After spending some time travelling from Denmark to Great Britain, we are now happy to be in good old England. Everything is different from continental Europe - landscape, people, houses and of course, electric plugs!

We started our journey today in Newcastle, at St Alban’s School. The students had prepared a song for us, to wish us well on our journey; this was a nice way to start our UK tour.

The school places great importance on sports, with most students participating in running, football or swimming (or all of them). At the end of our presentation, they took us for a quick run around their grounds before sending us on our way to St Teresa’s school about 3.5 kilometres away.

As we arrived at St Teresa’s, we were cheered down the driveway by the students.

We were all very impressed at how quickly they were able to guess the countries we are from. And loved all the questions!

From St Teresa’s, we started to make our way out of the city. As we passed through the city, we were greeted with warm wishes with every step we took. Even the patrons at the local pub emerged to cheer us on! We took the back roads today and were greeted by quaint country towns, old English houses and rolling hills.

We were stopped along the way by the Vicar of Mitford. He welcomed us warmly to the area, and answered some of our many questions. His church has one of the oldest bells in England and is steeped in history. It survived King John's emissaries who set fire to it, and has a unique grill through which lepers could hear the sermons without coming into physical contact with the other parishioners.

Now I would like to let you in on a little secret, as long as you promise not to tell a soul…Promise! OK:

We found Hogwarts!!! It is true. Unfortunately, Harry and the other students were away on holidays when we arrived, but one of the teachers kindly took us onto the grounds. Because of the flaming torch, they wouldn't let us ride on the broom sticks. Flying burning broomsticks, we were told, is against their school rules. But we did get to see the Quidditch field. And next time, when we are not on such a tight time schedule, we are going to give it a go!

I know there are many of you green with envy right now, but all I can say is, start training and we will pick you up next year for the World Harmony Run and show you the school.

OK, OK I give up, here is a website I found, giving information about it: Alnwick Castle (just don’t tell the teachers I told you!)

You should visit this place. It is a very beautiful castle called Alnwick Castle, where some parts of the Harry Potter movie were filmed. We would like to thank the castle "gate-keepers" for giving us an opportunity to run inside the castle walls.

As the day drew to a close, we crossed the border into Scotland with Devashishu and Balavan breaking into a Scottish song to welcome the team into this new land.

We passed through another scenic town called Berwick upon Tweed.

Climbing the last hill of the evening, we arrived at Coldingham Sands Youth Hostel, right on the shore of the North sea.

We would like to thank Britannia Hotel in Newcastle for hosting us last night. And for the lovely big breakfast to keep us going throughout the day.

Our thanks also to Rumana Restaurant, which offered us discounted meals that night. With such delicious food, it is no wonder most of us clocked up to 20 kilometres each today.

Finally, we would like to offer our gratitude to Sanjaya, who hosted us in Ipswich for the night, cooking us a feast for dinner and giving us a taste of England with a breakfast in his English garden - before fulfilling Ondrej’s childhood dream, by teaching us all archery.

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Distance: 96km

Team Members:
Ondrej Vesely and Mila Pisanova (Czech Republic), Mathias Eckerle (Germany), Maria Horvath and Erika Pongracz (Hungary) Ieva Kurzemniece (Latvia), Stacey Marsh (New Zealand), Balavan Thomas and Devashishu Torpy(England) Sandro Zincarini (Italy).

Harmonemail:
You can send a message to the runners or read the messages.

Gallery: See more images!

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