FFYONA CAMPBELL

The life and times of Britain’s best known walker:

At thrirteen, she was the Brit who dreamed to walk around the world.

At sixteen she took the first step on that journey (August 1983), walking from John O'Groats to Land's End. At eighteen she (supposedly – more on that later!) walked 3,500 miles from New York to Los Angeles. At twenty-one she broke the men's world record by walking 3,200 miles from Sydney to Perth in ninety-five days.

In April 1991 she began her monumental 10,055 mile trek from Cape Town to Tangiers, the penultimate leg in her round-the-world hike.

Ffyona was 24 when she waved goodbye to Cape Town. Finally, on 1st September, 1993, she arrived in Morocco and ran headlong into the Mediterranean Sea, her arms raised high in a gesture of triumph that was captured on front pages around the world.

Typically, Ffyona would walk 30 miles a day on the shoulder of the highway. Every ten miles, a companion would be waiting for her in the supply vehicle. She'd take a break, eat, maybe drain some blisters with a syringe.

The final leg of her crazed journey started in April 1994, from Algeciras, Spain, and, having walked through Europe, finally reached the shores of Dover. She then took a nap, drained a few more blisters, and walked the required 800 miles back to her starting point of John O'Groats in Scotland, on 14 October 1994.

Eleven years and 20,000 miles – a Sunday stroll around the planet.

THE GOAT!

It was the story no one wanted to believe. The woman who had conquered herself – and the planet – now admitted that she had lied about a walk across the United States.

During a 1,000-mile stretch, she said she’d cheated, accepting occasional rides from her companion and driver. ‘Nobody knew, nobody was hurt, I rationalized,’ Campbell wrote in her book The Whole Story. But the lie preyed on Campbell for years.

It all began back in Indiana, a little over a thousand miles into her walk across America in the mid eighties. Her pace had left her exhausted and weepy, and as she fell behind she fought with Brian Noel, her young British driver, whom she had also "bonked" (as she puts it in her book) on a pretty regular basis. Meanwhile, Campbell started canceling her appointments with reporters as she fell farther and farther behind schedule.

Then one afternoon she discovered why she was flagging: She was pregnant. ‘When things got too hard, I just got in the van till I was walking very little at all, just on the approach to a town to do the interviews.

A little farther past the town and I'd jump in again, all through Illinois and Missouri and Oklahoma and Texas.’ She had an abortion in Clovis, New Mexico, and resumed walking. When she broke her story in Britain, some in the media accused her of concocting the lie as a publicity stunt in order to sell books.

If that was the case, then her ploy failed. If anything, it seems to have hurt sales. Since arriving back at John O'Groats on 14 October, 1994, Ffyona has been back to the USA and walked the ‘missing 1,000 miles’ alone, apart from a dog for company.