Stepping across Africa

Ffyona Campbell is just 24. In recent years she has been walking round the world. She left home at 16 after an argument with her parents and ended up walking the length of Britain. She was only 19 when she walked across America for New York to Los Angeles, and at 22 she walked across Australia in 95 days.

During this time she had lost several sets of toe-nails and grown so accustomed to a family of blisters that she has given them names – Harry and Freda. The walking has also strained her thigh – bones, hip – joints and pelvis so much that doctors say her pelvis shows the stresses of a woman of 80.

Next month Ffyona is taking her 80-year-old pelvis to Africa to walk the 14,400 km from Cape Town in the South to the Mediterranean coast at Algiers in the North. She’ll find herself walking on every kind of route, from soft tracks across a treeless desert to muddy roads through thick rain forests. She plans to do it in 394 days, averaging 37 km a day (excluding rest days). She will be taking 60 pairs of socks, 30 pairs of Hi-Tec training shoes, and 50 bottles of shampoo.

The shampoo is vital. During the past 8 years of walking she has learned many things about herself. One of them is that she goes to pieces if she doesn’t keep clean. This time she has decided to walk in comfort, so she raised £ 50,000 for a Land Rover which will follow her through Africa. The Land Rover will have two drivers, and she will have support, a place to sleep, and a shower.

Ffyona will be collecting money, as well as spending it. Like her first walk across Britain, this is a sponsored walk for a charity which will be using the cash for the education of African children.

There will be dangers, particularly for a lone woman. She says she is going to try to be “as unattractive as possible”.

Boredom is another problem. She carries a Walkman, but she finds she has problems with what she calls “smell mirages”, where she thinks she can smell food in the middle of nowhere.

Then there is the pain. Although she hardens her feet in salt water, she had blisters throughout the whole Australian walk.

“I’m trying to treat the African walk as a nine-to-five job,” she says. “The trick is to take it a day at a time, and never to think about how much there still is to do before the end.”