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