Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes

Because these were self-financed or with just a small commission from Runner’s World, I had to be self-sufficient, carry a backpack and live in a tent—and do all this on a small budget. I had learnt to curl up and sleep like an animal by the side of the road—and hoped to do the same on this expedition. The world run was just going to be a longer version of my earlier ones.

My local running club, TROT St Clears (TROT stands for Taf Running and Orienteering Team), encouraged and helped me so much. I began training by running in races in the Welsh hills. I’d bring the bivvi and camp the night before. I found comfort in sleeping under the stars and began to understand: I didn’t need to fight my grief, and I didn’t have to be ashamed of sorrow—it isn’t a weakness. All these things became clearer when I was outside in the wide open spaces, amid the beauty of stars and moon and dawn, and even in the rain. The tall grass seemed to touch the moon. Once I had stopped in the dark, after arriving late by bus, and was a bit too near a footpath, and someone walking his dog in the early morning nearly trod on me. It gave us both a fright.

Next I ran the Cardiff Marathon in August 2002. About halfway through the marathon I tripped into a pothole and fell bang wallop on the tarmac—definitely not much of a prospect for running in the wilds at this time! Yet although blood began dripping down onto the road as I had cut my face, I was suddenly aware that my legs felt fine. I could run faster and it didn’t hurt.

I think I may have helped some of the other competitors to keep going when they were exhausted. Maybe they thought, She’s going on even though she’s bleeding! I hope I didn’t kill someone that way, but I made it to the finish. It was amazing. My name was called and I got first prize in the over-50 category. I had a black eye and swollen cheek and when the local newspaper photographer came to take a picture, I asked him, ‘Do you want my best profile?’ as I held ice to my face and tried to eat a banana at the same time.

We looked at each other and started laughing. That was when I realised that I hadn’t laughed properly for months. I knew Clive would have wanted it. He spent his last year putting things in place so that I could move forward. He was a private person and he wanted me to raise cancer awareness, but it was as important to him as my doing the run that it should not be a morbid journey; he would be proud to have inspired my run as he did, but he would hate it to be all about him or sentimental. Our feelings were and are very personal. So my run would be looking forward—running not from but towards life, as he would have wished.

Even though we did not discuss my run, he knew I would do something. He had repeatedly told me he wanted me to live with courage. I would not die inside and I would not dishonour Clive by treating my journey as a 20,000 mile round-the-world funeral procession. I would grab life double for him, feel love more, be more. If someone you love grabs life for you and flies the banner for you, death can be defeated.

All this gave me strength through that first summer. I knew that what I wanted to do was going to happen.

‘You’ll succeed, Mum,’ said my daughter Eve, ‘because you have people who care deeply about you.’

My revered stepmother Marianne was on the phone the moment she heard I was going to do the world run. ‘I’ll be waiting for you in Tenby at the finish,’ she said. Marianne is now in her early eighties. She still lives in Ireland, drives a car like a racing driver and teaches French in County Limerick to university level.

My son James had already started thinking about the rosiearoundtheworld website. The plan was that charities would be linked to the website and people could send money in; also if I was given money I would pass it on, but I would not ask for it, as I would have my work cut out just surviving, and also I would be in the wilderness and in some of the poorest countries in the world. Even so, I hoped I would be in a unique position to help with cancer awareness by doing my run around the world.

I didn’t have much money but I did have fabulous sponsors of equipment that I had used for years and the backing and friendship of Runner’s World. I didn’t attempt to try and secure large financial sponsorship, as I felt I would not succeed and that I might spend all my savings just trying to get it. Above all, I was still much too sad to ask anyone I did not already know. The thought of discussing Clive’s death and details for sponsorship with strangers was something that appalled me, and I would not do it.

But I did have a fabulous ‘A-Team’. Eve, James and my great friend Catherine in London got going with the research. Catherine also got her beloved cat Nedd to cross his lucky black paws for me.

Steven Seaton, publisher of Runner’s World UK, had always encouraged me to write by commissioning pieces about my running adventures in the past, such as my run across Romania when I’d met all the vampires. I didn’t even have to ask before he said that Runner’s World would sponsor me.

Ann Rowell, one of my best running friends, offered to do my accounts and keep an eye on things while I was gone as my family lived far away. She would also fend off the bailiffs by paying bills from my account. She and another great friend with whom I used to go running, Kath Garner, had joint Power of Attorney, drawn up by my solicitor. Ann optimistically said this was useful because they could go and rescue me if ‘I became unconscious and senseless in Siberia’.

Ann also suggested that Matt Evans, an amazing runner who ran ten marathons in ten days, manage the rental of my house through his company, the Pembrokeshire Coastal Cottages Holiday Letting Business. It was sound advice. I would need all the income I could get.

