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This week I’ll try (with the help of super Millie) to publish something every day but I’m not sure whether timings will allow it.

I’ll try to keep up as quick as I can.

It’s 3.25 in the afternoon here (an hour ahead of you) and I’m sat on the balcony of our Airbnb house overlooking a valley in the foothills of the Pyrenees listening to the clinging bell around a sheep’s neck.

In my stomach is a cocktail of emotions like someone has gone along the optics of a bar with a pint glass to put in everything that you like and don’t like and then topped it up with cider and strong lager.

These are some of the best days.

We had the most epic trip yesterday, recording ridiculous carpool karaoke videos for the Slack group at work and playing the alphabet game where we were trying to go through the alphabet to find the best things in the world and the worst things in the world related to each letter.

We travelled 1,500 km and ended up in this beautiful, picturesque scene. The calm before the storm.

This blog has always been about writing a diary to myself for afterwards and so, here is what I feel just now.

I love the time spent with friends like this, with a little bit of extra time that we didn’t have in normal life and the release and freedom to have fun and to forget about the daily struggles for a little while.

I miss my family terribly but I’m not sure they really believe that.

And I’m a little bit ashamed and humbled and humiliated by the response of people after I created a WhatsApp group today with all my contacts and asked if people could contribute to our JustGiving page.

Out of the group it’s Alex’s family who have the most emotive tales that relate to Cancer Research, but we’ve all be touched in one way or another.

Before we got here Alex’s family had raised £5,000 on our JustGiving page and we can add that to the nearly £2,000 that the rest of The Campbell Clinic team raised when they took part in the Race for Life.

And so, I sat on the balcony where I’m sat now and made a WhatsApp group under Alex’s direction as his wife, Jane had done and within a couple of hours we were closing in on £8,500 in total on that page.

I was asking people to help and to contribute to Cancer Research, not on the basis of how well I might finish this event but only on the basis that I will try and start it.

And so, now the nerves set in and I wonder whether I’ll even make it up the first hill and how bad that will look to everybody else and how far everybody else will be.

And then I remind myself of the mission.

I’m here at the start of a process, not at the end of a process and I’m here to live my life to the fullest.

The laughs that I’ve had over the past 24 hours have been some of the best for ages and ages.

The memories that we’ve created will take months to process properly and we’re only 24 hours into the adventure.

This is one of those adventures of adventures, it’s like the story wheel where it starts with expectation and dips in the middle and finishes, I hope, with a happy ending.

You can follow us on Instagram here and although I’m not on those platforms myself I know that lots of people are and there’s lots of stuff that we’re putting out that’s fun.

Hopefully you can follow the blog from day 1 to 5 here (as long as I have the ability and the time to do it) and hopefully, if you haven’t managed to do it already, you might think about chucking a few pounds onto the JustGiving page here because Cancer Research is definitely a good place to put that money.

Finally, though, and with my hand on my heart, I have been completely humbled by the generosity of people and their help by supporting.

Thank you so much, everybody here is blown away.

See you on the other side of stage 1!

“Life is about love, last minutes and lost evenings. About fire in our bellies and furtive little feelings. And the aching amplitudes that set our needles all a-flickering and help us with remembering that the only thing that’s left to do is live.” – Frank Turner

Blog Post Number - 3131