Winter walker
AN RNLI walking fundraiser is approaching his third winter in an epic sponsored trip.
IN 2014 a Margate man decided to raise RNLI funds by walking round the UK coast. Last weekend he made it to the Wee Toon.
Alex Ellis-Roswell, 24, revealed that it was a bit further than he thought, especially when he added the 2,500-mile Irish coast, which has added a year and broken his £3,500 budget, but he has raised £25,000 for the lifeboats charity.
On his way to Kintyre, at a special lunch organised by Isabella MacLachlan, 62, who runs the Cuillins bed and breakfast in Tarbert, he was introduced to another coast to coast walker, litter picker Wayne Dixon.
Ms MacLachlan made hearty bowls of butternut squash soup and a variety of filled rolls for the hungry hikers who never seemed to stop eating.
Litter picking
Mr Dixon and his dog Koda, five, is a familiar figure to Courier readers for his litter-picking efforts, with primary school children, while walking through Kintyre last month.
He has reached Tayvallich and his mum Christine collected him for the occasion.
While Mr Dixon was grabbing headlines, Mr Ellis-Roswell was completing the Irish leg of his route, which saw him delayed for three weeks with a knee injury.
Mr Ellis-Roswell, a sheep farmer who finished with school when he was 14, left his Kent home on August 3 two years ago, aged 21. He has been on Shanks’ pony ever since, tramping tracks as close to the coast as possible.
Walking
He spent his first winter of 2014 walking round Cornwall, the second in West Cork and the tough west coast of Ireland, and is now facing the harshest months of the year in Scotland.
‘In the past week I have walked from Tighnabruaich and should be in Campbeltown on Friday or Saturday,’ said Mr Ellis-Roswell, who was given a lift to Thursday’s lunch rendezvous and was then dropped back at the same point near Dippen.
He added: ‘I receive hospitality from lifeboat stations and sleep in them for about 50 per cent of the time. The other half I stay in a tent.
‘I use Scottish Vango tents and have gone through five during the trip. The firm wanted me to sign a contract and be a brand ambassador but I refused. The trip is about raising money for the RNLI, not promoting a company’s products.
‘I have also gone through seven pairs of boots.’
Mr Ellis-Roswell says he has been lucky to be mainly injury free.
He added: ‘When I injured my knee I was treated by the Munster football team’s physiotherapist in Cork.
‘It is funny how the body works. When one bit is injured, it tries to compensate and all of a sudden you have a sore ankle instead of a sore knee.’
Mr Ellis-Roswell set off thinking the walk would take two years and had saved up £3,500 but has extended his timescale to four years and has occasionally had to take odd jobs to make ends meet.
He writes for online publications and says that he is amazed that pictures from his mobile have been used in daily papers and Coast magazine.
‘Fifty per cent of my fundraising has come from online and the other through the RNLI bucket I carry around strapped to my rucksack,’ he said.
Christine Dixon, Wayne’s mum, joined the two walkers at lunch after driving up from Ribchester in England to deliver winter clothing.
Organise
Mrs Dixon said: ‘I try to organise Wayne and at first was travelling to see him every 10 days. Now he says it is his walk and I don’t know what it is like on the ground.’
Unusually, for extremely fit walkers, both men are smokers but reasoned that they are doing plenty to keep their arteries clear.