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Lying awake listening to the noises of the night when most humans are asleep, I think nobody on earth knows where I’m sleeping tonight except the owls and silent creatures who may be watching and the little black beetles that become rainbow-coloured when you shine the torch on them. I’ll always remember Usedom for its tranquillity and wildlife.
From here, on 1 December, I cross the border to Poland.
CHAPTER 7 Rip Van Winkle in a Snow-hole
Poland, December 2003
Everything is black. There’s a crushing weight on top of me. I’ve gone to sleep with the torch in my hand, and flicker it on to see the inside of the bivvi filled with a huge tangle of frayed rope.
It’s not rope at all. It’s actually my half-frozen breath that’s been recycled, melted and refrozen, as there’s so little air. I grab the zip and have to force it open. A heap of snow comes in and mixes with my frozen breath. I burrow and dig my way up.
The full moon is shining down on a totally white landscape and I’m in a snowdrift, 5ft deep. Again! The stars gleam into my snow-hole. Inside the bivvi, the sleeping bags and saucepans are covered with ice, my black bag with precious items has turned into a white bag. I can’t believe I just camped here last night. It’s as if I’ve been here for a thousand years and I’m Rip Van Winkle who went to sleep in a cave for 1000 years.
I make the hole larger into a kind of cave, then get the stove out. I had it in the sleeping bag to keep warm as I’ve been having trouble lighting it. I stick the lighter down my front inside my clothes to warm up a bit too and lose it for ever. Luckily, I’ve got waterproofed matches in a tin. I chip ice from the saucepan, triumphantly making snowy porridge for breakfast.
When the stove won’t go I spoon coffee powder into the mug, topping it up with cold water, thinking of it as Starbucks. It isn’t bad—great training for the imagination.
Most things have to be done differently—most important, the chamber-pot. In eighteenth-century England even the grandest homes had potties under the beds. Nobody wished to walk down icy corridors in search of facilities in the middle of night. My pot is more of a mountaineer’s emergency pee tin, but has a good lid, which is its most important feature. I can’t wriggle out into the darkness and snow at −15°C, freeze my bottom and bring all the snow in with me.
Vivid human encounter and deep solitude alternate like movements in a symphony. I love Poland. After the loneliness I find the people are so warm and full of fun, with the laughter and spirit of those who have known harsh times throughout their history but have never been conquered inside themselves.
There were two days of golden autumn just before the blizzard. These last moments seemed brighter and stronger as if to give a memory for the winter that wouldn’t fail during the months ahead.
The wind flying in ebullient little whirlwinds makes a merry-go-round of golden leaves. The last colours before the snows come are blazing scarlet, crimson and orange in the forests. The last dance of the leaves.
The first town I reach, Swinouscie, is an Aladdin’s cave of markets, an extravaganza of life and colour. Hot-water bottles dangle above stalls in their dozens, top of the range in the colder weather, along with thick socks, batteries of all sizes, spicy-smelling sausages, vegetables brightly displayed, exquisitely etched glassware. People hug each other, laugh a lot, wear big furry hats. My heart is lifted by hundreds of beautiful little horses pulling taxi carriages at a canter, with bells jingling merrily, or standing with faces deep in fat nosebags. I’ve fallen for a bright bay pony with a wild black mane and four white socks.
I’m patting the horse when his owner comes up, a white-haired energetic old man. He gets out his accordion and sings me a song. I don’t understand the lyrics, but it sounds great. I haven’t expected to arrive in Poland and be serenaded. I’m huge in damp coats and think my face is muddy from the lorries coming through the customs. The next thing he does is to get out a big clean white hanky, reach out and tenderly wipe my face. He then declares I have to marry him, he needs a wife and apparently I’m just right. I think he’s only asking me to make me smile, as I’m cold and lonely, but it does cheer me up. I imagine it’s typical Polish gallantry. He speaks in English but can’t understand anything I say to him. I’ll always remember the first words I string together in Polish with the help of the phrasebook: ‘Thank you very, very much, but I’m spoken for.’
He kisses my hand and vanishes. He’d mentioned he was nearly 90, hard to believe, and glad to be still working. I never discover his name, but he’s wonderful and leaves me feeling all made up.
I head off across the Wolin, practically an island linked by a tiny strip of land and bridge at a place called Dziwinów to the west of the north coast. There’s a spectacular nature reserve with majestic forests. The snows begin hitting hard. Deep winter arrives overnight. The holiday village buildings and campsites along the coast are ghosts. Buildings roar and shake in the blizzards. Doors to tourist cafes with tantalising signs for ice-cream and hot coffee are locked and barred, but the local farming community hang out in occasional cafes. I’m able to take off the wet kit discreetly and wring out my socks and vests. Nobody asks me to leave, even though I’m making puddles on the floors. Of course, the proprietors and customers are brilliant to me, as they have to be out themselves tending the farms. I buy pickles, black bread, wonderful sausage full of calories, and am fed hot beer—the locals say it’s the finest cure for the cold and everything else too.
I’m managing in Polish because of their huge efforts to encourage me, as few people in the countryside speak English. It gets to me so much that in the small, struggling communities, in cafes and markets, people seem to understand what I’m doing, ‘this crazy marathon’, and why: the outer and inner journey, the purpose of it, without too many words.
