A year on from her endeavour Geraldine McFaul reflects on her experience of walking from Glasgow to Rome for charity. At age 54 Geraldine completed her mission in six months, and she largely contributes her success to the kindness of strangers helping her along the way.
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00:00Which one story should I tell, Scott?
00:02So many good ones!
00:03I know!
00:04That was when I discovered that we didn't just have tickets for the general audience,
00:09I was being presented to Pope Francis.
00:12I am Geraldine McFall, and last year I walked from Glasgow home to Rome.
00:18I don't know why I did it.
00:20The backstory is that in 2016, a random thought came across my head.
00:26I don't know, I've been to Rome.
00:27And the next thought was, one day I'll walk there, and that was it.
00:32Such a ridiculous, stupid idea that it took me two years to tell anybody, but my mum was
00:39diagnosed with vascular dementia that year, so obviously I wasn't going to be doing it
00:43any time soon.
00:45And it was only after she died that I then realised that I now had the time, and I made
00:51plans and went off on 6th of May 2023 from my own front door.
00:56I was making it up as I was going along, I didn't really have much of a plan other
00:59than head size, and then across France and beyond.
01:04It took six months, so I arrived, I left on the 6th of May, and I arrived on the 4th of
01:09November.
01:10I did take days off, and sometimes weekends off, and breaks along the way, but yeah, it
01:16took me six months.
01:17When I was saying about not telling anybody for two years, by that time I already had
01:21two rules.
01:22I am not carrying a rucksack, and I'm not going over the Alps.
01:27I had no idea how I was solving them.
01:29So I was actually pulling a trailer, which is a buggy for running parents.
01:35So there was me strapped round my waist, a metre long pole attached to a buggy behind
01:41me, so I was always on the road, rather than on footpaths and sort of uphill and downhill.
01:49So yeah, it was different from most people walking long distance, like the West Highland
01:54Way type walk, that wouldn't have been an option.
01:57I was making my route up every day, so yes I was going from Glasgow to Rome, but actually
02:04it soon became my A to B was today, and every morning I'd get up and I'd look at Google
02:10Maps and figure out roughly 12 miles, but sometimes that had to be longer, or often
02:16it was shorter.
02:18So I was sort of, where is it, is there somewhere that I might be able to stop tonight, how
02:22would I get there, or that's too hilly that route, so I'll go this route.
02:26And I was making every day up as I go along, finding places to eat.
02:31I had my tent, so I did have my cooking equipment with me to start with.
02:36Some days were longer than others, and that was mainly, I'm having a really tough day
02:40today, I've had enough, and I was having a break.
02:43And that was the beauty of being on my own, I didn't have to negotiate anything, I wasn't
02:47in a hurry, nobody was telling me how far I had to go, but overall the average over
02:52the six months was about 12 miles a day.
02:54I arrived in Rome on a Friday afternoon, well, I arrived on the outskirts of Rome on a Friday
02:59afternoon, and a bunch of my friends came over from the UK to be there at the finish
03:04line for me, and the idea was then, on the Saturday, I was walking into, the finish line
03:10was St Peter's Square, so they were going to walk the last few miles with me to the
03:15finish line, and some more friends were there at the finish line, and actually Mary's Meals
03:20Italy, the president of Mary's Meals Italy, and some of his staff and volunteers were
03:25there at the finish line to greet me as well.
03:28So I met my friends on the Friday, and on the Saturday then, the four of us walked,
03:35and they were so excited and emotional and, you know, so dismayed, and they hadn't seen
03:41me for six months, and I was really worried because, yes, I was happy to see them, but
03:45I wasn't emotional and excited, it was almost like, I've just got so into this, getting
03:50up and going for a walk every day, that, but just as I got to the outskirts of the square
03:55and see the pillars of the square, all of a sudden, the tears and the emotions and everything
04:00just erupted, and I don't think it stopped then for about an hour after that, because
04:05obviously I was meeting up with some other people in the square, and there was a woman
04:10who had contacted me only two or three weeks beforehand on Facebook and said, I'm going
04:16to be in Italy on holiday, and I want to be there to see you at the finish line, and I
04:21gave her the details and forgot all about it, because I had no idea who this woman was.
