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.
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