Читать книгу Just a Little Run Around the World: 5 Years, 3 Packs of Wolves and 53 Pairs of Shoes - Rosie Pope Swale - Страница 16

Latvia, January 2004

By contrast with the cosy cafe, on Sunday, 4 January in the woods, I’m eating oatmeal with snow. It’s an awful breakfast but my stove has been broken for three weeks and I can’t make any hot meals or drinks. I’ve arranged to collect a new one in Riga which is now only 210km away. I can’t wait. Luckily I’m on a main E64 highway heading up by way of Panevezys towards the Latvian border, as the secondary roads are closed and six foot deep in snow. I can get meals now and again at the Lucoil Service Stations; otherwise it’s bread and cheese and muesli.

The damage to the bivvi started by Eric the Wild Boar has also got worse and the zip has finally given way. I’m getting a new bivvi sent with my stove but in the meantime I have to wedge the flap shut by leaning my backpack against it. This works fine as the flap is always frozen stiff as a board and stays steady.

Psychologically, the fact that I can manage in a damaged bivvi and without a stove at −20°C is reassuring. I am getting hardier and I feel more confident I’ll manage when the temperatures start dropping to −30°C. Even so, at the end of the day I almost always just drop in my tracks wherever I stop. I have no spare energy to run extra kilometres to find a town and accommodation. It’s better for my budget too.

I run under a bright icy moon with dark woods and mountains of snow either side of the road; lorries throw heaps of slush over me, but the backpack cover is good and I hardly care any more. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m used to getting grubby.

I get very excited as I approach the Latvian border on 9 January. Another country. The furry-hatted customs officers wave me through and are most polite. I’m pleased I came this way.

Next morning a big black official-looking car draws up alongside me as I’m running along and three good-looking men climb out like something out of James Bond. They shake my hand, greeting me warmly. It’s a big surprise.

‘Are you Welsh?’ one asks.

They are Brian Court, UK Adviser to the Lithuanian Ministry of Defence; Lieutenant Colonel Mike Clements, UK Defence Attaché in Lithuania; Paul Hutton, Assistant Attaché; and Rokas Boreiko their Lithuanian Defence Section Driver.

They stand in the snow chatting, apparently impervious to the weather. Despite their smart greatcoats, I fear they’re cold, as I’m wearing three down jackets. This amuses them and they remark that it’s me they’re concerned about. They have been listening to the news on their radio, it’s −15°C with windchill, and −22 not far away on the Belarus border, but they say I look as if I’m coping. They’re the first British people I’ve met for over six weeks. I can’t stop smiling and talking nineteen to the dozen. It’s the first time I’ve spoken English for so long. Yet I feel choked up with emotion at the same time.