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

CHAPTER 2 The Plan

Tenby, August 2002

I was born in Davos, Switzerland, where my mother was in a clinic suffering from tuberculosis, while my father was away serving in the British Army. When I was two days old the doctors put an advertisement in the local paper for a foster mother, as my mother couldn’t look after me. There were 45 applicants as I learned many years later. My mother chose the local postman’s wife, who was good to me. To strengthen my lungs, my foster mother took me for long walks, which ended up in the grounds of the TB clinic so my mother could look at me out of her window, because her infection made it impossible for her to have physical contact with me. I have shadowy memories of the faces of my mother and foster mother and the black squirrels eating nuts off my hands. My foster mother always dressed me beautifully and had photos of me taken for my poor mother to have around her bedside later.

I never knew my mother, but I shall always feel such huge love and gratitude to her for having the courage to give birth to me when she was so ill, and also for her greater courage in having to face giving me away. I feel I owe my life to many exceptional, caring and loving people.

When I was two my mother sadly died and my Anglo-Irish grandmother, who was called Carlie, came to collect me to live with her in Country Limerick, Ireland. She gave me a rabbit called Peter, and took me away. She broke the link. My last memory of my foster mother was of a lady with hair in a brown bun crying as she ran beside the train taking me away. From then on Carlie cared for me even though she became crippled with osteoarthritis.

In 1951 when I was five my father, a tall charismatic army officer with kind eyes, married a marvellous Swiss French lady—Marianne. Carlie was bedridden by this time, but my father felt that I was happy with her and it would be unsettling to move me, so we kind of looked after each other. In those long ago days in Ireland, life was simply worked out in the way that everybody thought best. I don’t regret it. In 1957 my father also died, leaving Marianne to raise their four children. He was only 47.

Although I never moved in with them, Marianne, whose riverside cottage was a few yards down the road from Grandmother Carlie, kept a loving eye on me. Marianne had a very tough struggle to bring up her four children alone. She was proud and very hardworking. She gave French lessons, sewing lessons, dancing lessons, anything to make ends meet. We became very close after I grew up.

The strange thing is that although Marianne is not really my mother and did not bring me up, we are very alike in character. Marianne is the head of the family today and is the foundation of the happiness of my own children and grandchildren. I love and admire Marianne and her children unconditionally—my half-sister Maude and half-brothers Gerald, Nicolas and Ronnie.

Carlie needed me and I was the only person to whom she really responded and was kind. Crippled and bedridden with osteoarthritis, she would thump the floor at night with her stick for me to come to her aid. I would feel so helpless, listening to her screaming for hours with the terrible pain that pills couldn’t ease. I loved her but remember my anger and sorrow as I tried to push her across the gap between her commode and the bed, praying she wouldn’t fall. Although just a child, I was already her carer. Her nurses seldom stayed as she was difficult with everybody except me.

Carlie guided me in many ways. She was very religious and for years tutored me herself. I didn’t go to school regularly until I was thirteen. But above all she taught me that freedom and responsibility go together, that life is the best university and that anyone can reach for anything.

‘Rosie,’ she would say, ‘it’s not good looks or natural gifts that count—luckily for you my girl!—it’s the wanting to do things that makes them happen.’

I was tall, thin and gangling with long pigtails.

To do my English essay, she’d send me off on my donkey Jeanette, and then I would have to write about my adventures to entertain her. It was Carlie’s influence that set me off on a lifetime of adventures.

Carlie had been a keen gardener in her youth and she still tried somehow to carry on gardening—through me, so to speak—from her bedroom. Slugs and snails brought in, along with all the greenery, would tumble onto her floor. Furiously, with knotted crippled fingers, she’d help me bunch flowers. It had to be done just so. The trumpets of the daffodils all had to point one way. Sometimes the room would be wall-to-wall with daffodils, forget-me-nots or even buttercups and dandelions. She sent me to Limerick with her long-suffering lowly paid gardener to sell them to eke out our funds. It was great for her—one of the few physical ways she could be a bit independent and earn money from bed. We were far from wealthy as there was no National Health Service in Ireland, and her medicines were very expensive.

When I used to go to Limerick market to sell the flowers for her, I would also take bunches of flowers from my own little flower bed to sell, as my dream was to save up to buy a pony. I secretly sold most of my clothes at a secondhand shop too, but I never really managed to save more than a pound or two for the horse. Animals were my life and love.

Nobody talked about the past. Maybe Marianne, so sweet-natured, could have done so, but I couldn’t stand the aura of pain, nor the sympathy. My grandmother would never talk about how she’d found me or about my past. It took me years to learn about it all. It caused her too much pain. She hated looking back, but even though her own prospects were so bleak she did look forward with all her might to the future, which she said was through me. Her strong ideas will always be what I most remember about her.

