On Wednesday February 2nd 2000, in the drizzle and the gloom of a wintry
Dutch dawn, Neil Robinson stepped off a P&O ferry in Rotterdam and took
the first, confident steps of a journey that was supposed to take him
all the way to Istanbul on foot. It was at this point that things began
to go seriously wrong. Recurrent tendinitis, a severely strained
achilles, the worst 'flu epidemic to hit the Odenwald in living memory
and more blisters than a warehouse full of bubble-wrap all played their
part in a journey which was destined, as most great journeys are, never
to go quite according to plan.