CHAPTER 8 Touching the Stars

       Poland, December 2003

      It’s −20°C but a fine morning on 9 December. I am too ambitious doing my washing in the cold of the woods. My socks feel like they’re beginning to run around the world by themselves so I take the chance of washing them in water I’ve melted from snow. Not to waste water, and feeling proud of my frugality, I try washing my hair which is dank, half-frozen and sticky with frozen sweat. The ends sticking out under my muddy balaclava have become ingrained with dirt from passing lorries flinging up grubby snow over me along slushy, icy roads. What a mistake. My hair is frozen before I’m able to get the soap out and stands on end so I look like a punk rocker with icicles for earrings. When I get back to my socks they have frozen solid. I left them tied onto the outside of my pack, forgetting I can never dry things this way when it’s icy. They are so hard, I have to break them apart.

      Undeterred I run into Slupsk and become lured by the lights of Restaurcja McDonald’s gleaming through the blowing snow. Eating spaghetti, cooked in snow-water with bits of grit in it, makes you a fan of McDonald’s. Especially as I’ve learned they started the Ronald McDonald Houses, enabling parents of seriously sick children to stay near them when they’re in hospital. The restaurants serve budget salads and yogurts with fruit. You don’t have to eat burgers and chips unless you want to.

      The Slupsk McDonald’s manager and staff, cheery-looking in their red shirts, seem to be students working their way through college. Instead of being disapproving at the spectacle of a muddy, snowy, dripping person large with giant backpack, they enthusiastically give permission for me to use their washroom. It all brings back memories of McDonald’s in Lancashire, and my training in the art of making do before setting off. At least I don’t get my head stuck between the basin and the taps this time—and the hot water is bliss.

      Yet treats like this aren’t going to save me. Security can only come from being vulnerable out there in the forests, and learning how to deal with it. I have to sleep out most nights because of budget and distances between places, training myself to think of my bivvi not as McDonald’s but a tiny Hotel Sheraton. It has to have everything I need because cafes and other safety nets will get scarce from now on. As days shorten and conditions harden, the only way to do the miles is on a sort of 24-hour clock. Running a few hours, then stopping and resting and getting going again, like being on- and off-watch at sea or shiftwork. So the bivvi is very convenient. Curl up, sleep and go. The ability to be able to rest along the road makes the hitches in doing this well worth overcoming.

      Simple things and high-tech items work together. A pencil is essential for notes because it writes long after the ink in pens and biros has frozen. Vaseline is good for protecting skin, especially on my feet. I have a tiny purple spot of mild frostbite on one toe. This happened the one morning I forgot the Vaseline. My feet also got really cold when I tried running in boots and couldn’t dry the frozen sweat out of them. I’m much more comfortable in my Saucony running shoes especially when I adapt them for the freezing conditions. I line them with rabbit fur and weatherproof them with a spray. They’re light enough to run in, don’t give me blisters and can be dried in the sleeping bag at night.

      I get into the habit of heating water and putting it in a drinking bottle and at night wrapping socks around the hot-water bottle or pulling them over it. Unlike rubber hot-water bottles, it’s exactly the right shape for socks, and can also be put inside my shoes to warm them before I put them on, which is a delicious feeling.

      The finest help of all is the state-of-the-art quality of the bivouac itself, and the brilliant feather-down and Gortex clothing and sleeping-bag system. Sir Ranulph Fiennes and other great explorers always depend on Peter Hutchinson’s PHD and Terra Nova, and I’m so lucky to have them. Because I can only carry the bivvi and not a mountain tent, due to the weight factor, Peter has designed the clothing and bags especially, knowing that snow and ice will be part of my life, and that the ice will often melt and refreeze. The scene in my bivvi often looks so terrible that it’s unimaginable a human could live in there, but it’s fine. It just requires another way of thinking and it works because of the kit. I have more feathers than a falcon. The outer layers are cold and icy or damp, but the inner layers of down feathers, like those of birds, are always dry, and my skin is warm. My core body heat is stable and good.

      My training descends into pure decadence when I reach Gdansk on 13 December 2003. A Rosie Parcel has been sent to Allianz Polsa. The staff even open on a stormy Sunday to welcome me and give me my box. Although for years Chief Investment Officer with Allianz Cornhill, Geoff’s frame of mind is just like when he was a student and needed to learn to drive six different types of bus to qualify for a job with public transport in Australia. When Geoff says he’ll help he means it: he’s a runner and cares that I succeed.

      Somehow, the vital new equipment is crammed into the backpack, including the big extra sleeping bag for the next harsh stage: shoes; some stores; and weatherproof leggings. The backpack is nearly bursting with its contents, now weighing 23kg.

      That evening the director’s assistant Isabella and her boyfriend Darek take me off to a fabulous Russian restaurant in town to be plied with caviar and fresh fish from the bay, washed down with Polish vodka and blackcurrant juice. Darek says it’s only ‘vodka sparring’ as Polish vodka is not as strong as Russian. ‘Just training,’ he adds. It’s very energising, but I’ve never slept so soundly. I curl up on the sofa of their comfy flat, cuddled up to and watched over by their beautiful black dog Myrto. You can tell what people are like by the happiness of their animals.

      I’m in the wilds for most of the two weeks up to Christmas on my way to the Lithuanian border. This section of the journey becomes strange and metaphysical. I feel my family walking with me, so strongly that I believe if I turn around in dark forests I’ll see them. And I do, more clearly than when we’d been together. It will be my grandson Michael’s second birthday on 19 December. I’m excited for Michael, yet sad at the time I have lost with him. He is so wonderful and all I want to do is hug him. I charge the satphone specially so I can sing him Happy Birthday.

      Two days before Christmas, near the Lithuanian border, I lie with my head out of the bivvi, wrapped in my thickest coat and with the hood drawn tightly. It’s such a beautiful clear moonlit night. I can see thousands of Christmas trees.

      Starlight tumbles like shiny crystals over the dark majestic firs and silver birch trees. I gaze at the sky above the forest clearing. Sirius is bright and I can see Orion’s Belt and a million others. I name the stars after my family—Eve, Peter, James, Michael, Marianne and all the people I love. I think about all the worlds out there, shining down to earth with all their strength. They are all so far away that time hardly seems to matter any more. All that ever happened is here, part of now, giving me strength. Soon I’ll be home, I say to myself. Time is a friend after all. I’m touching the stars, yet I’m closer to home than those stars are to me.