Last September my wife, Karen, and I were visiting Budapest for a few days, and we happened to be in the city at the same time as many hundreds of refugees from Syria and Iraq. They were all camped out at Kaleti railway station, hoping for trains to take them further west to Austria and beyond. What started out as a short metro ride to the station from our apartment to 'see what was going on' has led me to this point, where I am soon to embark on a journey from Budapest to Vienna on foot.

Two things happened while we were there in Budapest that left a deep impression on me. The first thing was visiting the station and then walking among and talking to some of the refugees stranded there. Many of them had already purchased rail tickets for the journey west, but the government in Hungary had decided almost without warning to cancel all trains travelling over the Hungarian border into Austria. Karen and I bought bottled water for one particular family and a lollipop for their tiny daughter, but the biggest impression left with me was simply the sights and smells of hundreds and hundreds and people just sitting and waiting in the heat. These were people who were escaping war - people who had risked everything and already travelled so far, just waiting for someone to tell them it was ok to travel further.

The second happened the following day, when the majority of the refugees left the station to make the next stage of their journey on foot to Austria. This time, my wife and I just happened to be outside a church around lunchtime that day when many hundreds of people snaked passed us on the way out of Budapest. They seemed in good spirits and one man travelling alone stopped and invited me to take his photograph. He was carrying a hand written sign - 'Walking on foot to Austria'. I wished him luck and later wondered just how it would feel to walk all that way in the September heat.  And so that is what I'm doing - simply walking from Budapest to Vienna. In a small way I'm following in the footsteps of those many hundreds of people that day - of the man with the sign and the family with the little girl with the lollipop. But I'm not pretending that my experience will be in any way like that of a refugee, who have been forced to leave their homes and bring with them only what they could literally carry. But, I will be able to feel something of what it is like to walk that kind of distance. I have an profoundly autistic child who is now fourteen, plus two younger children, (12 and 7) and I can only imagine how immensely difficult it would be to make such a journey with them.  At 53 years old I will find it hard enough alone.

It will be exactly one year on from my chance encounter in Budapest with those refugees that I'll make this journey, and it seems fitting that I start from the same spot that I met the man with the sign. This is my tiny show of solidarity for those fleeing war, and perhaps a way of raising awareness in some small way for such a immense, huge problem.

Over a period of eighteen days I will be walking the 274 kilometers from the centre of Budapest in Hungary to Vienna in Austria. I am doing this to raise money for a local charity - Kent refugee action network (KRAN) - who work alongside children who have arrived as refugees without their parents.

You can find out more about their work here: KRAN Website