Departure to mainland

11.30 p.m. on eve of departure

Filthy Fox, perhaps frightened of impending obscurity, has made a final bid for freedom.















It has burst out of its container, and expanded to full size in a split second, filling the small bedroom. We can't manage to pack it back down again, so it gets moved to the living room and I decide on a last night's camp.



















Rita, an exhausted bear with sore head last night, comes good this morning and manages to contain the tent in its packing sleeve.


10.00 a.m

Sarah from the respiratory team arrives to help load the bike onto the car and say goodbye. By 12.00 we are on the ferry heading for the mainland.




































The bike, the tent and me . . . . . along with Rita and Sue, we're coming home, with gratitude and thanks to all who have helped.

Botanical Gardens, Ventnor

2.30 p.m.

Later the same day we visit the Botanical Gardens which are on the site of an old T.B. hospital. When it was demolished, a covenant was made that the land should belong to the people in perpetuity, and reflect plants and climates around the world.

There are Australian, African and Mediterranean sections, and pottery sculptures amidst the plants. We are dwarfed by twenty foot echiums.






































The Breathe Easy group is meeting here for a walk. It's a good place for it, being laid out over slopes, with a lift back up to the top if required. We end the afternoon with tea in the cafe; as a lung disease patient, and an ex-art therapist, I am intrigued to meet Caroline Riches, an art therapist who has done valuable work with people with lung disease.







There is little in the landscape to record the siting of the hospital here. But we come across a tunnel built through the cliff to the shore. Although planned in 1875 to provide sea access for patients as a boost to their recuperation, when finally built in the 1880's, however, it was part of a new drainage and sewage disposal scheme designed to remove waste from the hospital.




















We say goodbye to Pamela and Andy who have made us so welcome, and arrange for Sarah to call by on Saturday morning before we catch the ferry. At the end of a lovely day, who knew the Tesco building could look so good?

Isle of Wight: Shanklin Chine

We visit Shanklin Chine, the dramatic Victorian gardens and walkway built around a waterfall and gorge which cut deep into the side of the cliff. Dave Pasco from Warehams, an architectural and antique garden furniture business in Whitstable, has told me the ashes of his partner Michelle are scattered here and there is a plaque which I told Dave I would look out for. We look without success and think of Dave while we are there. We conclude that Michelle's plaque may be somewhere up on the nearby headland.


















On a different note, we were reminded of Dave on Tuesday, when we visited Osborne House, home of Queen Victoria. Outside the main house was a monumental wild boar, a Victorian copy almost identifical to the famous one that sits outside Warehams in Whitstable's Oxford Street.

Wednesday: Saint Mary's Hospital, Newport

11.00 a.m.

I have a meeting with Guy Eades from Healing Arts based at St. Mary's Hospital in Newport to explore the possibility of booking "Drawing Breath Recycled" for next year. Sarah is also there and we have a useful discussion about the logistics of the exhibition spaces, timing and installation.


















The Cone, sited outside the hospital, divides opinion from both aesthetic and financial points of view. It was commissioned six years ago and is certainly unmissable.


12.30 p.m.

Back in the centre of town, Workers' Climate Action are campaigning in St. Thomas's Square against the closure of the Vestas factory. The company has decided that making blades for its wind turbines here on the Island is insufficiently profitable and plan to move production abroad.

It's National No Smoking Day, and Carol Foley and her smoking cessation team are also working hard in nearby St. James' Square.


















I used to enjoy smoking and apart from the absolute right to breathe clean air, I hold no moral position per se. But I have never come across anyone with emphysema, chronic bronchitus or lung cancer who doesn't profoundly regret having smoked, and the devastating damage it has caused.


The British Lung Foundation have made a creative partnership with Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibition in London, with a BLF stall housed near the lung exhibits. I remember my horror at the damage caused to the lungs by smoking and other pollutants when I first saw the exhibition in Berlin shortly after my emphysema diagnosis in 2001.

