Beyond the Setting Sun

Beyond the Setting Sun - 6000 miles on foot for hospice - Every journey begins with just one step...

By Colin Skinner

(e-mail skinnem@aol.com)

A beginning and an end, and between is the dream... a dream of lives lost and loves lost in time...here it begins... dream on 

Foreword by Sir Ranulph Fiennes:

I met Colin Skinner in 1984, when I was giving a talk in Dover about my Circumpolar Journey.  What I didn't know was that I was in part responsible for setting him off on a 9,000 mile unsupported trek that has taken him from Scotland to Iceland, America, Canada and New Zealand.  It was my tales of 'borrowing' icebreakers and army telephone lines, and crossing vast fields of twisted ice that inspired Colin to think that anything was possible.

This book charts the beginning of a journey that has now taken Colin halfway round the world.  From the ancient burial grounds of Scotland to the frozen Rocky Mountains and the desert of Death Valley, Colin made his way by foot, with only a tent and a backpack for company.  Collapsing with heat exhaustion at 104 degrees and walking at minus 30 Fahrenheit are two extremes of what he faced.  Sleeping in woods with snakes, running out of food and water and avoiding being hit by trucks are all part of this tale's gripping ingredients.

An important aspect of the walk, though, was that it was not solely undertaken on some adventurous whim.  The purpose of the trek was to raise funds and draw attention to the work of Macmillan Cancer Relief and hospices.  In 6,000 miles, Colin met people suffering from cancer, AIDS and other serious illnesses: it was those people who were facing the hardest journey of all.  Supporting hospices in helping people make the most of their lives as they deal with life-threatening illness is an underlying theme of this story.

This inspirational book, which takes you through vast cities, thousands of miles of plains, mountains and deserts, and through the lives and stories of brave people, shows what can happen when you just let go and do what you have to do.  I urge you to read on and do what you can to help hospice.

Ranulph Fiennes: 5th December 2006.

What Came Before

1985, summer, and the soft rain came down all around.  Dusk slipped into a wintery night's chill, as I walked along, casting my gaze beneath the damp-hazed glow of the streetlamps.  As the pavement passed below, scattered light shifted under the sodium-yellow moonbeams that fell from up above.  Reflected glimmerings moved over the wet rough of asphalt and that night they looked peculiar.  Like the sheen on the sleek fur of an animal, the reflections shimmered: iridescent, fluid, electrically alive, beautifully alluring yet wholly unnatural.

Nearby, a sign in red neon flashed a forgotten message: 'Hospital Quiet Please'.  Traffic roared on by, to fill the dank city air with fumes, and there stood the infirmary.  Crafted long ago from white stone, sliced up and carefully removed from the living rock to be fashioned by men who valued their skill, now it stood as a choked grey monument to a time gone by.  Stained and tainted, its dim lights yellow and pale, it rose several storeys into the night.  Inside flickered life... and I wandered by.

Here was a place for the broken in a world that needed mending.  Its lights shut out the dark and those inside did what they could.  Within bustled doctors, nurses and others.  Those who were patients sat around or lay about, away from their work, away from their families, away from the elements of life.  Amidst all this, the humble Mr. Skinner was a porter.  Nineteen, sometimes not so humble, maybe not much of a porter and certainly not knowing what was what, nevertheless that was what I was.

For that wet summer of 1985, I ferried blood to operating theatres, moved samples from wards to laboratories, and began to grow up.  It was my job, or supposed to be just a job, but that was not the way it turned out.