Chicken comes home to roost

He set off on the first leg of his epic journey with a fanfare of publicity, not to mention an appropriately alternative farewell pre-dawn party on Bristol docks featuring drummers and someone playing a conch shell.

Mark Boyle's idea was to walk to Mahatma Gandhi's birthplace without a penny in his pocket, relying on the kindness of strangers for food and shelter to prove that a better world without money really was possible.

Boyle got as far as Calais before he realised that, unable to speak French to explain his mission and unable, frankly, to get much vegan food in this part of northern Europe, he faced starvation.

He was forced to turn round, recross the Channel and yesterday was to be found in genteel Eastbourne, East Sussex, explaining why a two-and-half-year pilgrimage had turned into a month-long jaunt to France and back.

The Guardian