The BLF's Hannah Tucker told me how many people took the opportunity to leave their cigarettes in a specially provided bin on their stall. (Body Worlds publicity photograph).

Day 30: Cowes to Sandown via Newport

12.00 a.m.
Temperature: very warm. Sunny.
O.S. Explorer Map No.
Distance cycled: 12 miles


The final ride of the journey. Sarah, the lead nurse from the primary care trust respiratory team, accompanies me on a coast to coast route starting from Cowes. The track is the southern end of the NCR 23 which runs all the way to Reading.



















Here it runs south-east to Newport, alongside the river Medina; which we can see in glimpses to the left.





















There are occasional industrial sites to the right of the track, and at the Newport end, oxygen cylinders.
















We take a shortcut through the town, away from the fumes. It's been four miles so far.





















The trail to Sandown is a disused railway track, running downhill to the town.




















The track runs through a nature reserve. There are intermittent chainsaw carvings, some functional and some just sitting within the landscape.















We ride hell for leather along this last section; there's a welcoming party waiting at Sandown and they are hungry. The final stage through Sandown to the seafront is uphill.

















Both of us are sweaty, exhausted but happy. We have done the twelve miles in two and a half hours which, for me, is amazing. Many thanks to Sarah for arranging this ride, which is the last I will do on the Island, for now at least. I will calculate my total mileage, from Hastings to here at Sandown, and post it later.

Day 29: Breathe Easy Isle of Wight event

We meet up with members of the Island Breathe Easy group who have a stall next to the Appley Beach Cafe along from our flat in Ryde. They are celebrating their tenth birthday party. My plan was to make a life size bicycle out of balloons with members and public but we scale this down to decorating the stall and talking to members of the public about lung function and health.



















The group has had a birthday cake made (by the local Tesco) with the Breathe Easy logo on it. Andy, Pamerla (Andy's mother), Eileen and Sarah, the lead respiratory nurse from the primary care trust team display it amidst the balloons,


























and Rita photographs Sarah and myself cutting it.






This might be a good point to tell you of the unusual, though seemingly pointless achievement of 13 year old Andrew Dahl who, in 2008 in the public library in Blaine, Washington, U.S.A., blew up two hundred and thirteen balloons with his nose in one hour. The balloons had to be eight inches in diameter were counted by his mother, and were measured by his father. No further comment needed.

Day 28: Hayling Island to the Isle of Wight

The cable company workers have finished and gone. But newcomers in fearsome 4x4s arrived yesterday evening and they talk, shout and sing through the night.


10.15 a.m.

Temp: Warm, sunny, light westerly wind
O.S. Explorer Maps Nos 120, 119 and OL29
Distance cycled: 10 miles

So, bleary and sleepless, I'm up early for the final pack. Brian helps me with Filthy Fox and I set off south for the Hayling to Portsmouth foot passenger ferry. The skipper, Mike, tells me about working the ferry and donates the fee to the BLF.







































Rita and Sue meet me on the Portsmouth side and take my baggage ahead in the car, leaving me to enjoy the Solent Way up to the hovercraft, unburdened.


















In Portsmouth, as part of the Forces Day festival, ships have been constructed out of wooden pallets.






















1.45 p.m.















It's ten minutes on the ferry to the Isle of Wight, and that's it - I've made it! Although I have a ride planned for Monday, this is the symbolic end of the journey.




I set out on 31st May from Hastings. It feels far longer than a month. The day before I left I read an article about garden sheds.

"The route to the shed, up the meandering garden path, is important - the journey to somewhere dissipates the memory of where you've just come from..... Once you've got a shed, you carry it with you in your head - the sanctuary is always there." (Malcolm Temple interviewed by Dinah Hall, Guardian Weekend)

My profound thanks to the many friends who have supported me, donated to the BLF, and especially kept in touch throughout the trip. And Rita, I couldn't have done it without you.