I've walked a thousand miles; it's taken me four months to do this. The time has come now, when I meet people on my journey and tell them these two facts, their eyes widen and they look at me with a slight, I don't know. Amazement, wonder. Basically the question on their faces is WHAT?
So it gets me thinking; why am I doing this thing that people find so strange? What is driving me to walk every day for a year, to sleep outside, to push myself physically beyond what people feel is normal.
I had an ovarian tumour removed two years ago; I'm not in the mood to tell my cancer story right now, let it merely be said that I had what the doctors have told me is a removable cancer but, understandably it was still a massively traumatic thing to happen.
Before cancer I was travelling, I'd just finished a kayak journey following the length of the Danube and was planning to live in Bulgaria for the winter and make my way back to Britain on foot. Cancer cut my life in half, or it forced a sudden and immediate change of direction. Whereas before my illness I was deliberately without timings, schedules and plans, living as far as possible a free and spontaneous life and completely secure in my abilities to do whatever I wanted; now I found myself constrained, constricted. My -physical body was hurt and couldn't function as it wanted and suddenly I had a timetable, appointments stretching out five years into the future. Five years! For me, accustomed to having a six month plan, at the end of which I could be living in any European country, doing any job I set my mind to, to be forced to a timetable like this was awful.
About six months after the worst period I looked at a map and realised the mountain behind my house, Plynlimon birthed two rivers which ran past Bristol, the river Severn and the river Wye. I could walk to my hospital appointment in Bristol down one of them and walk home up another. So I did. 380 miles. It was to test myself, to see if I could handle the outdoor life again, to see how much my illness had changed me.
Not as much as it seemed, was the answer. I was whole again, tender, newly healed but whole.
I looked ahead to the next few years and a plan formed. I would walk to hospital again and in the six months before the next appointment I wouldn't go home, I'd walk around Wales until I came back to Bristol again, hospital again and home. The first and final legs of the journey would be the two Plynlimon rivers.
Other things were still resonating from my ovarian cancer experience. My complete lack of knowledge of the symptoms, my inability to recognise what was happening in my body.
Then there was the shock of finding out how fatal ovarian cancer can be, just 35% of women are still alive five years after diagnosis.
There was also the shock of finding out that the survival rate in Wales is lower than in England, 3% lower after the first year. The ovarian cancer charity told me it was a sign of late diagnosis.
I felt that I could do something, to raise money for charity and to tell women in Wales about the symptoms, it fitted in perfectly with my self-centred need to travel. I could make a big journey, enjoy myself, raise money for charity and hopefully make women in Wales (and beyond) just a little more aware of the symptoms.
I had help from Target Ovarian Cancer during my illness, not much, just an information pack in the post and a poster in the hospital but I felt I had to choose them over the other ovarian cancer charity operating in the UK.
I visited the Penny Brohn Cancer Care centre twice during my illness; they were an incredible source of help, advice and support. It's where I learnt how to begin to cope with a cancer diagnosis and I received two residential courses from them for free. I had to support them in return.
All these things are true; I am walking to have fun, I am walking to raise money for charity and I am walking to tell women about the symptoms of ovarian cancer. But three, four, almost five months after I started, when I wake up aching, stinking, vaguely dehydrated and think what am I doing today there is a part of me that goes what? Walking again?
When, for the one hundredth day in a row I sit down for a rest at midday that can't last longer than 45 minutes before I must push myself up off the ground, shoulder my heavy, smelly rucksack and walk on I think - this is seriously huge, did I really think this through? Did I really realise what my plan entailed? When I thought, oh yes, I'll walk the length of nine rivers and five long distance trails in one continuous journey, I must be honest, I really didn't consider the amount of steps, the sheer time, effort and strain involved.
And finally, when someone is staring at me as if they have never seen a sweaty woman wearing a gigantic rucksack before, as if the idea of someone walking thousands of miles for charity is so alien to them they need to step backwards in case I'm dangerous it does make me think, why Am I doing this, if everyone thinks I'm so wierd.