04:26Well, she arrived, and she, it turns out that she was a fantastic, fluent Italian tour guide,
04:33so she had seven of us, you know, taken us to the right cafes, and took us to, her hotel
04:40was right at St Peter's Square, and it has a roof terrace, it used to be Pope Paul VI's
04:45residence, and so she had us up in what we called the Pope's pub, overlooking St Peter's
04:51Square, looking at all the folk queuing up to get in, and we were having champagne, so
04:57she had us a fabulous weekend, and then on Monday, my friends all went home, and my 94-year-old
05:04godfather and his family came over from Glasgow to be in Rome to finish, and we had tickets
05:12for the general audience, to see the Pope and the audience on the wedding day.
05:19I went to collect the tickets with Sylvia from Mary's Meals, she was my translator on
05:24a Tuesday afternoon, and that was when I discovered that we didn't just have tickets
05:29for the general audience, I was being presented to Pope Francis, and what was lovely as well,
05:36I was allowed to take Uncle Desmond, my 94-year-old godfather, with me, so we were up on the sort
05:42of altar, and, you know, the sort of much smaller group, and Pope Francis after the
05:48mass came around, and we all got a handshake and a big smile, so that was just, the whole
05:56adventure was incredible, but that was just the tin lid, you know, getting to meet Pope
06:02Francis at the end.
06:04Mary's Meals is one of two charities that I did it for, I also did it for Dementia UK,
06:09and that was in memory of Mum, who had vascular dementia, but the background to the Mary's
06:14Meals is, I've been aware, and I've not done active fundraising for Mary's Meals, but
06:18I have been involved in Mary's Meals donations and the backpack sort of gathering and things
06:25like that over the years, but my dad was a Black Hackney taxi driver in Glasgow when
06:30I was growing up, and he used to come in every day with his bag of change, and as a child
06:36I would fish through his bag of change and fish out the half pences, and save them up
06:41and send them off to help the children in Africa, and Mary's Meals, although it's a
06:45Scottish charity, started its work in Malawi, so I was thinking of a charity to remember
06:53with Dad, and that's why Mary's Meals with the half pences, going to help the children
06:58in Africa, and they are feeding, they started by feeding children in Africa, but they're
07:03now feeding 2.4 million children every day around the world, so that's why I chose Mary's Meals.
07:10During the walk, and as I said already, I was making it up as I was going along, I didn't
07:14know how far I was going to walk each day, I had my tent in the UK and France, but one
07:20thread from start to finish was the kindness of strangers that I met all the way, and I
07:26called them kind nappers, kidnapped with kindness, and that's what happened to me, that would
07:32be cafes and pubs that I would maybe stop for breakfast or lunch, and they would ask
07:37me what I was doing, and they would say, well this is on the house, so they were giving
07:41me my meals, or tea, coffee, free, and this happened in Europe as well, people would stop
07:48me in the street, and they would make donations to the charities, or they would give me water,
07:52or even give me biscuits and things to put in the trailer, but also one particular example
07:59was a cafe that I was in, a customer was chatting to me, asking me what I was doing, and she
08:04said, where are you sleeping tonight? I said, I don't know, because I didn't know at that
08:09point, and she said, well I'm up visiting my parents, and she says, I'll phone mum and
08:14ask if you could come and camp in their garden, it's only a few miles down the road. Great,
08:19so later on that day then, I went, you know, her mum had agreed, and it turns out that
08:25her dad had dementia, but it was raining when I arrived, so they decided that there was
08:31no way that I could camp, so I ended up in the spare room, having my dinner with the
08:36family, breakfast the next morning, and sent off with a trailer full of more food for lunch,
08:43and that kind of thing happened a lot. I was camping in a church grounds, and the gardener
08:52arrived in the morning before I had packed up my tent, I came away with his packed lunch,
08:56because he said, well sure, I can go home and make another one, but you can't, so that's
09:01the kind of kindness that I met all the way through.