Cancer is a problem here too. I learn there’s a lot of it along the Polish coast. In Kosalin, someone calls the local paper and I do a stumbling interview in Polish to promote cancer awareness and health checks. I am so pleased that my message might reach someone here and help them. I think of Clive, still wondering how it would have turned out if we’d gone to the doctor earlier. The reasons for my run are not left behind. If you do something for a reason, I’m discovering, the reason itself gives back the help ten thousandfold, because it makes you so much more determined.
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.
CHAPTER 9 A Stranger is Family
Poland, December 2003
In Poland it’s the custom to set an extra place at Christmas for ‘The Unknown Guest’. It’s early morning on Christmas Eve when I find out how true this is. I’ve run through a snowstorm and gale that’s just eased back when I see a diminutive figure rushing after me, whipping up a whirlwind of snow. Following her is a little girl with snowflakes in her curls sticking out from her woolly hat and a small dog with wagging tail, chugging through the snow like a miniature snowplough, his legs too short to leap over the drifts.
‘Nesoey Sisiat!’ she shouts. ‘Happy Christmas!’ Unlike most people in this area, she speaks perfect English. Dorota, daughter Kasia, aged eight, and their sweet little dog Eny lead me to their home a short distance away in Budry. I follow them with pleasure but it’s like a force of absolute will. They apparently feel they have to spoil me. They haven’t even known I’m coming, but spotted me in the distance.
‘Nobody should be alone at Christmas,’ says Dorota.
The building is a tall ex-communist warren of small apartments. The exterior is grey, brutally functional, like the communist buildings surviving in Germany, Albania and Romania which I saw on a previous journey. But inside it’s very different: Polish candles of hope and for the spirit of Christmas are on the shelves and tables. There’s the smell of warm baking. Sweet-smelling fir branches, bells and tinsel decorate the living room for the festive season; sprigs of fir hang over bookshelves filled with books in Polish and English. They even have The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist.
They want me to stay for Christmas Day. Christmas is traditionally a closed circle yet a stranger like me is given such affection and welcome. ‘A stranger is never a stranger,’ she says. ‘A stranger is family.’ I feel so moved yet I also need to be back on the road.
So they deluge me with a Christmas Eve I’ll never forget, putting music on and feeding me with carp her friends caught. It’s deliciously baked and, I learn, the traditional Christmas meal in this part of Poland. We also eat Moczka, a sweet pudding tasting of poppy seeds, nuts and fruit. Dorota has a computer and sends the first message to the website that James has had for a while. I also write an email to James and Eve. I couldn’t have asked for a lovelier Christmas gift. Before I leave, Kasia ties tinsel to my backpack, ‘To bring you happiness and luck,’ she says. They heap me with delicious food before hugging me and saying goodbye.
There is a party after all, because the magpies and starlings are fascinated by Kasia’s tinsel and keep appearing, looking for a chance to steal it. The cake-crumbs make the sparrows and finches even more eager to follow my trail than usual, as the fare is so fancy. They’re still Clive’s ‘little feathered hooligans’.
It’s 30km to the next town, Goldup, the only big place in this area. I’ve made good progress and find myself running through the hustle and bustle and last-minute shoppers. I’m concerned about my budget as always, and don’t feel like staying in a hotel at Christmas anyway. I run on until I reach beautiful woods and camp in a wide clearing.
I sleep soundly, waking early on Christmas Day. It’s a cold morning, −21°C, but the air is fresh and clear. I’m warmly dressed and a pale band of gold around the edge of the sky leads me on. I get up and run. For some reason, I feel must keep going, keep running on this special day, though I don’t know why…
I haven’t got far when a car draws up and a middle-aged couple get out. They stop especially to talk, looking downcast. They speak French which I can speak, saying something about having been looking and searching for a sign. They hug me, seeming overwhelmed to see me. They want to give me their email address. After they drive off I see they have written in my book: ‘Our son Guillamine took his life on 30 October 2003 to join his great father in the sky. You have appeared to us as a marvellous star and a message of love. You have given us hope.’
It’s hard to write about this. I cry and cry, which is something I never do. I don’t really know why they have said I’ve given them hope. If so, I’m so glad. I cheer up at the thought of action and decide to run for Guillamine through Christmas, to think about this man whom I haven’t met and can never meet, and about his parents Christian and Elizbieta. I do believe thinking about someone can help. Thoughts and prayers are powerful messengers. These two have touched my life and given me more courage. The to-ing and fro-ing between feeling my family are with me and the loneliness that cuts like a knife has gone. Perhaps because it makes me realise I have so much.
Next day I reach Dubeniniki and meet a wonderful lady called Bozenna. ‘You must come home for a meal,’ she greets me, ‘but first we go to church.’ The huge church is packed, people standing shoulder to shoulder. The singing is powerful and stirring, every voice from the thronged masses joining in. There are guitars and children singing and the christening of a three-week-old baby at the end of it all.
It has been my policy not to cross a border late at night, because I’d be in a new country and not sure how to handle everything. I sleep this side of the Lithuanian border beneath trees all bowed and broken under the weight of the snow. One tree is creaking, but I can’t tell which one and I’m so tired I don’t move. I hope it won’t fall on me, and that everything is all right.
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