GUY WALKING AROUND THE WORLD

This is the amazing story of a guy who's WALKING AROUND THE WORLD!

It's a 36,000 mile journey, and he's doing it on foot. Take a look at his story and website here

I feel a mix of feelings about this guy. One, that he's such an adventurer. He's chosen to sacrifice his life in a way, just for this trip. It's his whole life, really, as there'll never be a day for the rest of his life when he won't think about it. What he does with his life is WALK. I really wish I'd done something with my life of this magnitude. When you consider, we're each given this life and have the choice to do something with it. My little adventure was to come to America at 40 with $500 and survive. This guy went to South America with little more, and chose to walk around the entire globe. Hats off to the man, with absolute respect.

I wonder what perspective he has now about life, just from doing what he's doing. At the time of writing this, he's now in Russia, having walked across the frozen Bering Straits, from Alaska. New year's eve, just the day before he was due to enter Canada from the USA all his equipment was stolen. Can you believe that? What arseholes stole the guy's equipment??? What kind of jerks would do such a thing? But he got over it, and got on with it.

I see this guy as some kind of monk or holy man. That's the only way you can look at it. The spiritual adventure he's embarked on is so monumental, it transcends anything any "real" monk could do, surely? He's walking around the world, for Chrissakes!

This is an exerpt from his first diary entry, in England, just before leaving for Argentina : Saturday 31st May 1997. PRIVATE
Yate's wine bar, City centre, Hull, Sunny day, 26.7 degrees C.

This is the first entry in my diary. Perhaps one day I can look back through these notes and appreciate how naive I was. During my tour of Norway in 1997 I battled with the idea, or more accurately, came to terms with the decision that given success or failure in the forthcoming sponsorship campaign, I would still go feet to ground in late 1998. It has taken a long time to come to terms with just what this means. I am in fact saying that I am willing to try this without any financial support of any form, and at present, without any idea of how I will be able to achieve the smallest of distances. This increases the chance a fatal error by a factor of 10. These months have been a roller- coaster ride of emotions. I feel like a man on death row.

He goes on, in his first entry on the walk:

Since my childhood days in East Yorkshire the horizon had always provoked curiosity in me. The further away it was, the more fascination it held. What would it be like if I went there? What would I be able to see beyond it? Off I would go then, sustained by a bottle of pop and a Mars bar, off across the fields and hedgerows to the north of Hull. I would sometimes have a less than enthusiastic native bearer, in the form of my younger brother Adrian, but I felt he was never gripped by the ‘curiosity’ on our expeditions.

This man has inspired me. I'm in awe, frankly.