As for equipment, I asked those whose kit I had used and trusted for years for their advice, and they helped me without question. Saucony UK sponsored my shoes; Peter Hutchinson and his team at PHD Designs in Staybridge designed the sleeping-bag system that allowed a temperature-range of 100° on the run, from the little down Minimus bag for the summer weighing only 450gm to the extreme cold-weather sleeping bags that would save my life at temperatures colder than −60°C.

Terra Nova, whose products I’ve also used for years, sponsored the tents for the journey, including their invaluable Saturn bivvi, my home for the whole of the first winter, weighing only 2lb 2oz. I had a thirst-point filter bottle so I could drink any water; and so on. Such simple things would make a huge difference.

I had to really plan what I was going to take. Even small, down-to-earth items were important, such as face care. All I took was sun block and Vaseline—later to be replaced by whatever its local equivalent was in any country I happened to be in—and my wonderful friend Eva Fraser, who runs the Facial Fitness Clinic in London, taught me facial exercises to help circulation, looks, mental attitude and how to care for my face without carrying jars and potions. Every part of the body is important.

Getting my Russian visa was a problem. Because of the length of my run the only type of visa that would work was a one-year Russian ‘business’ visa, but as the manager of one of the agencies pointed out, there aren’t many business meetings in the depths of the Siberian forests and the people who arranged things for him in Russia would get into trouble. The police would have them and me up without question. I’d be put in jail. The letters of commission and good character, provided by Runner’s World, my book agents Watson, Little Ltd and the organisers of the Daily Telegraph Adventure Show I’d proudly presented, seemed to frighten the agencies even more because they made it clear that I was serious about the run. Someone suggested I just say I was ‘going to Russia to do research’ on running, but I decided I had to be straightforward as to why I wanted the visa: it was the only way to manage anything regarding visas and papers, and it was vitally important that it was all properly arranged.

As part of my training, I ran another marathon—the Loch Ness Marathon—in September 2002. I was getting fitter and used to being outdoors all the time. I could feel at home anywhere. The night before the race I camped the night beside Loch Ness. The water sparkled as the stars came out, looking mysterious enough for one to believe anything. I thought of putting biscuits out for Nessie but fell asleep instead so she never came to visit after all.

I was lucky enough to get booked to give a few talks to help with funds and to begin promoting cancer awareness.

An especially memorable occasion was a lunch function at the Bolton and Bury Chamber of Commerce. I was training hard now, and had gone running and camping in the hills the night before, getting my one good blouse all crumpled as I had lain on it by mistake. No problem. I ran down into Bury town early and popped into McDonald’s because they have nice hard seats in the cafe where I could sit on the blouse to iron it. I was very pleased with the ‘ironing’ and got a bit carried away and decided to wash my hair in the ‘Ladies’ while I was at it. Unfortunately I got my head stuck in the machine on the wall on which there were signs saying ‘soap…hot air…water’. To my relief, two girls came in and rescued me, so that was fine. The hazards of modern life! But it taught me a valuable lesson in the gentle ‘art of making do’ or improvisation that was going to be very useful during my run.

The talks helped boost my courage. The Chairman of the Chamber even posed with the Saucony shoes around his neck along with his golden chain to show solidarity with my goals, and then they put them around my neck for a photo for their journal and stood there cheering me—while a bishop who was there blessed the shoes, wishing for God to go with me—as indeed he did.

By now I was beyond feeling excited or apprehensive; I had no time to be introspective. Every single second was taken up getting ready to go, thinking about it, trying to get everything right.

At Christmas I stayed at home, spending hours calling my family, then set off on my fine new bicycle, bought for me by my friends Chester and Jean in Pembroke Dock. I passed much of the day cycling, visiting friends, only spending a little time with them, and then on to the next—being careful not to drink too much wine! I couldn’t quite yet bear sharing a whole family Christmas—it hurt somehow—but then suddenly in the New Year I knew that Clive was happy, having a riot of fun up in heaven, and that I didn’t have to worry. He was with his friends.

I decided to set off in October 2003. I’d have to run through the European winter to Moscow but that would give me the whole of the first summer to get through as much of treacherous Siberia as I could before winter came again.

Siberia derives its name from ‘Siber’—land without end—and that is what it’s like. I could not escape the Siberian winter since it is so vast and the distances too great, but I wanted to run across as much of it as possible before the extreme cold set in. It was likely to be −40 or −50°C but the temperatures could plummet as low as −70°C in Eastern Siberia.

I planned my route, through Holland, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia to Riga, and then from Riga to Moscow and on from there to Siberia—and beyond. I did not have the big Russian visa yet, but was working on it. For Lithuania and Latvia, British subjects do not require visas. If the Russian visa problem got solved, there was just a slight possibility that I might run from Poland through Russian Kallingrad to get to Riga, as it was shorter than going through Lithuania and Latvia, but time would tell.

