Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes. Rosie Pope Swale
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eating Lena’s pasties that she’s packed in profusion to keep me going.
I sink up to the waist in snow. It doesn’t get ploughed here. The wind’s howling and by evening the bivvi is frozen so hard rolled up in the pack that it’s all stuck together. I’m frightened that I can’t prise the opening apart enough to climb in it to get shelter. It’s painful and slow to break it open but I manage to get inside. It becomes an oddly shaped frozen igloo, smaller than ever as it has contracted and iced together. I have to take everything to bed with me, especially the shoes. It’s not enough to bring them inside the bivvi. They freeze so hard I can’t undo the laces and get my feet in.
I try bypassing Kaunas, as the main road through is full of lorries flinging snow and slush over me, but I get lost, eventually finding myself in the centre of the city after midnight, and carry on into the side-streets. Everything is dark and seems asleep. A hotel I pass looks expensive, its door locked for the night. I’m walking, not running—actually I’m creeping along very tired with head bowed, when I almost collide with a wheelchair that has fallen over.
A man is still in it. He’s crying but nobody has heard. He seems scared when he sees me. He can’t right the wheelchair as he has no legs. He just lies wrapped in rags, clutching the chair and trying to stay in it as he lies sideways on the snow. He’s trying to gather some coins that have spilt from a small cardboard collecting box. I’m not frightened of him; he’s the frightened one. He shrinks from me. He takes hold of my bright torch and shines it at me. I can only see his eyes, a small part of his face, as he has a large scarf, but his eyes are gentle. I definitely know that he’s not intending me harm; indeed he’s frightened I might attack or rob him. Then he suddenly smiles, even though his thin face and scraggy beard are still trembling with cold, or fear or emotion. He keeps looking at me as if I’m not real. It’s a massive struggle to push the wheelchair upright while he’s still in it. If he came out of it, neither of us would manage. He starts talking and I get out my dictionary. Certainly he doesn’t wish to go hospital, he tries to tell me, but he does have a place to go, or so it seems with the help of the phrasebook and signs he makes.
Down those awful empty dark streets I push him, as through the labyrinths of hell. It’s very hard to push small rusty wheels through the snow. I don’t know how he usually does it. Eventually, he points this way and that, and we come to a part of town where people are still out drinking and eating at a small cafe.
The café manageress, like someone from the movies, broad and glamorous in big shawls and necklaces, clasps my hands and thanks me for bringing him as he’s been lost. I soon understand that the man I’ve brought in is a war hero known as Vladimir who’s fallen on hard times. Vladimir is taken off to the washroom by friends to clean up after the fall. A crowd of girls looking pretty and warm, mostly dressed in silver miniskirts and practical thick leggings like dancers wear, throng around him, kissing him, saying things like, ‘Don’t be long. Your drink’s waiting for you.’ They laugh, telling me they love him. He’s their grandfather. I’m given a hot drink and sausage and soup. Some of the people stay around the cafe all night as they too have nowhere to go. The manager shows me a sofa in a side room where I can sleep. I want to sleep dreaming of all the faces, all the hollow-eyed office workers who’ve never got home, tramps, factory shift-workers and women who invite me to take their photos so I could send them a husband from England.
People with nothing want to help me in every way. I don’t need any help, but they do. So, it continues while I’m in Lithuania. I learn about the brave, tragic Lithuanian history, and understand for the first time that the run around the world is going to be more full of surprises and unforgettable sharp lessons than I’d ever thought; that most memorable of all will not be the dangers, the cold, the encounters with death that lie ahead, but the fact that it’s a living circle of testimony to community and humanity, and that there is a united world. The world of special so-called ordinary people.
Latvia, January 2004
By contrast with the cosy cafe, on Sunday, 4 January in the woods, I’m eating oatmeal with snow. It’s an awful breakfast but my stove has been broken for three weeks and I can’t make any hot meals or drinks. I’ve arranged to collect a new one in Riga which is now only 210km away. I can’t wait. Luckily I’m on a main E64 highway heading up by way of Panevezys towards the Latvian border, as the secondary roads are closed and six foot deep in snow. I can get meals now and again at the Lucoil Service Stations; otherwise it’s bread and cheese and muesli.
The damage to the bivvi started by Eric the Wild Boar has also got worse and the zip has finally given way. I’m getting a new bivvi sent with my stove but in the meantime I have to wedge the flap shut by leaning my backpack against it. This works fine as the flap is always frozen stiff as a board and stays steady.
Psychologically, the fact that I can manage in a damaged bivvi and without a stove at −20°C is reassuring. I am getting hardier and I feel more confident I’ll manage when the temperatures start dropping to −30°C. Even so, at the end of the day I almost always just drop in my tracks wherever I stop. I have no spare energy to run extra kilometres to find a town and accommodation. It’s better for my budget too.
I run under a bright icy moon with dark woods and mountains of snow either side of the road; lorries throw heaps of slush over me, but the backpack cover is good and I hardly care any more. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m used to getting grubby.
I get very excited as I approach the Latvian border on 9 January. Another country. The furry-hatted customs officers wave me through and are most polite. I’m pleased I came this way.
Next morning a big black official-looking car draws up alongside me as I’m running along and three good-looking men climb out like something out of James Bond. They shake my hand, greeting me warmly. It’s a big surprise.
‘Are you Welsh?’ one asks.
They are Brian Court, UK Adviser to the Lithuanian Ministry of Defence; Lieutenant Colonel Mike Clements, UK Defence Attaché in Lithuania; Paul Hutton, Assistant Attaché; and Rokas Boreiko their Lithuanian Defence Section Driver.
They stand in the snow chatting, apparently impervious to the weather. Despite their smart greatcoats, I fear they’re cold, as I’m wearing three down jackets. This amuses them and they remark that it’s me they’re concerned about. They have been listening to the news on their radio, it’s −15°C with windchill, and −22 not far away on the Belarus border, but they say I look as if I’m coping. They’re the first British people I’ve met for over six weeks. I can’t stop smiling and talking nineteen to the dozen. It’s the first time I’ve spoken English for so long. Yet I feel choked up with emotion at the same time.
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