Visiting the Buxton Adventure Film Festival last month I was inspired by one of the speakers: Rosie Swale Pope. Her story of running around the world was incredible, her delivery and energy was invigorating and I left believing I could achieve anything!

So when I returned home I decided to buy her book on Kindle. I did intend on buying a copy at the actual event but did wonder what I would do with a physical copy. I had decided to avoid reading the book until I had finished Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman. Something that was important to my extended essay for my degree. But procrastination got the better of me and I decided to start reading it during my Starbuck visits. This also coincided with my attempt to reach gold status at Starbucks so I read the book quite quickly!

The book is titled A Little Run Around The World. The book is simply breathtaking. It took Rosie 5 years to run around the world and the book tells a wonderful story of the people and animals she met along the way. It would have been so easy to be drawn into writing a book about the stats of running such an epic distance of over 20,000 miles. But it is far from that, its a story driven by experience of people and the countries she visits.

As I read the book there was a constant wow factor. I couldn’t believe one person could endure so much under difficult conditions. As part of her journey she spent an extraordinary amount of time in Syberia camping out in conditions of -60. I simply cannot imagine being that cold, I wuss out if the temperature is approaching 0! I cant imagine being that far down in the negative.

I regaled my wife relentlessly for weeks while reading the book, all Sian would hear is — Oh this reminds me of a story from Rosie’s book, when she….. I just wanted to constantly tell people about the book. I think I managed to wrangle it into every conversation I had for weeks. I was even tempted to buy a paper copy and leave it in Starbucks for someone to find, read and enjoy.

I really don’t want to spoil the book for anyone and feel if I tried to relay any of Rosie’s stories I simply would not do them justice. If you want to read a book that inspires and tells a wonderful human story of running around the world I implore you to buy it. You don’t even have to be into running, its just a great story of one woman’s journey. A journey that was undertaken at the age of 57, took 5 years and covered the largest land mass possible.

If you are looking for a stocking filler for anyone this year go and buy the book!