My house-plants grew to the ceiling, thriving on neglect. The house dusted itself. I made a pot of stew once a week, eating it all the time, and got out so many maps and plans the living-room floor was always covered with them so you couldn’t see any carpet to Hoover anyway.

The planning and preparation for my world run were all-consuming and there were promises to keep before I even set off. Clive and I had planned to trek in Nepal in aid of the Nepal Trust and the Rotary’s Club’s work in the isolated Himalayas. When he had been very sick, he had asked me to go up to the big Rotary Conference in Glasgow—and I promised the audience of 2000 that we would go to Nepal when he was better. As he had not been able to do so—I had to do this myself.

So in April just for six weeks, I left on this strange tangent. It was high-altitude training that was valuable, but it was much more than that. Liz and Jim Donovan, who run the Nepal Trust, invited me to run and trek to fulfil Clive’s dearest wish. Maybe Clive’s persistent desire that he might make it, even when very ill, was a kind of foreknowledge that it would help me, as well as helping the extraordinary work of the Nepal Trust. The small charity, together with huge input by Rotary International, have brought health, literacy and income to people in the forgotten high Himalayas at Humla and other especially remote places, targeting areas where need is greatest. They had steadfastly continued this even during the civil war in Nepal that killed 10,000 people in the previous eight years.

Accompanied by 20 young Nepalese men and women, tough and fast as Gurkhas, I ‘speed-trekked’ over 32 mountain passes to Everest Base Camp. Even though we kept getting held up by Maoists, we did 1750km in 68 days, raising the money for the hospital and clinics.

Through the Nepal Trust I met Liza Hollinghead, who runs the Ecologia Travel Company, founded to help fund the Kitezh Community for Children in Russia, which looks after orphans rescued from heartbreaking situations. I was so inspired to be helping both these charities that I added them to the causes, along with cancer awareness, that I was going to support on my run. Dedicated and determined, Liza managed to get me the long-term Russian visa where everybody else had failed.

My worries about having no contacts in Siberia were also sorted when I spotted an ad in a running magazine for the Siberian Marathon taking place on 3 August. Woman’s Weekly commissioned me to write an article, so I’d have enough money to go for the marathon. In Omsk I stayed with Elena in her neat home in a crumbling apartment, learning quite a lot about life in Western Siberia during my few days there.

Omsk is a beautiful city, but life is hard here. People clean their water by filtering and repeatedly straining and boiling it for three days before it’s safe to drink or make a cup of tea.

They are too poor to replace the old Soviet factories upriver which empty dangerous chemicals into the water. It looks clean to the eye but is often toxic and there’s a high incidence of cancer here, I was told. Doctors fight this battle even though the wages of a doctor are so low that a doctor has to have several jobs to survive—and the hospital has few facilities. I was so glad to be running the Siberian Marathon in aid of the Siberian Railway Hospital after I visited it. The head doctor blithely described how he’d cut a patient open, put his guts onto a sterilised plate, removed the rotten bits and popped them back before sewing him up. The patient recovered fine.

People really put everything out for the Siberian Marathon. Bright stalls selling all kinds of things were set up and flags flown. Everyone lined the streets, cheering so loudly from the first mile, just as in the London Marathon.

I’d have to run 6000 miles before I next saw Omsk, but I had a home and good friends there already. I was also very lucky to meet Geoff Hall, the only other British runner, who even allowed me to take his photo for Woman’s Weekly. Geoff became an exceptional supporter of my run, coordinating my equipment from the UK, sending me shoes and other kit to isolated parts of the world, and making all the difference. It was amazing that I went all the way to Siberia to meet one of the British lynchpins of my whole run.

After the race, as the plane took off, with the crimson of an exquisite Siberian sunrise bathing the circle of the horizon, my heart was full and I had so much to think about. I knew I had to find out more; and that between Nepal and Kitezh and the Siberian Railway Hospital, the world is vast—so very, very vast.

Finally, on 2 October 2003 after all the dreaming and scheming and planning and preparation, the day arrived. I stood in front of my house in Tenby, among friends, ready to set off. I had decided to leave on that date because it was my birthday, my 57th to be precise.

There wasn’t much fuss—round-the-world sailor Sir Francis Chichester used to say: ‘The celebrations come after the voyage’—but my son James was there, my brother Nicolas who had come over specially from Ireland, some close local friends, running pals and a few others, such as Chas and Carol, the owners of Tenby Autoparts. Chas had shared many a joke and tall story with Clive while he’d been getting bits and pieces for Cassidy, our elderly campervan.

My brother Nicolas drew the outline of my foot on the flagstone in the gateway to my house—the first step. The plan was that the last step of my run would be in Tenby on the same flagstone after I circled the world.

Everything happened so fast. The local telly filmed me, everyone kissed me and off I set. I ran down the street, around the next corner and then I was gone.

