Book review of Vic's Big Walk by Vic Heaney

My review today is for Vic's Big Walk by Vic Heaney. Vic is cool! Vic walked from his ‘home’ in the south of France, to the house he was born in 70 years earlier in Blackpool (north west UK). This epic walk of nearly 2000kms was timed to take 70 days and arrive on his 70^th birthday. It is not uncommon to want to celebrate a big birthday with a challenge, but for Vic the real goal was to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer research and he felt it had to be a significant challenge to bring in the donations. He was always happy to talk to those he met en route about his fundraising and continues to raise money through the sales of this book. So far he has raised a whopping £9,375.

In addition to the walking, Vic also updated his blog as he was on the road and made plenty of notes for this book which is so much more than a walkers diary of ‘I got up, walked, got there, had dinner, went to bed’. It is an entertaining account of his adventure and I was a bit sad when I finished this book. I was obviously pleased that Vic had achieved his goal, but to be honest I could have gone on rambling alongside him, although I’m guessing he was pleased to leave it there.

Although this was a solo walk Vic had a great team behind him - his wife; who was driver of the motor home support vehicle/accommodation for the trip, chief laundry steward, cook, route planner and more. The physical challenge of this walk would make me, a person half Vic’s age, think twice about completing it, but when I read that Vic also has an eye condition that makes map reading almost impossible it just increased my awe for him. Vic is tres cool! If Vic can walk an amazing 2000km to raise money the least we can all do is buy this book to help him.

You can find Vic’s JustGiving page here. You can read Vic’s guest post he wrote for me here and my ‘France et Moi’ interview with him here.