All the reasons are there and they're good ones, I just forget them in the heat, exhaustion and map reading I have to do.
So it gets me thinking; why am I doing this thing that people find so strange? What is driving me to walk every day for a year, to sleep outside, to push myself physically beyond what people feel is normal.
I had an ovarian tumour removed two years ago; I'm not in the mood to tell my cancer story right now, let it merely be said that I had what the doctors have told me is a removable cancer but, understandably it was still a massively traumatic thing to happen.
Before cancer I was travelling, I'd just finished a kayak journey following the length of the Danube and was planning to live in Bulgaria for the winter and make my way back to Britain on foot. Cancer cut my life in half, or it forced a sudden and immediate change of direction. Whereas before my illness I was deliberately without timings, schedules and plans, living as far as possible a free and spontaneous life and completely secure in my abilities to do whatever I wanted; now I found myself constrained, constricted. My -physical body was hurt and couldn't function as it wanted and suddenly I had a timetable, appointments stretching out five years into the future. Five years! For me, accustomed to having a six month plan, at the end of which I could be living in any European country, doing any job I set my mind to, to be forced to a timetable like this was awful.
About six months after the worst period I looked at a map and realised the mountain behind my house, Plynlimon birthed two rivers which ran past Bristol, the river Severn and the river Wye. I could walk to my hospital appointment in Bristol down one of them and walk home up another. So I did. 380 miles. It was to test myself, to see if I could handle the outdoor life again, to see how much my illness had changed me.
Not as much as it seemed, was the answer. I was whole again, tender, newly healed but whole.
I looked ahead to the next few years and a plan formed. I would walk to hospital again and in the six months before the next appointment I wouldn't go home, I'd walk around Wales until I came back to Bristol again, hospital again and home. The first and final legs of the journey would be the two Plynlimon rivers.
Other things were still resonating from my ovarian cancer experience. My complete lack of knowledge of the symptoms, my inability to recognise what was happening in my body.
Then there was the shock of finding out how fatal ovarian cancer can be, just 35% of women are still alive five years after diagnosis.
There was also the shock of finding out that the survival rate in Wales is lower than in England, 3% lower after the first year. The ovarian cancer charity told me it was a sign of late diagnosis.
I felt that I could do something, to raise money for charity and to tell women in Wales about the symptoms, it fitted in perfectly with my self-centred need to travel. I could make a big journey, enjoy myself, raise money for charity and hopefully make women in Wales (and beyond) just a little more aware of the symptoms.
I had help from Target Ovarian Cancer during my illness, not much, just an information pack in the post and a poster in the hospital but I felt I had to choose them over the other ovarian cancer charity operating in the UK.
I visited the Penny Brohn Cancer Care centre twice during my illness; they were an incredible source of help, advice and support. It's where I learnt how to begin to cope with a cancer diagnosis and I received two residential courses from them for free. I had to support them in return.
All these things are true; I am walking to have fun, I am walking to raise money for charity and I am walking to tell women about the symptoms of ovarian cancer. But three, four, almost five months after I started, when I wake up aching, stinking, vaguely dehydrated and think what am I doing today there is a part of me that goes what? Walking again?
When, for the one hundredth day in a row I sit down for a rest at midday that can't last longer than 45 minutes before I must push myself up off the ground, shoulder my heavy, smelly rucksack and walk on I think - this is seriously huge, did I really think this through? Did I really realise what my plan entailed? When I thought, oh yes, I'll walk the length of nine rivers and five long distance trails in one continuous journey, I must be honest, I really didn't consider the amount of steps, the sheer time, effort and strain involved.
And finally, when someone is staring at me as if they have never seen a sweaty woman wearing a gigantic rucksack before, as if the idea of someone walking thousands of miles for charity is so alien to them they need to step backwards in case I'm dangerous it does make me think, why Am I doing this, if everyone thinks I'm so wierd.
All the reasons are there and they're good ones, I just forget them in the heat, exhaustion and map reading I have to do.
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