A further update in our occasional series showing that the English really are different, that PG Wodehouse was a documentarist and that some people will do anything (quite rightly) to escape from English cooking:

A solitary figure appears at the crest of a hill, framed by fir trees shrouded in snow.
She is running – strapped to a harness that pulls a loaded buggy – and
puffing great clouds of water vapour. It is minus 20C (minus 4F) and
Rosie Swale Pope, 58, a British grandmother, is half way around the
world, in eastern Siberia.

Yes, at 58, this lady is running around the world. (I would note that while her address is in Wales her name is English.) What prompted this?

Her vision came when her second husband, Clive, 73, died of prostate
cancer in 2002, and she decided to run around the world to raise money
for the Prostate Cancer Charity and an orphanage in Kitezh, Russia.

Now, I have, in my time, helped support a Russian orphanage…although I used to do it by getting drunk at their annual fund raising ball. But this does sound a little odd doesn’t it? Hubby dies so I’ll run round the world? She has form in such matters:

She is used to adventures, and publicity. In the
1970s, she hit the headlines for sailing naked through the Tropics –
from England to Australia – with her first husband.
In 1983, she sailed solo across the Atlantic and later trekked 2,000 miles through Chile on horseback.

Please, I’m not trying to make fun of this woman, rather to celebrate her actions. As she says:

As the most punishing and dangerous stretch of her trip approaches, she
looks to her husband’s memory for inspiration. "After Clive’s death I
realised you have to push out the boundaries. Life is so precious:
Sometimes an idea grabs you by the base of the spine and you just have
to do it. Clive would have wanted me to be here, doing this."

A thought for any Alaskan bloggers (and if there be any in Magadan) , ….she’s coming your way in a few months. Keep an eye open for her, let us know how she gets on will you?