For a long time, RELAY 116 123 was basically two places on a map and a slightly ridiculous idea between them.
Tótkomlós in Hungary, where Stephen grew up. Leeds in England, where Terri grew up. And somewhere in between, around 1,500 miles that we somehow intend to cover as a husband-and-wife relay.
Over the last few weeks that line between the two places has started to become something much more real.
We have been working through the route section by section, using Google route data as the backbone and then joining everything together into one master route. The result currently contains 43,805 GPS points from Hungary through Europe and into the UK.
That route is now on the website as an interactive map. You can zoom in, move along it and actually start to see the roads, towns and places that will eventually make up this journey.
Seeing it like that feels very different from saying, “We’re going to run from Hungary to Leeds.”
It also makes it very obvious how much work there still is to do.
The route is not final. We already know the opening section needs changing so that we leave Tótkomlós through Orosháza, which is the way the journey should begin. We also still need to adjust the Budapest section so that the route actually reaches the Hungarian Parliament rather than passing nearby.
And there will be plenty more changes as we check roads, paths, crossings, places to stop and the practical reality of moving ourselves and Peanut across Europe while one of us runs and the other supports.
But this is probably the first time we have looked at the whole thing and thought: this is becoming real.
There is now a line all the way from home to home.
It will change. It will probably cause us a few headaches. And there are still a lot of questions to answer between now and April.
But the route exists.
And somehow that makes 1,500 miles feel both slightly more possible and considerably more terrifying.
You can explore the current route on our RELAY Route page.
S&T
