for a week I became a denizen of commuterland, working with the St Bernard Project, coming home to Pam and her little house on Carondelet Street, and sharing her with her dog and cat. It was a little haven of warmth and stability in my constantly changing landscape.

My next main port of call after Memphis is Little Rock, Arkansas, about ten days' walk from Memphis. By a happy coincidence, this is where Pam's daughter lives, so we'll soon be meeting again.

The other reason for my extended stay in New Orleans was that I so much enjoyed working for the St Bernard Project. We worked hard, but the charity also encourages volunteers to interact and learn from one another and the owners of the homes they're rebuilding. For this reason, and because so many of us were new to this kind of work, we were probably less productive than your average construction crew.

I met an extraordinary selection of people from all over the country: building workers, firefighters, lawyers, students, truck drivers, locals who'd rebuilt their own homes and were now helping their neighbours to do the same.

When I started my walk, I was determined to give big cities a wide berth. I'd visited many of them already, and regarded them as a hostile environment for pedestrians like me. But somehow I found myself gravitating towards them, perhaps because I've always been a city dweller.

I've been to Columbus, Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis and New Orleans, and each time I've met memorable people and had memorable things happen to me. So from now on, instead of avoiding them, I shall be seeking them out.

Cocktail of the week:
Boots in the River

Mix one measure each of bourbon, Godiva chocolate liqueur and Nocello walnut liqueur. Serve neat in a tumbler.


Today, I went to throw my boots into the Mississippi.

I bought them in a camping shop in Lewes, England, in June. When the staff heard what I was buying them for, they gave me a big discount and threw in some socks for free.

They lasted for 1,200 miles. I had them reheeled once, in Louisville, KY, but the heels started falling off soon afterwards, and it got to the point where it was cheaper to buy a new pair than to keep repairing them. Also, they were starting to smell so bad that I had to leave my hotel windows open at night.

I was sad to see them go, but they'd served me well and they merited a dignified departure. So I decided to throw them into the river here in New Orleans, like the ashes of the dead being scattered into the Ganges.

I went with my friend Pam, who is a mixologist among other things, and she offered to create a cocktail so that we could toast the boots and the rest of my journey.

So we went into a bar, and she pondered for a while. I said it had to be muddy and brown like the Mississippi, and I also wanted it to contain bourbon because I'd walked through the entire state of Kentucky without once letting a drop pass my lips. Eventually, she came up with the above, and it was good.

I told the barmaid the cocktail was called Boots in the River, just in case it became famous and other people started asking for it. Then I went and threw them in. I like the idea of them floating off to Mexico or somewhere, but they probably got bogged down in the mud and stayed right where they were.


I'm reluctantly dragging myself away from this beautiful city tomorrow. Halloween was unforgettable, and the streets were packed with costumed revellers. I don't normally do dressing up, but I was persuaded to don a Sergeant Pepper outfit, and Pam went as a rather fetching harem girl.



And this is a guy who sat next to me in the bar.