I had been brought up with animals because Carlie was certain that it is animals that give you respect for life. Mostly we collected orphans. I ended up with the elderly Jeanette and four little motherless donkey foals, bought for about five shillings from farmers who did not want to keep them; a little dog called Bobby; seven goats; a chicken with one leg; and a beautiful dairy cow called Cleopatra, who gave good milk even though she was elderly. As I did not have a horse I taught Cleopatra to wear a saddle and halter—and rode her on one occasion, to the Pony Club. Of course we came last because cows jump over the moon only in fairy stories—but we did have a rosette tied to her tail, after trying hard in the gymkhana, even though I fell off at the end as cows trot and gallop with their heads down. With Cleopatra as my steed, falling off was especially uncomfortable as she had a pair of very pretty but quite sharp horns! Anyway, animals were my education—and I could not have had a better one.

I did get a horse in the end, in a way I could never have dreamed. When I was aged about nine, all the local children were asked to the country estate of a rather grand lady called Mrs De Vere for a picnic and summer fete. We were given rides on an old black mare who was led up and down by the gardener. The mare was very unhappy about this, and kept trying to snap and bite everyone, even biting the gardener’s trousers as he gave a leg up, but I just fell in love with her. She was tall—about 16 hands high—and very fat, fierce and wild looking. I remember going to an old oak tree with all the other children and being told we could have a wish here as it was a lucky tree. I wished with all my heart that Columbine, as she was called, could be mine.

Amazingly, three months later, the old mare arrived right at my front door with her saddle and bridle, led by the gardener. He explained that Mrs de Vere wouldn’t let him ride her any more as he was too heavy and because the mare was very old—and that is why the lady had decided to give Columbine to me. She thought I had a special way with animals, as I was the only child Columbine had not tried to bite!

The mare was so big that she more or less took charge of me and brought me up—she was my friend for years. It was fun teaching my sister Maude, just four years younger than me, how to ride on her.

When I was young I dreamed of being a runner, but thought I was no good. I’d never believed I could run a marathon, still less run around the world. Then, when I was about 47, I picked up a copy of Runner’s World in a doctor’s surgery while awaiting an inoculation. Having read the torn copy of the magazine, I thought, I can do that, and that very evening set off to run around the block.

A year later in 1995 I decided to enter the London Marathon and started to train for it. One day I was struggling hard up a steep hill thinking I was crazy to attempt a marathon when two super-fit local runners caught up with me and said, ‘Hey, you’re doing pretty well.’ They slowed down to stay with me and we ran together the rest of the way. They taught me to believe in myself just as Carlie used to do, and that made all the difference.

After the London Marathon I became aware of the Swiss Alpine Marathon in Davos. I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to go back to my birthplace. When I mentioned to the race organisers that I’d spent my early childhood in Davos they ran an article looking for my foster mother. I had had never been in touch with her as my grandmother had not wished to talk about the past, and had never told me her full name. They found her—Frieda Fridli who now, at 98, was the oldest person in Davos. That didn’t prevent her from coming to the finish. She invited me to her home—and she had photos of me as a baby on her mantelpiece. It was as if she had waited specially to see me again. I was so proud to introduce her to Clive, who had come with me as photographer, and we stayed in touch with her until she died at the age of 100.

It made me realize that running is far more than a sport, it is a way of communication. Running had brought me back to my past all those years ago and suddenly I was sure it would help me move forward and honour Clive’s final battle too.

I spent hours looking at maps. I saw that I could run all the way round the world without having to cross any oceans. It would have to be through icy northern latitudes, the harshest latitudes on earth, but it took hold of my mind and spun it in circles of excitement. It also looked cheaper than other ways because…it was cheaper than other ways. It was the package tour alone on foot. No expensive long-haul airfares.

I threw myself into planning it. The preparations were to take more than a year. With hindsight, I should perhaps have spent longer, but it just seemed very important that I should go as soon as possible: I’d had Clive on my mind, and also all those faces in Ward 10; people who had dreams, people who had led careful lives and had made plans for the future, which they now could not achieve.

I thought I could run from my own front door to London and Harwich, take the ferry to the Hook of Holland, then across Europe to Moscow all the way through Siberia. The next sea after the English Channel on this route would be the short stretch across the Bering Sea. Then I’d reach the immense wilderness of the far north of Alaska, head across the North American continent to Nova Scotia then Greenland and across the north of Iceland, and finally down the length of Great Britain back to my front door. It was like a voyage on two feet. I had to go for it.

It broke my heart to think how for years fate had, without my knowing it, been training me up for this but hadn’t warned me in time about the cancer. Yet these earlier expeditions, like sailing the Atlantic single handed, had given me strength and knowledge. I feel blessed to have been alone on the ocean trying to look beyond the horizon and to navigate by the stars. The voyage had taken 70 days because the boat had been so small and old. During this time I had not seen a human face nor a tree nor any land; I hoped that had taught me to deal with loneliness I would feel on this journey too. Hard lessons from the past can be valuable. Also, between taking up running in 1995 and Clive’s death in 2002, I had run marathons but had often used running as a way of travelling and researching countries for my writing. The journeys were short—around six weeks each and about 1000 miles per journey—in countries that included Albania, Romania, Iceland and war-torn Kosovo.

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.