CHAPTER 3 The Tenby Bear

       Wales, 2 October 2003

      It’s only after I’ve run two miles that I remember it’s my birthday. I never ate the cake I found hidden at the back of the fridge last night, or waited for the champagne.

      It’s so strange to be running up the hill to New Hedges and Pentlepoir, seeing the sublime and beautiful sea, and cliffs and coastal path my friends and I have run along so many times in stormy weather, on rainy days and in magical days of sunshine like this morning. Surely I’m running just a short run along these familiar ways and will be back home in time for breakfast. I’m looking at everything around me with passion and intensity, knowing it’s for the last time for maybe years. Everything seems different looking at it for the last time: the colours brighter in the beautiful gardens of the cottages and in the green, green fields: the scurries of the first golden leaves on the roadside being chased by the breeze; the smell of sun on grass.

      I think back to my house, where my son James and brother Nicolas are getting ready to go as they have to leave soon to return to their homes. The momentum has swept us on. I want to say goodbye again. Yet this is partly the purpose of this run; to go forwards and not back on an easy track when you feel lonely; just as it’s always been for people on slow journeys and voyages long ago.

      A shy little girl rushes out from her home with her mother to give me a painting she’s done for me and some sweets. A bouncy lady with twinkling eyes and Indian summer sunburn on her cheeks makes fresh sandwiches for me.

      ‘Oh I’m so proud of you,’ she says. ‘Keep going. You’re insane, you need to see the doctor, but don’t go before you’ve done the run, you don’t want to see the light too soon.’

      The feelings of day one are encapsulated by the enormity of what lies ahead. Captured in the essence of burning feet, pain and flashes of joy and happiness, and lovely people. As Darwin wrote in one of his journals, ‘To be a traveller is to see the goodness everywhere.’

      I manage 25 miles to just beyond Carmarthen the first day, but often have to sit down by the side of the road to rub my feet, burning from the pressure of running on tarmac with the very heavy pack. I need a fire extinguisher.

      My head is swimming with emotion at what I’ve left behind, and excitement at what lies ahead. It sets a precedent that I am too exhausted to go into the town and look up people who have kindly asked me to stay. So I put up the bivvi among tall grass and bushes in the centre of a piece of wasteland and I go to sleep at once. I wake up in the middle of the night with my head sticking out of the bivvi, looking up at the stars and wondering where on earth I am. Then I realise—I am on my way. I feel overwhelmed with both joy and sadness…

      I pray that I can achieve what I need to do. I don’t feel strong, but very determined, with a mixture of physical and mental determination, like at the start of my transatlantic voyage that has now become my ‘Voyage on Two Feet’. The tide is running with me and there’s no going back. The first step, I’ve done the first step, and that’s the longest step of all.

      I can’t go back; I must avoid injury. All this makes the first few miles feel nerve-racking, heart-stopping. I think about the vastness of what lies ahead and tell myself, You only have to run for an hour…and then another hour after that…Do not think of it as a great big deal all at once… I think of it in steps…I can do one step…And then the next one…And the next one…

      As always on adventures—at sea or on land on two feet—this journey is a mixture of dreams: something that sends a shiver down my spine, that I have to do and, practical realities. It’s nothing airy-fairy, but facts that make dreams come true. I’ve already become trained at staying out at night over the past months; the difference now is that I am really on my way. I have to look after myself, and will have to do so for a long, long time.

      Big chunks of lead seem to have got into my backpack. Forget all the training runs I’ve been on with 5kg or 10kg packs of potatoes to teach me to run with weight. Forget sessions laden with my kit; you never quite take all the kit when you know you’re going home to a nice warm bed. I’m carrying stuff for the winter that I’ve been afraid to send ahead of me in case I lose it—and on top of this, I have a bear.

      He’s the Tenby Bear, come along to protect me. He even wears a little green knitted jacket with ‘Tenby’s Bear’ written on it. The children at one of our local schools want him to look after me and he’s my talisman. Next day, as I run to Cross Hands, I feel better, having managed to post back a little of my kit that I don’t need so much. But Tenby Bear stays. He’s not heavy, he’s my brother.

      There are seven days in Wales: exquisite hills, wild sea in Carmarthen Bay, glorious autumn colours in the woodlands of Wentworth. I run through Cross Hands and am invited by some pleasant-looking ladies to attend a murder. I wonder what dastardly skulduggery is being planned but it’s just a village-hall play called The Murder.

      Running with a heavy pack is better than a lullaby. I have a lovely day with friends in Newport, meeting up with Mike Rowland, a marathon coach and one of the best artists in Wales. I’m so tired I go to sleep in another classroom while he’s teaching. I don’t even wake up when they test the fire-alarm. He finds me curled up fast asleep, about to get locked in for the night by mistake.

      On 8 October, I run across the Severn Bridge after picking up some Welsh Oak leaves to keep forever with me.

      That’s it. I’ve done Wales. Now for the rest of the world.