CHAPTER 3 The Tenby Bear

Wales, 2 October 2003

It’s only after I’ve run two miles that I remember it’s my birthday. I never ate the cake I found hidden at the back of the fridge last night, or waited for the champagne.

It’s so strange to be running up the hill to New Hedges and Pentlepoir, seeing the sublime and beautiful sea, and cliffs and coastal path my friends and I have run along so many times in stormy weather, on rainy days and in magical days of sunshine like this morning. Surely I’m running just a short run along these familiar ways and will be back home in time for breakfast. I’m looking at everything around me with passion and intensity, knowing it’s for the last time for maybe years. Everything seems different looking at it for the last time: the colours brighter in the beautiful gardens of the cottages and in the green, green fields: the scurries of the first golden leaves on the roadside being chased by the breeze; the smell of sun on grass.

I think back to my house, where my son James and brother Nicolas are getting ready to go as they have to leave soon to return to their homes. The momentum has swept us on. I want to say goodbye again. Yet this is partly the purpose of this run; to go forwards and not back on an easy track when you feel lonely; just as it’s always been for people on slow journeys and voyages long ago.

A shy little girl rushes out from her home with her mother to give me a painting she’s done for me and some sweets. A bouncy lady with twinkling eyes and Indian summer sunburn on her cheeks makes fresh sandwiches for me.

‘Oh I’m so proud of you,’ she says. ‘Keep going. You’re insane, you need to see the doctor, but don’t go before you’ve done the run, you don’t want to see the light too soon.’

The feelings of day one are encapsulated by the enormity of what lies ahead. Captured in the essence of burning feet, pain and flashes of joy and happiness, and lovely people. As Darwin wrote in one of his journals, ‘To be a traveller is to see the goodness everywhere.’

I manage 25 miles to just beyond Carmarthen the first day, but often have to sit down by the side of the road to rub my feet, burning from the pressure of running on tarmac with the very heavy pack. I need a fire extinguisher.

My head is swimming with emotion at what I’ve left behind, and excitement at what lies ahead. It sets a precedent that I am too exhausted to go into the town and look up people who have kindly asked me to stay. So I put up the bivvi among tall grass and bushes in the centre of a piece of wasteland and I go to sleep at once. I wake up in the middle of the night with my head sticking out of the bivvi, looking up at the stars and wondering where on earth I am. Then I realise—I am on my way. I feel overwhelmed with both joy and sadness…

I pray that I can achieve what I need to do. I don’t feel strong, but very determined, with a mixture of physical and mental determination, like at the start of my transatlantic voyage that has now become my ‘Voyage on Two Feet’. The tide is running with me and there’s no going back. The first step, I’ve done the first step, and that’s the longest step of all.

I can’t go back; I must avoid injury. All this makes the first few miles feel nerve-racking, heart-stopping. I think about the vastness of what lies ahead and tell myself, You only have to run for an hour…and then another hour after that…Do not think of it as a great big deal all at once… I think of it in steps…I can do one step…And then the next one…And the next one…

As always on adventures—at sea or on land on two feet—this journey is a mixture of dreams: something that sends a shiver down my spine, that I have to do and, practical realities. It’s nothing airy-fairy, but facts that make dreams come true. I’ve already become trained at staying out at night over the past months; the difference now is that I am really on my way. I have to look after myself, and will have to do so for a long, long time.

Big chunks of lead seem to have got into my backpack. Forget all the training runs I’ve been on with 5kg or 10kg packs of potatoes to teach me to run with weight. Forget sessions laden with my kit; you never quite take all the kit when you know you’re going home to a nice warm bed. I’m carrying stuff for the winter that I’ve been afraid to send ahead of me in case I lose it—and on top of this, I have a bear.

He’s the Tenby Bear, come along to protect me. He even wears a little green knitted jacket with ‘Tenby’s Bear’ written on it. The children at one of our local schools want him to look after me and he’s my talisman. Next day, as I run to Cross Hands, I feel better, having managed to post back a little of my kit that I don’t need so much. But Tenby Bear stays. He’s not heavy, he’s my brother.

There are seven days in Wales: exquisite hills, wild sea in Carmarthen Bay, glorious autumn colours in the woodlands of Wentworth. I run through Cross Hands and am invited by some pleasant-looking ladies to attend a murder. I wonder what dastardly skulduggery is being planned but it’s just a village-hall play called The Murder.

Running with a heavy pack is better than a lullaby. I have a lovely day with friends in Newport, meeting up with Mike Rowland, a marathon coach and one of the best artists in Wales. I’m so tired I go to sleep in another classroom while he’s teaching. I don’t even wake up when they test the fire-alarm. He finds me curled up fast asleep, about to get locked in for the night by mistake.

On 8 October, I run across the Severn Bridge after picking up some Welsh Oak leaves to keep forever with me.

That’s it. I’ve done Wales. Now for the rest of the world.